M Puzzle: Mad Props to My Peeps
by Todd Radford and Lance Nathan
The mechanics are straightfoward. The plays are by and large Pulitzer or Tony winners or were recently performed at MIT. They are, in order:
- I Hate Hamlet, Paul Rudnick (performed recently at MIT)
- The Admirable Crichton, J.M. Barrie
- Biloxi Blues, Neil Simon
- American Buffalo, David Mamet ("dead-pig leg-spreader" is what the stage directions call it)
- Long Day's Journey into Night, Eugene O'Neill
- The Lion in Winter, James Goldman (Eleanor: "Of course he has a knife. He always has a knife. We all have knives! It's 1183 and we're all barbarians!")
- Equus, Peter Shaffer (wire horse heads for actors)
- The Effect of Gamma Rays on Man-in-the-Moon Marigolds, Paul Zindel (hey, it won the Pulitzer)
- A Streetcar Named Desire, Tennessee Williams
- City of Angels, Cy Coleman, David Zippel and Larry Gelbart (performed recently at MIT)
- You're a Good Man, Charlie Brown, Clark Gesner ("That little red-headed girl dropped her pencil. It has teeth marks all over it. She nibbles her pencil. She's human!"; performed recently at MIT)
- Proof, David Auburn
- The Universal Language, David Ives ("Presets: application form, book, rose, stick, three chairs; in the handbag: paper, money"--written in Unamunda; performed recently at MIT)
- Goodnight, Desdemona (Good Morning, Juliet), Ann-Marie MacDonald
- The Real Thing, Tom Stoppard (the handkerchiefs have blood on them)
- How I Learned to Drive, Paula Vogel
- The Playboy of the Western World, J.M. Synge (a "loy" is a shovel)
- Amadeus, Peter Shaffer (Salieri's sweets--crema al mascarpone and Nipples of Venus)
- Noises Off, Michael Freyn (two characters in the play are the stage managers; Act II is seen from behind the set)
- The Heidi Chronicles, Wendy Wasserstein
When the plays are listed in the right order, the highlighted spaces spell HAMLET'S WAS ALL UNBRACED, which is a clue for the word DOUBLET.
Archivist's note: This puzzle had also had a trained answer, as described in the training page. The flavor text mentions "arrange them aesthetically", so we apply the answer from Ikebana, REMOVE THE BLUE, to get the new answer DOT.
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