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I was delighted when I finally got some NYT acceptance letters this summer after four years of rejections. So you can imagine my shock when, only a few days before my 30th birthday, Will asked me if he could use this grid as the playoff puzzle for the Westchester Crossword Puzzle Tournament. My debut in the New York Times, AND I got to see many puzzle enthusiasts all in the same room solving it in real time — I couldn't ask for a better birthday present.

I originally submitted the clue for (TO BE) OR NOT (TO BE) as a revealer: [Famous dramatic words ... and a hint for this puzzle's theme], which I thought would be a good way of showing that some theme answers are TO BE, others are not, and you have to figure out what the OR NOT element is. I would have preferred that the revealer had been there, but it can be fun to let solvers interpret an answer as a revealer without being explicit about it (like Jeff Chen's STIR FRIES puzzle).

There were several other TO BE entries I considered using, like TO BE CONTINUED, HIP TO BE SQUARE, IT REMAINS TO BE SEEN, and the Weird Al song DARE TO BE STUPID. I actually built two different grids for this puzzle. The first one had some really great long fill entries, but I scrapped it because a) I thought there were too many short, crappy answers, and b) I didn't think an entry like CRABB would fly, especially since those B's held down a theme square. The lesson, as always, is don't hesitate to tear your puzzle down and start over if you think you can do better. The second version that you see here is much cleaner, so that's what I submitted.

I don't know if any individual puzzle inspired me to create this one, but I think the closest analogue might be Joel Fagliano's DOUBLE U puzzle from July 2012, which I thought was remarkably clever.

One last note: I think it's fitting that the NYT would run my puzzle on October 3, 2013, since that happens to be my late grandmother Edna's 100th birthday, and there's a funny crossword story about her too. When my mother Elaine was young, my grandmother came home and found that her daughter had completely filled in the answers to the crosswords in one of their puzzle books. My grandmother was astounded. "How did you do that?" she asked, stunned that her daughter might be a crossword-solving ace. "Oh," my mother said, flipping the pages to the end of the book, "they have all of the answers right here in the back. See?" Thus the legacy of puzzle-related deviousness in my family was born.

– puzzle by Evan Birnholz

I started out picturing the grid with the two double stacks of 15s. The intersecting central 13s only came into the plan once I started writing the NW corner. 15-Across was the first to go in and I started looking at other 15s staring with F, thinking that 1-Down would be OFF-something. I got really close with CARLOAN/D and TIEGAME (singular) at 2 and 3-Down. I saw ALGORE working nicely but the dearth of OFFA??? led me to try AFFABLE. Then I worked out a pretty good corner if BOANS was a thing (a defunct department store in Perth).

I joked to myself about using CARLEAK instead. That was enough to get me over the hump by thinking of LEASE and adding the central 13 running across. I wasn't psyched about FREONS and would have chucked it if the opposite corner hadn't come together so well. Didn't much like HOMELESS SHELTER as an entry. A lot of space for a word you can't really clue with my usual japery but there was too much good stuff in the SW corner to pass up.

– puzzle by Byron Walden

Ah, my first NY Times crosswords. I'm very happy to be here.

For me, this puzzle was a lesson in "fresh and lively." As a newbie, "fresh and lively" can be a difficult accomplishment. I was happy just to complete a grid with no Tibetan yaks, references to drugs or disease, Roman numerals (one of my own pet peeves) and still fall within the word count guidelines. Mr. Shortz liked my theme but found my first grid a bit too "crosswordy," asking me to try again.

So I tried again. I didn't exactly get a "meh" in his response but Mr. Shortz did not find the puzzle all that exciting for solvers. Again, he was willing to take another look if I wanted to try again. "Really?" I thought and walked away from the project for a couple of weeks. Coming back to it with fresh eyes, I was able to produce what you see today. Is it fresh and lively? I'll let you be the judge of that. I will say it is much improved, a "fresh and lively" lesson I hope I can carry over into other crossword constructions.

– puzzle by Amy Johnson

The inspiration for this puzzle was simple: I wanted to take a common (timeworn, in this case) theme, the "double talk" theme, and give it some variation. I didn't know how exactly I'd do it until I was doing a crossword (don't remember which) and saw one of those infamous "When repeated" clues. I didn't want to do it that way, because I didn't want a million clues to begin with "When repeated". I came up with this way instead because I wanted to give the early-week solver just the briefest bit of pause as to how to parse the answer. I wanted to give the solver at least a small "aha moment", however slight it would be.

