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This theme started with visually representing famous painting titles in the grid. After a few brainstorms, the concept of altering art into wacky knockoffs took over. One early version had us changing the letters F-O-R-G-E-R-Y across seven paintings into random letters to form silly phrases. For example, the "G" from FORGERY would map to the "G" a solver replaces in Leonardo's "THE ADORATION OF THE MAGI" to become "THE ADORATION OF THE MANI". This was fun, but the incorrect letters were oddly arbitrary — and having the solver mentally replace the wrong letters with F-O-R-G-E-R-Y to reveal the original titles was potentially unsatisfying.

What we decided felt most fun and impactful was including well-known original painting titles in the grid as guides, with F-O-R-G-E-R-Y squeezed into key squares alongside original letters — giving the sense that the solver is actually comparing the original to a fake, much like an art dealer. Our original Times submission included slashes in the rebus squares. The puzzle editors removed them in the final version, and we both agreed that the puzzle was better for it, since telegraphing all 7 of the either/or squares from the start would make a less tricky and satisfying solve.

Tracy and I were pleased that THE SON OF MAN snuck into our theme about forgery — since this painting appears in the 1999 film "The Thomas Crown Affair" which features a forgery scheme.

– puzzle by Jeremy Newton and Tracy Gray

This theme type is often called a "vowel movement," where a series of words can be spelled with all five vowel sounds in rotation.

I'd been impressed with other constructors' vowel movements in the past, marveling at their satisfying simplicity. Creating a theme like this seemed easy enough… Yet after weeks of unsuccessfully trying, I wondered if I'd ever produce a solid vowel movement myself. All my initial attempts stunk and were, quite frankly, very sloppy.

So I pushed to achieve tightness in my vowel movement, settling on two word phrases with the rotation in the second word. Usually I make all my puzzles on a laptop, but when a strong vowel movement just wasn't emerging, I decided to work it out with a pencil. There was a point where I thought it shouldn't be this hard.

But then came that explosive moment! When I finally hit on the vowel movement you see today, I couldn't hold it in any longer. After it was fully out of my system, I did a quick check, pushed that fateful button, and—whoosh—it was sent off to the New York Times.

I often think about crossword themes like seats at a bar and hope that with my vowel movement, this stool wasn't already taken. Luckily, when the editors got a whiff of it, they were extremely pleased.

Now do I think this will be the absolute best puzzle you solve all week? Probably not… but I'd settle for number two!

– puzzle by David Distenfeld

ACME: After Christina and I did a puzzle about going into labor and delivering a baby, I got to think about what else is delivered? Babies, the news, pizza, milk (in the Olden Days) mail/Amazon packages (in the Newen Days). We thought it'd be fun to think of films with those words in the titles, with the reveal being "Deliverance"… a pivotal film of my adolescence.

"Licorice Pizza" was out in the theaters, but we weren't sure it would stand the test of time.

The tricky part was a way to unite the films clue-wise. So we focused on the setting where the actors "deliver" their performances. I think it's pretty tough without at least one prominent actor's name attached (Julia Roberts, Holly Hunter, Burt Reynolds), but space limitations overruled.

As a serious movie buff, I love this puzzle. And I loved working on a "sequel" with Christina!

CHRISTINA: Andrea is a pleasure to work with, and I'm happy to share a byline with her again! When this puzzle comes out, we will have just seen each other in person at ACPT (The American Crossword Puzzle Tournament). Maybe one day we'll make a puzzle together that has nothing to do with delivering babies!

– puzzle by Andrea Carla Michaels and Christina Iverson

This grid dates back to mid-2020, when I first started toying with ultra-low word count themeless puzzles (as I unexpectedly had a lot of free time). Despite many attempts at 60-word puzzles since then, I've yet to assemble a grid center as clean and colorful as this one. I consider myself pretty lucky to have found it.

The technique I used to fill this puzzle is one I call "spot seeding." (I'm almost certainly not the first person to use this technique, but I haven't seen it described before, so I figured I'd give it a name.) Typically, themeless puzzles are built around one or more preselected "seed" answers. It can be risky not to do this, since crossword solvers and editors look for at least a few outstanding marquee answers in a themeless. Eschewing this wisdom, a grid can be "spot seeded" by building a grid around strategically placed letters, not full phrases.

Here, I spot seeded with the R of COAL MINER, the Y of CANDY BARS, and the first S of ART SCENES — all favorable terminal letters for the intersecting Downs. The remaining fill soon followed with computer assistance. Voila! Oh, and I also wrote some clues.

Lastly, a plug for my first crossword book — a collection of hard 10x10 themelesses in the "Sip and Solve" series! This book has some of my favorite puzzles I've ever made, and it's available for preorder right now.

– puzzle by Sid Sivakumar

BROOKE: I'm so thrilled for Olivia and my collab debut! We barely knew each other when we started collaborating, but now we've been working together at Lil AVC X for about half a year. Olivia is such a thoughtful editor and mentor and has really amazing, creative ideas; it's a privilege to work with her! Her thoughtfulness and creativeness came through in this puzzle — the idea is all hers!

