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This grid design owes a debt to a 2008 Barry Silk puzzle run in another venue. I rearranged the black squares in the center to form two mini-staircases of the longest entries in the puzzle. I liked that they were all different lengths (9, 10, and 11 letters). I've used this pattern a few times in both a 68-word version and a 70-word version, but I think this was my first instance working with it.

Plugging in possibilities from my list of seed entries, hoping to stack them, TORT REFORM and CLAW CRANE slid in. VELVET ELVIS and FALLEN HEM also worked on the bottom. For some reason, E.L. DOCTOROW was not in my word list at the time, and I kept that in, only later discovering it's not a new entry in the least. Something else might have popped more. There are underwhelming spots in the shorter fill, but the 8s are not bad and both Will and I especially liked "I'M RUINED" at 58A. JILTEE from the unabridged Webster's kind of saved my bacon in the SE, but I used the first clue that came to mind and I see Will left it in.

– puzzle by Brad Wilber

This puzzle came about when, for no particular reason, I was considering songs that start with "It's" (It's Not Unusual, It's So Easy, It's Tricky…). When I got to "It's Raining Men", Finn Vigeland's January 2012 Sunday puzzle "Weather Report" sprang to mind, and I thought it might be fun to have various men's names running vertically in the grid. Of course, "men" is a bit of a broad category, so there had to be something unifying the names. The RAIN/REIGN homophone then hit me and things were off and running.

The word "reign" makes me think of kings and queens, so I wanted to use four well-known historical names, rather than modern rulers like Obama and Putin, and these four rulers fit the bill (and fit symmetrically!). I liked the contrast between a gimmicky 80's song (co-written by Late Night's Paul Shaffer, by the way) and these old-time rulers. In terms of construction, getting two entries to cross through three theme answers was helpful to make what I thought was a fairly open, interconnected grid pattern. I also like how RICHARD III looks vertically in the grid. I enjoy doing and trying to make Monday puzzles, so I hope people have fun with this one.

– puzzle by John Lieb

This puzzle went through three incarnations. The first one had a musical theme. I had (NIGHT)INBANGKOK, (PAC)(PAC)SHAKUR, (DOG)(DOG)(DOG)NIGHT, and (WAY)(WAY)(WAY)(WAY)STREET (a CSNY live album). Will questioned the 2Pac entry (among other things, rightfully so) but said he was interested in the theme. I couldn't find any other musical TWO entries that would fit, so I made a new puzzle with (ARMED)BANDITS, (STAR)(STAR)MOVIES, (CARD)(CARD)(CARD)MONTE, (WAY)(WAY)(WAY)(WAY)STOP.

Again, Will said he liked the theme but felt (STAR)(STAR)MOVIES was kind of arbitrary. It could be two or three or four…would I be interested in trying again? Well, hell yes! So I replaced that with (BIT)(BIT)CROOKS. The only thing I was worried about was the decidedly "criminal" angle the puzzle took. Bandits, crooks, and a three card monte don't really mesh with a four way stop. I looked for a criminal FOUR for a while but found nothing that fit. Hopefully, the bloggers don't take me to task for it too badly :-)

– puzzle by Alan DerKazarian

I have been creating puzzles since 1994. Over the years, I've been able to place puzzles with most publishers, including having seven or eight daily puzzles in the Times. Perhaps ten years ago, I decided to have a go at placing a puzzle in the Sunday Times. I've tried to do so once or twice a year since then, failing every time. Although I had sent what I consider my best work each time, I have the sense that I was not very close to acceptance in any case. After each puzzle was rejected, in most cases I was able to place it or another puzzle with the same theme elsewhere, I started to think that I should give up the idea of placing a Sunday puzzle in the Times. However, I hadn't quite gotten there yet. I do have ideas for puzzles pop into my head pretty regularly and, being retired, have time to work with them.