The construction of this puzzle was a prime example of an exercise in balance. How many theme entries could I fit until I started to feel like I was "wedging" them in, until the sacrifices in the fill and the grid structure became too great for the amount of theme material? Truthfully, when I started, I didn't expect to get sixteen. Believe it or not, after I had the sixteen in place, I actually tried to fit another two at 32A/43A, but that's where the "balance" principle kicked in. I had already put in a pair of cheater squares to get this far; that was enough of a compromise. With the addition of another pair of theme answers, I would've lost too much in fill quality for it to be worth it.

– puzzle by Tim Croce

This is my first published puzzle, so I am quite excited!

The stacked 15s constrain the fill, so I had to make some hard choices. My least favorite fill (by far) is REPEN, but it's a linchpin. I couldn't find a way to eliminate it without adding even more painful fill elsewhere. IVAN I invaded the northern part of my grid because my alternative fill required a repetition (ANOTE and TNOTES) that I found unacceptable.

It's very educational to see how editing improves your puzzle between submission and publication. I was pleased that about 60% of my clues survived without modification and that almost half of the remaining clues had only minor edits. It looks to me like most of the changes are intended to dial down the difficulty level and help solvers unfamiliar with the theme answers. This makes a lot of sense. Tribute puzzles like this one could really benefit from having an easy and a hard set of clues. That way, people who are very familiar with the theme can still get a challenge.

Unfortunately, the edits did cause many of my favorite clues to disappear. Of the remaining clues that I wrote, my favorite is 4-down. I also like 30-down as a (hopefully) fresh way to clue a common answer and 51-down as an attempt to help solvers with a relatively obscure answer.

The grid had some minor surgery in the West between submission and publication, and I can guess why. This is the least constrained area of the grid, so I was adventurous with the fill. 25-down was originally MOOC (massive online open course). Currently, MOOCs are quite a disruptive force in college education. I can why this isn't Wednesday fill, especially in a puzzle in which the difficulty notch needs to be dialed down. Don't worry MOOC — I'm sure your (crossword) day will come soon!

For the very curious, that section was originally CAGY ODOM MOOC. If Will had kicked it back to me, I probably would have gone with CCCP (nice cross with COMMIE), ORAL, and MERE. The crosses of CREPT, CAR, and PLEA would have been fine. Failing that, as a computer scientist, I would definitely have clued CERF with Vint Cerf, one of the scientists generally credited with inventing the Internet.

– puzzle by Jason Flinn

Filling a grid is an act of discovery as much as construction. Construction implies you know the end product before you begin, as if working off a blueprint. Maybe there's something to that when building a themed puzzle.

Making a themeless puzzle is different. More like a journey, you pick a place to start, head off in one direction or another, not sure what you'll find but hoping for memorable encounters as you try to reach the other end or come full circle. In this case, I set out from the northwest, traveled south, then east, and finally up north again. For the most part, not a bad ride. Every section has a thing or two worth the visit — a lively answer, a clever clue, pleasant accommodations.

One spot where I feared the wheels were coming off was the middle. My attempts to avoid F-SHAPED were for naught. But if you can't get around it, you go through it, so that's what I did. Luckily, there is something shaped like the letter F. For anyone unfamiliar with cellos and their sound holes, don't think of a capital F in sans serif font, but a lowercase f in calligraphy. That's a better image, and the reason that musical types call them f-holes.

I also thought twice about TURTLE DIARY. It offered better crossings than the alternatives, but I imagine not everyone knows the movie. I had good memories of it, watched it again this week, and I'm glad I went with it. The film is a small gem, based on a Russell Hoban novel that is now in print again. I give the title a big thumbs up, too — it looks good in the grid. And it is the end of the week, so why not?

– puzzle by John Farmer

This puzzle was a long time in the making, over two years. So many people helped me with feedback and collaboration: Ian Livengood, Doug Peterson, Jim Horne, Kevin Der, and Joon Pahk. Joon in particular hit upon BOULDER COLORADO which was the final piece of the puzzle. I have to say, the puzzle constructor community is awesome, some of the most intelligent, funny, and nice people I've ever had the pleasure being around. Plus, they know how to have a good time (what happens at the ACPT stays at the ACPT).

(mostly a lot of drinking, laughing, and nerd talk)

I originally had a cutesy cluing scheme, i.e. MISSION IMPOSSIBLE = "Puzzle subject's least favorite TV series?" with SISYPHUS hidden, for the solver to find. But I really like what Will has done with it. At first I was worried that people wouldn't quite get the theme without the explicit "puzzle subject" cluing, but now I see it as poor Sisyphus surrounded by these rock-related terms, stuck in the middle of nightmarish limbo. And I love what Will did with the circles around SISYPHUS. Much more elegant than the kind of notepad note/word search approach I was thinking.

