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Natasha Lyonne: Working with Deb Amlen to create this puzzle has quite literally been a lifetime highlight for me.

I thought I had peaked at being a clue in a New York Times crossword puzzle, so having this opportunity to become a constructor is a clear sign I have crossed over and am writing to you from the afterlife.

I have become someone who thinks in clues, who jokes in puzzles and who lives for the answers. Most days of the week.

Deb is a puzzler extraordinaire. Working alongside her has stimulated parts of my brains that I hope will remain aglow for years to come. She is definitely the person I would most recommend being blindfolded in a labyrinth with. Should it come up. She was the key that led me to safety and it was a privilege to get to construct under her tutelage. Much like a young, fumbling Richard Dreyfus in the oft forgotten film, "The Apprenticeship of Duddy Kravitz," I was able to bask in her golden glow and try to make a name for myself amid endless stabs at mastering puzzle making.

There was so much to learn, but Deb was patient with my endless enthusiasm and heartbreak at the Herculean task. I was like one of those eager puppies you see get lost during a dog show who just keeps running around the obstacle course, having forgotten the rhyme or reason or lessons of their master. But the point is — they're show dogs! What has my dog done lately other than nap on my lap as I fill out more crosswords? She's done nothing, that's what.

I have a true obsession with the crossword. I spend the bulk of my downtime doing them. They're my happy place. Where I can hear the click. The white noise sound I'm always looking for that feels closest to self-soothing. They're my personal spa day and I would live in a puzzle if I could.

There were points where I thought to myself "Is the crossword a case of 'Never meet your idols'?" But once we nailed the Fosse-esque ALL THAT JAZZ theme, things really began cooking. Our shared love of the film kept us going. Seeing BOB FOSSE marry Dr. Dre with 26-Down's "Nothing but a G THANG" really hits me in all my happy reference places. The film "All That Jazz" occupies about as much space in my psyche and in "Russian Doll" as the crossword puzzle itself, so it felt very satisfying to see all the worlds I love so much collide.

I plan to buy an awkward amount of copies of this issue to drape myself in on any dark days to come. I welcome you to do the same and hope very much you enjoy the puzzle!

Thank you, New York Times, and by proxy, to my personal and wildly intimidating hero, Will Shortz, for allowing this highest of lifetime achievements to benefit two charities incredibly near to my heart, the Lower Eastside Girls Club and the Women's Prison Association.

Deb Amlen: Natasha is a joy to work with, and her creativity, energy and passion for crossword puzzles were incredibly inspiring. She even bought the Crossfire software program, so she could learn how to construct and put in her share of the work.

The really strange thing about this collaboration was that, even though we had never met before or discussed it, we both had exactly the same initial idea for a theme. I think that freaked us both out a bit, but it also gave us common ground on which to work.

We both love the film "All That Jazz" — a semi-autobiographical take on choreographer BOB FOSSE's life — which happens to celebrate its 40th anniversary this year. The interesting thing (to me, at least) is that we liked it for different reasons. Natasha is an amazingly well-read philosopher who adored the movie's take on the main character moving between life and death. I liked it because I am the sister of a former dancer and have always loved the visual impact of Bob Fosse's choreography.

Natasha and I worked focused on filling the grid with as little junk as possible. The only part that was tough to polish, even after ripping that section apart multiple times, was the eastern part of the grid where Phil MAHRE resides. Sorry, Phil, but if I could have put something else in your slot, I would have. Even so, I think we're both happy that we could debut some nice theme entries.

And I'm thrilled that Will and the editorial team kept many of our clues. I'm particularly proud of "Ghost at the altar?" and "It might have golden locks." I had forgotten how much fun it is to write a really twisted clue.

So thanks, Will, for hauling me out of retirement for this wonderful experience. I hope everyone enjoys our puzzle.

To keep our mojo working, Natasha and I have decided to donate part of our fee to two charities, the Lower Eastside Girls Club and the Women's Prison Association.

Also, don't miss Natasha's extraordinary turn as the co-creator, star, writer and director of Netflix's "Russian Doll." You will love it.

And as far as that "golden glow" that Natasha mentioned, only my hairdresser knows for sure. (Hi, kids!)