In this particularly case, somehow I started thinking about the way different ended, such as Walter Cronkite's "That's The Way It Is". I wondered if I could come up with a good set of famous show closings as the theme entries for a 21x puzzle. I thought of different ways to do this and decided to take a chance and ask Will if he might be interested in any of them. I have not attempted to dialogue with Will on any of my other submissions to him either before or since knowing it is asking a lot of him to do so given the volume of submissions he receives. Anyhow, the theme did interest him, and we had some dialogue. That eventually led to this puzzle, but not before my first attempt to do this was rejected. I believe there are three reasons why I was finally successful with this version. First, Will did like the theme. In fact, he is entitled to most of the credit for the key theme entry (which entry will be apparent to the solver). Second, I was able to do this puzzle with 134 entries. Finally, I was able to avoid entries that Will considered unacceptable.

In my years of puzzle writing, I've had more than 4,000 puzzles published, including crosswords and more than 25 other types of word puzzles. I'm 3½ years into full retirement from my career business and created puzzles to stay young. If you like this puzzle, please check out my ebook of puzzles book on the free Puzzazz app.

– puzzle by Alan Olschwang

I started puzzling and constructing around the same time. Which is to say I started out only being able to solve (and construct) Monday and Tuesday puzzles. The act of constructing rapidly improved my solving ability by introducing me to so many words and phrases that are put in then taken out of tricky corners. It also led to me developing certain rules that I will always try to follow in my grids. For instance, I will never have a corner with only one entry point. I think it cheapens the building as well as the solving experience.

For this puzzle, I was most proud of the Northwest, with CASH BARS on OSCAR WAO on NO IFS ANDS OR BUTS. Didn't notice until it was too late that AND crosses ANDS. Oh well. I went back and forth on whether to include NOONER but decided to keep it (SOONER/MISCUES would have worked as well with some other changes to the Southwest). Really wanted KRUPKE in the Northeast but couldn't make it work. Hardest part to fill was the Southeast. Was honestly surprised that ACE DEUCE was accepted.

– puzzle by David Woolf

This puzzle started life with CHAI EUONYM as part of the theme set. Will didn't think many people would know what a EUONYM was, so we went to PRAGUE AIOLI (changing CHATEAU OIL to OILS), and I refilled the grid for the first time. I thought at that point I was done, but Will wanted another rewrite because I had long downs at 5d and 64d* that were longer than my themers at 36d and 40d. I personally hold the philosophy that breaking that convention is OK with certain themes (for instance, where the theme answers are all clearly nonsense phrases), but I may be in the minority on that point. Fortunately I had come in at 138 words in my original version, so I was able to split those answers up without completely gutting the grid. Still not the end of the story though — Will e-mailed me a couple of weeks before publication to tell me I'd misspelled OEUVRE (oof) and that he had redone the left side of the grid. Talk about limping to the finish line.

In any case, I'm very pleased to have my first Times Sunday puzzle in print, and I hope people enjoy it despite its tortured birth!

* for interest, 64d in the original grid was LAUREL WREATH {Leaves in triumph}, and 5D was BREASTAURANT (!)

– puzzle by Julian Lim

A couple of weeks ago I was at a dinner engagement where I struck up a conversation with the gentleman across the table. He was quite interested in the fact that I constructed crossword puzzles. We had a nice chat, but at the end he said "I don't like it when they put that crazy stuff in there — like circles." At that point, I stared down at my plate and started pushing the peas around with my fork. I think I changed the subject to baseball.

Needless to say, I'm sure that guy is not too happy today. To add to the "crazy stuff", I threw in a couple of unchecked letters. The fact that the grid has left-right symmetry (as opposed to the usual rotational) might just throw him over the edge.

I wonder how many solvers will be confused by the two 15-letter down entries, thinking that they must be thematic. Well ... they aren't.

Jackson Browne's "Running on Empty" was a big album back in my college days. I can still hear the songs bouncing off the walls of my dormitory (as I pulled my pillow over my head trying to get some sleep).

– puzzle by Peter A. Collins

This is the second vertically themed puzzle of mine accepted by Will Shortz, and as I mentioned to him in my cover letter, I was hoping vertical was the new horizontal. There are certain limitations to the format, namely that all of the theme entries as well as the reveal are encountered somewhat early in the solving process, but it would be unfortunate to waste all the possibilities that "downness" brings to self-referential themes because of that.