Even when I had all the theme answers in place, the grid was a bear. For a while I thought that this construction had defeated me, but after three dozen rearrangements and 35 punts, I finally came upon a pattern of black squares that seemed like it might just work. In order to incorporate the kinds of long fill Will mentioned (thanks for the nice words, Will!) I ended up having to place more cheater squares than I would have liked—three pairs feels like too many to me—but the resulting blockiness seemed like a reasonable compromise.

I tried my best to incorporate snazzy long fill and clean short fill, but not matter how hard I fought, not matter how many dozens of hours I spent trying hundreds of options, I couldn't figure a way around INSTR. I finally convinced myself that if a flaw in woven goods is a tribute to Athena (showing that no one is as perfect as her), a flaw in a crossword is an offering to the crossword deity OOXTEPLERNON, Rex Parker's nemesis (see "Some helpful vocabulary" at the bottom of the page).

– puzzle by Jeff Chen

Andrea:

Post-ACPT 2010, Patrick suggested M*C idea, knowing i like to do this kind of AEIOU puzzle. I came up with preliminary entries, most held to the end, though the MIC was MICROPHONESTAND. Really love MICKEYMOUSECLUB so much more, esp with EEK under MOUSE! (and I snuck in my Siamese cat KOKO)

We talked about adding MCC (MCCOURT) and /or MRC Mr Clean. Maybe MYC MYCENAE...maybe even a MDC snuck in there. PB did a version with SEVEN of them, but the MUC (MUCHADO) lacked the MAC, MEC, MIC, MOC sound. So we decided to scale back and just do a clear, solid, fun alphabet run. I made a new grid having just learned how to use Crossfire, that my other frequent collaborator Michael Blake insisted I learn. The peppy original cluing is all Patrick. Though not a pangram, two Xs and seven Ks (!) make up for no QZ.

Many of my puzzle partners are new folks I've mentored, but Patrick's role with me is that he always takes my ideas and bumps them up many notches. Always. :)

Patrick:

Flattery will get you everywhere. ;)

Working with Andrea is a lot of fun; her vivacious energy is quite infectious. Glad we scaled back our original theme ambitions on this one, though I do like the idea of adding some consonants to the usual "vowel run" theme. Maybe next time!

– puzzle by Patrick Blindauer and Andrea Carla Michaels

I brainstormed phrases that could work as revealing entries for add-a-letter and drop-a-letter themes. THROW IN THE TOWEL stood out, not only because it allowed for the addition of HIS and HERS but also because it contained 15 letters. Crossword gold!

To class it up a little, I wanted theme entries where the HIS and HERS were appended to the front or the end, not jammed in the middle (e.g., PARIS FRANCHISE). And of course I needed four theme entries: two with HIS and two with HERS. Finally, I felt it important to have a HIS and HERS up top and another set at the bottom. Looking back, I don't know if all of these self-imposed constraints were essential, but I was happy with the symmetrical set of theme entries that emerged. HERSHEY BABY was my favorite.

The grid may not be the smoothest you'll ever see (LEONAS, NIDI, and ACHT, anyone?), but I like to think it was in service of the theme and some of the more interesting non-thematic fill. I spent a lot of time thinking whether it was something of a sin to have I CHOKED and I RAISE in the same line (much less the same grid), but ultimately I LIKED it.

– puzzle by Samuel A. Donaldson

I constructed this puzzle in April 2012. I had recently solved Tim Croce's puzzle from March 9 and remember thinking the grid looked awesome and would be a fun construction challenge! So I decided to rotate the grid pattern, move a few blocks around, and try to fill a similar grid myself.

My seed entries were STILL DRE and ZEN GARDEN, two phrases I'd never seen in a New York Times crossword before. When I noticed that a third seed entry, JASON MRAZ, fit at 25-Down, I started to get excited about how this puzzle was shaping up! The rest of the fill came relatively fast, since the number of options for such an open grid pattern is limited. My favorite corner is the lower right, because it has a lot of Scrabbly letters and unusual entries; my least favorite is the lower left, since it has several tough proper nouns. Nevertheless, I was very happy about how this puzzle turned out and hope it makes for an enjoyable solve!

