Features

COVER STORY

Clued In

Marisa Milanese

The Game, a semiannual 24-plus-hour quest to unlock a seemingly impenetrable network of clues, has become a Stanford tradition for students and alumni alike. Winning requires gadgets, tactics and a ridiculous amount of cryptography. And the winners get—nothing?

  • Photo: Amanda Lane

    Telling Tales Out of School

    Retired from teaching but vibrant as ever, Diane Middlebrook is working on the next chapter of her life, as full-time biographer. Her latest project is characteristically adventurous: chronicling the troubled marriage of poets Ted Hughes and Sylvia Plath. It’s a subject as interesting as Middlebrook herself.

  • Courtesy William Alsup

    The Search for Peter Starr

    Pete Starr lived up to his name. A prominent San Francisco lawyer, he was one of the nation’s foremost mountaineers and conservationists in the early 1930s. Then he disappeared on a solo climbing trip to the Sierra. By the time searchers found him, all of California knew his story.

  • © The National Gallery, London

    Masters of Deception?

    The works of Early Renaissance painters such as Jan van Eyck have enthralled viewers for centuries with their uncanny realism and exquisite detail. Was it sheer talent, or did they secretly rely on projection devices? A Stanford physicist takes a stand.