This puzzle was submitted last December, and was accepted in April with some provisos. A few changes had to be made to the fill, however there was one sticking point, the ten letter 3-Down themer didn't quite fit with the others. In subsequent submissions 3-Down went from: THISLLPASS; to YOUAREOKAY; to DONTGIVEUP; to LIFEGOESON, each of which was rightly met with Mr. Shortz's disapproval. I just couldn't find something that sounded right.

By then it was the end of August, my wife and I were spending two weeks at a lake cabin in Vermont. On our final evening, after one or two margaritas, (underage constructors please disregard this), the heavens opened up, and NOTTOWORRY was comfortingly whispered into my mind's ear. EUREKA!!!

Mr. Shortz concurred.

– puzzle by Jules P. Markey

So many good constructors are creating puzzles today that it's hard to find an original idea. Whenever I think of a theme that might work, I add it to a list on my phone, which I'll check later when I feel like constructing. In this case, I think I saw a bumper sticker on the street that began with "HONK IF YOU LOVE...", which had clear Monday possibilities.

In the grid, the theme entry lengths (12's and 13's) forced a certain pattern because I prefer to avoid two cheater squares for 13's. The result is two long vertical entries that pass through three theme entries, which drastically reduces the possibilities. (I now see that I could've just flipped the top and bottom pairs instead. No idea why I didn't.) The two vertical entries I found are consequently ok but not amazing. I tried to compensate by increasing the number of 7- and 8-letter entries. Finally, I try to avoid using 3 letter words that cross the grid's center, because it feels suffocating.

– puzzle by Kevin G. Der

Don:

I remember clearly that I was in my car in Columbus, Ohio, listening to a local radio show host, John Corby of 610 WTVN, and the subject was "words that were at one time trademarked but have now become accepted everyday words". It seemed like an excellent topic because I was not aware of many of the entries on his list. I thought that if we could make phrases with some of the words, it would be fun. Many thanks to John Corby.

Beyond that, I can't remember how we approached the construction, but most likely, my resourceful partner, C.C., came up with a thorough list of qualifying words, and we both made phrases from these, and chose the ones we thought worked best. We always share the construction and cluing about 50/50, as we like it to be a complete collaboration.

Zhouqin:

As Don mentioned earlier, we narrowed down our choices to words that were once trademarked but have since lost their legal status. Lots of words that we use generically are still trademarked.

This is actually the first puzzle that Mr. Shortz said "Yes!" to us. Don and I were very excited when we got the "congrats and welcome aboard!" from Paula.

– puzzle by Don Gagliardo and Zhouqin Burnikel

Loren:

First I have to say that Jeff Chen is the nicest, most generous person in Crossworld. And I am so enjoying reading his very funny comments on the puzzles. Over a year ago, Jeff had a collaboration with someone. On the day it ran, he went to Rex Parker, gave his email address and invited new constructors to contact him as he likes working with neophytes. Boy, I took him up on that and peppered him constantly with theme ideas that he patiently discussed with me.

Jeff and I remember today's puzzle's inception differently. I had been kicking around the idea of hiding ASP in a grid, first with things like BANANA SPLIT and CAST A SPELL. I'm pretty sure it was Jeff who suggested this way of doing it. He did the heavy lifting — he built the grid and placed the ASPs over the PLANES — I don't think I could have pulled that off! We both worked on the fill, and I did a lot of the clues. If it's a so-so alliterative clue, it's probably mine; alliteration is my go-to trick to perk up a meh clue. I had "Flower feature" for CALYX, "Sendai suds" for SAPPORO, "sowed stuff" for STASH. Jeff definitely clued HANG-GLIDER, my favorite clue in the puzzle. Jeff is also to thank for the YO HO HO in the same grid as MATEY.

Happy Thanksgiving, everyone! Enjoy the puzzle!

– puzzle by Loren Muse Smith and Jeff Chen