– puzzle by David Steinberg

I submitted this one towards the beginning of 2011, but it had to sit on the shelf for an extended period because coincidentally two adjacent entries were identical to those in Joel Fagliano's 03-16-2012 puzzle. I've had themeless puzzles delayed due to a similarity of one marquee answer, but never before for a pair. Surprised to see that none of our downs matched up, but glad they're each unique solves.

As such, it's fun to compare this to some of my more recent publications, given that it's actually older than my last four. The past year or two, I've been putting a greater emphasis on culling weaker shorter entries from my puzzles, and while I still stand by the majority of the fill, I'd probably redo the NW corner given the chance. These days I might be okay with one of ILUV, SADO, or UDE working their way into a quadrant, but definitely not all three. However, the SE is among my all-time favorite work! Really happy I was able to get all those entries in.

– puzzle by Peter Wentz

Imagine standing in Times Square and then walking west, through 14 states... all the way to San Francisco's Lincoln Park. Unimaginable? Not if you follow the Lincoln Highway.

Until a few years ago, I never realized that Times Square was the starting point of one of our nation's first coast-to-coast road — the Lincoln Highway. Nicknamed "Main Street Across America," it predates Washington D.C.'s Lincoln Memorial as a major memorial to President Lincoln.

The possibility of making a puzzle came about when MAINSTREET ACROSS AMERICA revealed itself as a 23-letter phrase (cue the "tingling feeling"). Road trip! I rarely make 23x puzzles, but took a chance on this one. Bottom line — a puzzle about a coast-to-coast, 14-state American highway had to be big, wide open and travel-worthy. The 23x23 landscape seemed perfect.

Keeping with the "big" theme, I was elated to work with four 23-letter entries sweeping across the grid in a coast-to-coast pattern. The 14 state abbreviations correspond to their approximate locations on a U.S. map (as close as one can get in a 529-square grid). Think abstract art.

Luckily, those big, 23-letter entries yield dividends: (a) a low-word count (170) and (b) a low three-letter-word count (30). These stats offer a chance to make an interesting fill, a make-or-break feature of any themed puzzle (I can't stand boring puzzle fills, and will rewrite a puzzle to within an inch of its life, if need be).

The puzzle bottom (148-A) revealed a directional twist (somewhat of an afterthought) — a way to simulate the direction of the Lincoln Highway as one travels from east to west coast. It's a sneaky surprise — like finding icing at the bottom of a cupcake. I hope you enjoyed today's cupcake-y road trip across the grid!

– puzzle by Elizabeth C. Gorski

I heard the phrase BREAKOUT STAR on TV and wondered if there had ever been a crossword based on two-word phrases beginning with a synonym for "flee." Quick research said no. ESCAPE CLAUSE then came to mind, also 12 letters. Bingo. I'm a Grisham fan, so RUNAWAY JURY had to be in this puzzle, and TAKE-OFF RAMP naturally countered it. So there's a cool theme. To the grid I went with hopes of a making this one a very accessible Monday offering (Will has told me that the Monday happy stack is the shortest of the bunch).

It's a good idea to begin in the center then fill the grid just as a drummer tunes a snare, starting with the corner with the trickiest theme letters, then advancing to its polar opposite. When the ESQ-QUAFF fit nicely, I decided to go for the pangram, which I usually don't give a hoot about, but I already had J, K and W taken care of in the theme so why not? Now for some fresh fill. POGO STICK, TOUCH UPON (which I actually added in a second take after Will requested a change in the SW corner), VARIOUS and the tasty FUMET (which I may have heard once on the Food Channel) have never appeared in a Shortz-era NYT puzzle so in they went. My apologies about ERY. Finally, CATTY is a strong 1A, a lively word, but not my all-time favorite. That would be CHIAROSCURO.

– puzzle by Gary Cee

This puzzle falls into the genre of "common phrase that can be interpreted in a wordplay-y way." I'm a big fan of pop culture, and like finding ways to make pop culture-themed puzzles that pay homage, but don't actually require knowing a lot of pop culture trivia. (I generally find that Will doesn't like publishing puzzles that require too much knowledge of a specific area of pop culture, as opposed to being more wordplay-y and accessible to all.)

I loved the Lord of the Rings films and I struck upon the phrase MIDDLE EARTH as something that I think is well-enough known (or figure-out-able at least) and lends itself to wordplay. I initially tried to find phrases where EARTH was in the exact middle, but I couldn't find enough that worked, so settled on the more general meaning of the word "middle" (after all, Malcolm was not actually in the dead center). It was important to me to use all feasible divisions of the word EARTH, though I couldn't find an E-ART-H breakdown. I debated whether I HEART HUCKABEES was valid, since the movie title was often written with a graphic of a heart instead of the word "Heart," but I found lots of references with the title spelled out.