OLIVIA: I'm so grateful that Brooke contacted me about collaborating back in 2021! It was a pleasure to work with her then and an absolute dream to work with her now. This is the first Wednesday puzzle for both of us, and I'm really happy with how it turned out!

This theme started as an idea to create clues made up of anagrams ... the two entries I had at the start were [Notes set on stone] for ENGRAVINGS and [Least stale tales] for PAGE TURNERS. Luckily Brooke had the idea of switching up the execution by putting the anagrams in the grid. From there, we went back and forth with some fun options. Here are some others that were left on the cutting room floor:

• I WON'T OWN IT IN TWO [Refusal to buy something broken?]
• TEAM'S MATES STEAM [Friends of the squad hang out in the sauna?]
• TIMES EMITS ITEMS [The Gray Lady generates content?]
• KEATS TAKES STEAK [English poet orders the filet?]
• ELVIS VEILS EVILS [The King hides his sins?]

– puzzle by Olivia Mitra Framke and Brooke Husic

Hello Crossworld! I'm a Chinese-Filipino software engineer currently living in Singapore. Absolutely ecstatic to be making my print debut here, and on my favorite day no less! (Okay, second-favorite. I'm a sucker for Saturdays.)

I caught the crossword bug about three years ago and fell deep into the rabbit hole of crossword construction, reading everything I could get my hands on. I'm pretty sure I've read every single one of Jeff's write-ups here, along with another couple thousand or so of Rex's blog reviews and hundreds of Wordplay, Cruciverb, Fiend, etc. posts and articles. These resources and more have been invaluable in making me a better constructor: this was only my second submission to the Times.

As a "foreigner," it always feels a bit weird making crosswords for an American audience. A large mass of my American cultural knowledge comes from crosswords themselves, so it can sometimes be hard for me to tell what's crosswordese and what's genuinely well-known. It's like being a chef with no palate! It probably won't be that surprising to hear that this was sent back for a few rounds of fill revision. Many thanks to Sam and the team for the help!

Thankfully, the language of wordplay is universal, and many of my punny clues made the cut. 14D is by far my favorite, but 15A, 45A, 70A and 13D were fun to write, too. The team had a few of their own great additions: my favorite is 61D.

– puzzle by Robin Yu

BILLY (he/him): The two of us met at Carleton during winter term 2022 (Billy's freshman year, Clay's sophomore year). By May, I had started introducing Clay to the magical world of crosswords. We sent the NYT two puzzles. Incidentally, this is the one we thought was less good, but we had fun building around LOVE TO HATE nonetheless. Clay, time to hit 'em with a bio.

CLAY (he/him): I am on an accelerated track at Carleton College, graduating next year, where I'm a member of CUT (Carleton Ultimate Team). I am from Hastings-on-Hudson, NY, working as an advisory intern this summer at KPMG. I am currently in India on the Ganges River. Last month I learned to fly fish on the Golden Dorado Cruiser on the Panara and Las Pitras Lodge in Patagonia, Argentina — thank you to Fabian and David. Fabian was also nice enough to teach me how to drive stick. Also, thank you Fishing With Larry for making everything so easy to plan!

BILLY: My fellow Americans, our long national nightmare is over (103 days without a Billy Bratton NYT crossword).

– puzzle by Billy Bratton and Clay Haddock

KATE: Woo hoo! I took up constructing during the pandemic and am eternally grateful to the welcoming, generous crossworld community for helping out a clueless newbie. I'm ecstatic to have my NYT debut with Scott, whose skill is matched only by his kindness. This was my 22nd submission — I finally wore them down!

This theme was Scott's idea, and we had fun going back and forth on themers (Can you read body language over Zoom? Does a silent movie have words? What's your favorite obscene gesture?). I'm so grateful to inimitable, hilarious mentor Ross Trudeau. I reached out cold to constructors I admired who were foolish enough to list contact information — thank you to collaborators Ross, Scott, Jeff, Adam, Matt, and Laura. In conclusion, woo hoo!

SCOTT: Kate has been a fantastic collaborator. I tend to construct freestyle [i.e., themeless] puzzles, so noodling on theme ideas with a creative partner like her has been a delight. This puzzle went through several revisions to make it more Monday-friendly — including a last one by the editors, thereby losing the fantastic CORI Bush — and being able to debate the merits of many, many fill options with Kate made the process much more enjoyable!

– puzzle by Katherine Baicker and Scott Earl

KATIE: I know I say this about all my puzzles, but this one really is my favorite. I love when a theme falls into place like this while you work through other ideas and end up on a tangent that becomes a great set. Scott is really fun to work with since we have a similar sense of humor. He is so good at exhausting the possibilities of a theme, and he doesn't hold back, on the theory that even crazy ideas can spark something that could end up working. We tend to communicate on our shared docs through comments on each other's entry ideas, and quite often, I just leave a "lol" or an "omg, Scott!"

He took the lead on writing the clues here because I kept letting the word "is" slip in, which we really needed to avoid for it to work. He made them all quotes which gave them a nice consistency, and I think it enhanced the humor significantly.