– puzzle by Natasha Lyonne and Deb Amlen

Excited to have my 10^th New York Times puzzle published today! I reused this elegant grid pattern from a Patrick Berry puzzle I loved from back in 2016. Starting out as a constructor several years ago, I took a lot of my inspiration from wide open grids like this, and would attempt to fill some of them myself as practice. Not all of my attempts turned out well, but some (like this one) I liked enough to submit.

My goal for making the puzzle was to get six lively and varied answers in the intersecting staggered stacks in the middle. Overall—and after a lot of iteration—I'm pretty satisfied with the end result, KNEECAPPING's general unpleasantness notwithstanding. Other than those center stacks, it was fun to get a food stack in the SW with SNOW CONE, NEST EGG, and OREO O'S, and I was also happy to use IRRUPT, which is such a cool little word that needs more love. Hope you enjoy!

– puzzle by Ryan McCarty

SNUFFLEUPAGUS was the "seed" entry, originally in the top stack where it just wouldn't work, so down to the bottom stack it went, and happily so. It arose in a conversation with my brother over how to pronounce it, but just as much it's here as a nod to my kids, who grew up with Sesame Street (and my daughter was a Sesame Street intern one summer, working as their "muppet wrangler").

This puzzle is a major redo of a previous effort that had a ho-hum top stack with some resulting fairly sketchy fill - a near-miss with Will, with too many "dings." I opted to go with a three-part series of monologue bits from the same speaker in the top stack and to clue them contextually. They depend on each other to be sussed out, and I enjoyed the chance to test it with Will and company as a relatively fresh way to build a themeless puzzle, with three sequential conversational pieces to start the puzzle off.

But it all started with SNUFFY, Big Bird's imaginary friend who later appears as a very real woolly mammoth - to the chagrin (and delight) of the other characters. SNUFFY lives, and I'm glad he's (she's?) making his/her puzzle debut here.

– puzzle by Ned White

This puzzle was published pretty quickly. It's been less than a year since I wrote it, and only about nine months since I got the always thrilling "Crosswords — Yes" email from the editorial crew. Over time, I've noticed that puzzles that depart from common theme types often make it into print much faster than more traditional grids. So if you're looking for speedy publication, my advice is to push the boundaries of originality and novelty!

To build the grid, I started by finding and placing some "long" across entries into a promising configuration. There aren't too many valid English semordnilaps (words that have different meanings when read forwards and backward) with more than five letters, so my options were pretty limited.

Next, I slowly, painfully filled in each section while referencing two different word lists — my normal list and a special one that only contained semordnilaps. As is typical with highly constrained stunt puzzles, I frequently reached dead ends and had to tear up what I'd already created. While filling, I also had to avoid words whose reverse I'd already put somewhere else.

An unfortunate side effect of the paucity of longer semordnilaps was that I had to keep most of the across slots at five letters or fewer. I wanted to incorporate more longer semordnilaps, but it was too constraining on the rest of the fill.

I'm not sure I've ever seen a published NYT puzzle with only ten entries longer than five letters. It would be interesting to know if that's a record. Likewise, XWord Info only tracks puzzles with the longest average word length– I'd be curious to know where this one stacks up against others with a very low average word length.

– puzzle by Alex Eaton-Salners

I'm curious to see how this puzzle will be presented in print and in the NYT app. I shaded CATERPILLAR gray in my submission, and I hope this feature will be preserved. It's visually appealing for two reasons.

First, the final grid art looks better with a head/body (in gray) to go with the wings (depicted by the connect-the-dots feature). Second, the gray CATERPILLAR also resembles a caterpillar, making its transformation into a butterfly more remarkable.

Unusually, there's almost nothing in common between my first submission and the final grid. Originally, I had CATERPILLAR in the same central vertical slot, but I used right/left symmetry for the grid, which made the pattern on the wings symmetric and much prettier. CATERPILLAR's bottom R intersected METAMORPHOSIS.

Unfortunately, a central vertical theme entry in a puzzle with left-right symmetry requires using either (1) two flanking vertical entries at least as long as the central entry (which both strains the fill and makes it unclear what's thematic and what's not); or (2) a one-letter word somewhere in the middle of the puzzle. I chose the latter.

Given the aesthetic considerations at play. I hoped for an exception to the NYT's prohibition on words less than three letters long. Unfortunately, Will and crew didn't go for:

1. "I" clued as a one-letter word,
2. the consecutively-presented phrase YES/I/CAN, or
3. checking the singleton letter by making it part of the alphabetical list of circled letters.