I had some trouble in the upper right, getting two good 9-letter words to intersect the two theme entries there and to intersect the somewhat-constrained ISAACS. Note 36-Across. This is my first time including that in a puzzle.

– puzzle by Kevan Choset

This one started with ELEVATOR OPERATOR. First, I thought it was interesting that this 16-letter phrase alternates between vowels and consonants and that it splits evenly into two 8-letter words. That's enough to get a constructor's mind churning. Next I thought about an elevator going down and back up, and a puzzle idea was born. BOOMERANG EFFECT (fifteen letters — yes!) seemed like a good revealer, hinting at the back-and-forth nature of the themed entries.

The side-by-side themed answers made filling the grid a bit of a challenge, since I was locked into two consecutive letters on 28 occasions. I'll admit that a few of the entries are a little on the ugly side (the symmetric pair of abbreviations WRS and STK strike me as the worst offenders).

One thing I like about the grid is the way that two pairs of themed entries tie symmetrically into the theme-revealer — the extreme E and R of ELEVATOR OPERATOR and the middle E and F of NEGATIVE FEEDBACK lie on BOOMERANG EFFECT. I think "grid architecture" is an often unnoticed or undervalued feature of a puzzle. The likes of interlocking themed entries and (perhaps to a lesser extent) grid art are often subtle. They might not add much to the solving experience directly — especially if speed-solving — but at least for me they often make me sit back and say "Hey that's pretty cool!". Granted, grid architecture can't make up for a dull theme or lousy fill, but it can be the icing on the cake.

– puzzle by Peter A. Collins

Joe Krozel mentioned recently that the whole trick of constructing quad-stack grids was to create as many independent mini 15x4 stacks as possible. And from them, try to build larger 15x15 puzzles if possible. However, he was not talking about complete mini 15x4 puzzles, rather he was referring to 15x4 units that have some legit 4-letter crossers mixed with 4-letter sequences that look like they have the potential to get extended into real words. This is why computers (and the dreaded autofill) play a smaller role in constructing these puzzles than many solvers may think.

For example, if you look closely at the top stack in today's grid, you find some good complete 4-letter words (MELS, DOSE, TAME, ORES) along with some non-words: ENAC, IMGA, AFIR, and MONI. So this top stack can only work, if a grid pattern can be found that extends those non-words into real words (for example: ENACT-, I'M GAME, AFIRE/AFIRST/MONIED, etc.

Usually at this point, the puzzle goes in my unfinished "scrap heap" pile, because a (good) matching bottom stack is next to impossible to find. However, in this case I got very, very lucky and found an earlier orphaned lower 15x4 set that fit quite nicely. So I sent a 66-word version off to Will, who rejected it saying that the stacks were "lovely", but he felt the central area of the grid was too blocky-looking and closed off. Luckily I found a solution, and an extra 15-letter entry to boot as you can see in the final puzzle.

Finally, I know there are a few too many partials in the lower half of the grid, and the "ME AT"/"MINCEMEAT" dupe sucks. But, on the plus side the 15s are reasonably lively... and there are none of those dreaded "ONES" phrases... for a change!

– puzzle by Martin Ashwood-Smith

PIZZA CRUST was my seed entry for this puzzle. At the time I constructed this puzzle at the end of 2011, PIZZA CRUST, MAN CAVE, HOCKEY MOM, BATTERY BOX, BACKLIT, SIN BIN, SOLAR ARRAY and PHONE BOOTH had not yet been used in puzzles (as far as I could tell). I thought they would make good fill for a themeless puzzle. I was quite lucky to be able to fit them all in one puzzle! Usually, getting more than 2-3 new entries in a puzzle is a challenge.

When constructing a themeless, I try to fill it with:

• new "interesting" words/phrases
• as many compound words and phrases as possible
• high-scrabble letter content

I'm always on the lookout for good fresh fill for puzzles. Whenever I come across a new word/phrase that sounds interesting, I write it down and then add it to my wordlist the next time I update it. However, it turns out that much of the "fresh fill" that I choose to use in puzzles winds up being the reason for the puzzle being rejected. "It doesn't get enough google hits" seems to be a reason for rejection. Thankfully, in this case, all the fresh fill was acceptable!

– puzzle by Barry C. Silk