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Aside from thinking about other-worldly things on a daily basis as an astrophysicist, this puzzle started by noting how good of a revealer SPACE INVADERS would be. The ET rebus idea came immediately afterwards, and I thought about making a little "Space Invaders" alien from the ET squares. That didn't work so well, so then I tried making a UFO, which turned out much better. However, all of my theme real estate was in the middle of the grid — I needed something else. When the COW idea hit me, I changed SPACE INVADERS to ALIEN ABDUCTION and was off to the races.

Having the revealer at the top of the puzzle helped my theme material span the whole grid, while putting it through the middle or at the bottom made for really tough construction. This of course ran the risk of giving away the theme too early, so I made the clues in the Northwest as tough as I could. As for the rest of the grid, having immovable ETs everywhere proved best accommodated by amping up the black square count. Hopefully I struck the right balance between having too many short words and having a junky grid. I was particularly pleased to work two rebus squares into ETICKET.

I feel that so much of this puzzle hinges on the COW square, and was happy that Will preserved my approach not to indicate its presence in any way but rather let it be discovered as the final touch to the theme. He did add the fantastic descriptor "an eerie rural legend" to my original 1-Across clue, which motivates it a little more.

This puzzle is my first (but hopefully not last!) in the NYT. I'm still a little surprised this screwball of a puzzle was accepted, but am thrilled to have the opportunity to share it.

– puzzle by Brandon Hensley

One of my favorite parts of crossword construction is being able to express my interests through juicy fill. This is especially why I most enjoy creating themeless puzzles, as there are so many possibilities for fresh entries that I can squeeze into each grid. A classic rocker at heart, I chose BABA O'RILEY to be the seed for this puzzle, and packed the grid with several other answers I felt connected to me: the SAY HEY KID of my favorite sport, the TOP HONORS I'm currently striving for as a first year at UVA, the modern-day "ABOUT THAT" I know I use a bit too often, and more!

I submitted this original grid back in early 2013, but Will replied that I needed to get rid of the ugly abbreviation ENER. (8D) in order for the puzzle to be reconsidered for acceptance. After several hours of revision, including another struck-down attempt, I stumbled across the very lucky pairing of OPERA MUSIC and BOY SOPRANO that fit nicely with my current 1A as well as preserved most of the original grid's fill ... perfect! Sure enough, Will acknowledged that the newest revision "turned out great," and wrote some pretty killer clues for me; I cannot claim the cluing brilliance behind 1A, 17A, the 19A/22A combo, 50A, 24D, 36D, 37D (evil!), and the saves made to the otherwise poorer entries 31D and 52D. Really glad he left mine in for 35A though :)

Anyway, I hope you've enjoyed solving this puzzle as much as I enjoyed making it! Thanks to everyone involved for continuing to make this dream possible!

– puzzle by Sam Ezersky

One of my favorite NYT crossword puzzle constructors is Elizabeth Gorski. Her August 18, 2013 puzzle, EDGINESS, planted the seed for this along with another puzzle published in the WSJ (March 7, 2014, co-constructed with Jeff Chen). I remember being intrigued by Ms. Gorski's crossword. Reinforcement came after seeing Dan Schoenholz's CONFUSION puzzle in the NYT on December 5, 2013.

Once I'd decided on DOUBLE-EDGED as the revealer, the next step was to jot down words shared/paired with DOUBLE. After compiling this list, I chose to use perimeter words that were preceded, rather than followed by DOUBLE. Once the perimeter was in place, I followed Jeff's advice to fill the outside first, working my way inward. (He's been AROUND and knows — see his February 23, 2012 NYT puzzle). I really had to DOUBLE down!

I have to laugh now as I'm rereading what Ms. Gorski penned at xwordinfo.com:

"Note to budding constructors: Don't ever try a location-specific theme (in this case, theme words that follow the grid's perimeter) unless you're willing to tear your hair out, gnash your teeth and become a BORDERLINE psycho."

Obviously, I didn't take that good advice — I was working on not just one, but two of these type puzzles.

Ms. Gorski was correct though, at times I thought I was becoming a "borderline case" trying to fill this puzzle cleanly. The only theme related material I had in the center of this grid was the revealer, unlike her puzzle which had the added phrase, AROUND THE PERIMETER (split), in addition to her revealer. My hat is off to you, Ms. Gorski! Thanks not only for the many pleasurable hours of solving delightful puzzles that you have given me, but also for being the inspiration for this and the WSJ puzzle.