SCOTT: I'm so excited to have joined forces with Katie Hale on this puzzle! Our mutual mentor (and crossword rockstar) Christina Iverson introduced us by email at some point during her meteoric rise to the NYT editing staff. Having our acceptance email penned by Christina was undeniably cool.

Katie is hilarious to work with. I found the inclusion of DARK HUMOR as one of the longer non-theme entries particularly appropriate because we share a twisted sense of humor — sometimes to our detriment, I think. Our first ever NYT (REJECTED!) submission used funny "bad behavior" phrases like LIFT A FINGERPAINTING [Steal artwork from a kindergarten classroom?]. Another (REJECTED!) submission followed a heckling wine snob at a tasting party and ended with a glass of wine tossed in his face by the up-until-that-moment tolerant host.

Today's theme is largely Katie's brainchild and started with dropping an "S" from words ending in "SS" to make possessives — DRESS CODE became DRE'S CODE [Hip-hop Dr.'s ethos?]. Then, Katie suggested using verb phrases with S-ending verbs in which "apostrophes matter," which I thought was a brilliant parallel to the famous "Let's eat, grandma" example of how commas matter.

You see? Even this puzzle has its roots in a bit of DARK HUMOR.

– puzzle by Katie Hale and Scott Hogan

One night back in high school, I was at a concert, and I went to the concession stand to get a Dr Pepper. Looking at the hand-lettered menu on the wall, I confusedly asked what "special ties" were. In my defense, the gap between the "L" and the "T" was quite excessive. And that very minor embarrassment survived in my memory long enough to become the basis for a crossword puzzle theme 20 years later.

I would have preferred to use some longer theme answers, but the pool of words that fit the formula was somewhat limited. I think short theme answers are more constraining on the grid structure than long ones, because all the fill is supposed to be shorter than the shortest theme entry in that same direction, which limits block placement options in the rest of the grid. But I liked having CAMPINESS and MOUSETRAP together, TAMPA on the OCEAN, and PARSECS and INERTIA representing the science category in symmetrical spots. Special thanks to my mom Metah Boroughs for being my test solver!

One of my other hobbies is making music. If you're interested, you can find my albums "Under the Farthest Skies" and "An Incandescent Christmas" on Spotify and most other music streaming services. Thanks!

– puzzle by Grant Boroughs

Back in 2020, Kevin Christian and Brad Wilber gave us a "Psycho"-themed puzzle, and it inspired me to create this tribute to another—and in my opinion, better—Hitchcock classic. In 3-D, no less!

If you haven't seen "Vertigo," today's crossword was probably more baffling than thrilling (though hopefully, you've looked up a clip of the scene that the layout of the grid pays homage to). It also bends a lot of crossword conventions that might rub some folks the wrong way: diagonal symmetry, long themeless entries, and a lot of short fill, all in service of a film released 65 years ago. And yet I'd be lying if I said I didn't love this weird little puzzle just the way it is. I hope some of you did too.

If you have a suggestion for the next film that should enter the Hitchcock Cinematic Crosswordiverse, feel free to DM me on Twitter.

– puzzle by Aaron M. Rosenberg

I got the idea for this puzzle after seeing DOCTORS WITHOUT BORDERS in a news article. I thought, hot dog, that phrase has all kinds of crossword potential! Turns out, it's been done once or twice before. Then I remembered that The Times sometimes runs puzzles with unusual formatting, like this fun one by Joe Deeney. I thought that a set of literalisms deconstructing the grid would be an interesting gimmick.

The top right entry had the most possibilities — ENDLESS SUMMER, WORLD WITHOUT END, OLIVE GARDEN NEVER ENDING PASTA PASS® — but the seven letters representing NO END IN SIGHT balanced out its neighbor to the left. At 41 themed letters I thought I had enough material to work with, but I still felt that the puzzle was missing that, god I hate myself for saying this, je ne sais quoi that could really level up the solving experience. Ultimately, I thought the phrase TAKES THE EDGE OFF really tied the room together.

The editors accepted this for an "extra-crunchy Wednesday," but here it is on a Thursday, those sly dogs. I hope you enjoyed solving today's puzzle!

– puzzle by Michael Schlossberg

some stats:

• this is the first themeless puzzle that we have made together
• we submitted this puzzle on august 3, 2022. we received an acceptance on october 28, 2022, and it ran on april 28, 2023. we found this to be a surprisingly quick turnaround!
• there are 72 clues in this puzzle. thirty-eight (53%) were kept identical. ten (14%) were updated slightly. twenty-four (33%) are new.

other things:

• our original clue for CUTAWAY GAG was [Comedy scene breakout?]
• our original clue for THIRST TRAP was [Hot flash result?]
• the great clue for MOSCOW was courtesy of the Times team
• after editing but before publishing, the editors show you a draft of the "final" puzzle for you to confirm. we asked that four of their new clues be changed (e.g. SHAY, which they wanted to clue as a carriage instead of Mitchell), and they agreed. many thanks to the NYT editors for putting in the time to do last-minute back-and-forths with us, and to the constructors who pushed hard for this to become part of their process. we hope that eventually this is standard procedure at all outlets.

– puzzle by Malaika Handa and Erik Agard