Reluctantly, I abandoned my dreams of left-right symmetry and looked for options using standard rotational symmetry. After some brainstorming, I found the final configuration of BUTTERFLY and CHRYSALIS symmetrically intersecting CATERPILLAR. Sometimes the crossword gods are kind.

One final note: I'm super bummed that my clue for PANDEMIC didn't survive the editorial process. I clued it as the [best-selling cooperative board game]. If you're into games and looking for something new, I highly recommend it.

– puzzle by Alex Eaton-Salners

In making this puzzle, I was astounded to find that there are no popular, universally-known movies with "SPORT" in the title — despite how many there are about that particular subject! I thought it would be a cinch to turn "SPORT" into "sUPport," but in the end I had to give up on that dream. I considered the Jean-Claude Van Damme cult classic "Bloodsport" for a little bit, but I figured that was too niche. I also dearly wanted to fit "ALIEN" into "cALIENte" somehow, but that "CTE" string proved too uncommon, and the universe did not see fit to grant me that gift. That's what comes with making a puzzle with such a specific gimmick--your options are surprisingly limited. In the end, though, thanks to hours sifting through "Top 100 Movies" lists, I'm pretty happy with what I was able to find.

Will had me remake the lower-left corner, which resulted in me including my favorite longer answer at 94-Down. Hasn't everyone shared a hotel room with someone that sounded like a lumberjack going to work at 2:00 am? And while I didn't clue it as such, every time I look at 57-Down, my mind immediately follows it with "Rock you like a hurricane!"

– puzzle by Grant Thackray

It's a great honor to make my New York Times crossword debut with a puzzle I had so much fun putting together! I'm a veterinarian who has been addicted to crossword puzzles for 30 years, since picking up my first issue of GAMES magazine when I was 7. After getting some puzzles published in GAMES in college, I wanted to make a more serious effort to get my work into the New York Times. All of my early rejections thankfully came with some helpful feedback. Thanks to Will for giving this puzzle a thumbs up, to Dave, Lily, and Mom for test solving, and especially to Nancy Salomon for some excellent mentorship during the constructing process!

I decided it would be a novel idea to build a puzzle around an emoticon — I toyed with a few different ideas for working in a smiley face, such as fitting it into a single square rebus-fashion or placing it into a few themed entries to replace the word HAPPY. In the end, I decided to place it dead center, and use the other theme entries to hint at the gimmick. It worked out nicely that EYES, NOSE, and MOUTH dovetailed into some decent Down rebus entries, and the fact that COLONHYPHEN / PARENTHESIS worked as symmetrical descriptors sealed the deal.

A few of my original clues may have been too iffy for a Thursday, or for the difficulty of their crossings ("Rocky landing?" for PLYMOUTH; "Change for good?" for TIP JAR), and were changed accordingly, so I'll have to keep that in mind going forward.

Hope this was a fun solve, and I look forward to rolling out some more puzzles in the near future!

– puzzle by Jon Olsen

It's very exciting to have another puzzle published in the New York Times! This was the first themeless puzzle I had accepted for any venue; by fun coincidence, I also constructed today [4/27]'s themeless LA Times puzzle. Double puzzle day!

Two years ago or so, I tried making a few themeless puzzles when I couldn't come up with any good themes. After a couple encouraging "near miss" rejections, I decided to take a more serious and systematic approach to making a themeless puzzle. I made this puzzle fourteen months ago; I've made several themeless puzzles since then (a few of which are in the queue for future Fridays and Saturdays) and I've learned a lot in the process.

A couple of entries in this grid would not pass muster with me today. ROLF in particular, but RARED and NEMEA are entries I'd prefer to avoid as well. I'm also not sure I'd include ALL IS TRUE now, for fear it's too niche. I originally clued it as [Alternate title for Shakespeare's "Henry VIII" (honestly!)] to give a bit of a parenthetical hint to the solver.

I was pleasantly surprised to see how many of my clues were kept. I'm particular happy that the clues for GO TO PRESS and OVER SLEEP made it through. Two that aren't mine are [Dawn of the Space Age?] and [Major thing in the heavens?] - I guess I need to work on my astronomy cluing.

– puzzle by Joe Deeney