I would like to encourage more females to try their hand at constructing and to consider getting into the sciences and math. Unknown to some, it was a young woman, Rosalind Franklin, whose research led to the discovery of the structure of the DOUBLE HELIX of DNA. Unfortunately, she died in 1958, at a young age, and was therefore ineligible for nomination for the Nobel Prize in 1962 which was subsequently awarded to Crick, Watson, and Wilkins in that year.

I hope you enjoyed the DOUBLE feature. (I know, I know, enough DOUBLE talk!) Thanks to Will Shortz for accepting and editing this puzzle. I am thrilled to get a Sunday puzzle in the NYT.

– puzzle by Mary Lou Guizzo

Debut puzzle, woo! This is my fifth published puzzle, but my first in the Times — I'm very excited! It only took me the better part of 5 years, I think! I wrote this puzzle a couple of summers ago, well before I purchased Crossfire. As such, I was still writing puzzles like this one "by hand" in an Excel spreadsheet, using only XWord Info and maybe Onelook as helpers. My filling skills have no doubt improved considerably since then, but I'm still pretty happy with this product.

I guess what fascinated me about this theme idea was just how few things PICK UP can precede; without a THE, PICK UP STEAM/SPEED is the only other one I can think of right now.

I'll admit, TRIVIA GAME was not my first choice for that spot. Even by my novice reckoning, I identified at least two dozen acceptable choices to satisfy ??????GAME. However, 36- and 41-Down just would not play nice with most of them, if I remember correctly. I probably could have rearranged the grid to fix that issue, but I think I had filled most of the rest of the puzzle by that point and was pretty reluctant to do that much ripping.

Will really improved many of my clues (and corrected some blatantly inaccurate ones). Incidentally, pad see ew is my favorite THAI dish, so I was especially happy with that clue. But I was sad to see my original clue for SWIZZLE STICKS go: "Manhattan or Long Island features." Too obtuse for a Tuesday, I guess! Anyhow, I'm very honored to join this most select of groups. Hopefully, this will be the first of many!

– puzzle by Alex Bajcz

I've been constructing puzzles since high school (30+ years ago), and treasure a handwritten rejection letter from Eugene Maleska that says "Not bad for a neophyte." (That puzzle never saw the light of day, and rightly so.) About 10 of my puzzles have appeared in major publications.

My background is in math and physics, so I've been exposed to and intrigued by paradoxes for a long time. It wasn't anything academic, though, that prompted the puzzle, but a t-shirt I saw that had a playful take on a classic paradox. On the front was written "The back of this shirt is true," and on the back it showed "The front of this shirt is false." It wasn't a major leap to the puzzle concept.

Coming up with the 15-letter entries was fun, and surprisingly easy once I got over an initial hurdle. I had first wanted the two long entries to cross each other in the center square, one vertical and one horizontal, but it soon became clear that this would be a dead end. Well, almost a dead end. I dabbled briefly with having the answer to 32-across be NINEDOWNISTRUE, and the answer to 9-down be THIRTYTWOACROSS, with the additional two words ISFALSE living elsewhere in the puzzle, being placed symmetrically with PARADOX. A rather nice looking grid resulted, but it was such an ungraceful approach to have one of these theme entries be broken into two parts, that I abandoned this path before it got too far along. Every constructor has false starts.

That meant that the 15-letter entries would have to be either both horizontal or both vertical. There weren't many options. Since they each had to total 15 letters, including ISFALSE (7) AND ISTRUE (6), that leaves 8 and 9 letters. With four more letters for the word DOWN, you've got 4 and 5 letters respectively for the clue numbers. For these entries to be located symmetrically in the grid, you're left with NINE and THREE. It rather wrote itself.

All that was left was to find a nice place for the theme word PARADOX and fill the grid.

– puzzle by Matthew Lees

First of all, happy Mother's Day to all the mothers out there. I'd like to dedicate this puzzle to my grandmother. My mom passed away several years ago, but her mom is still going strong. Grandma will be 104 next month. She's a little frail, but sharp as a tack (even though she's never done a crossword puzzle in her life). In fact, she's one of the few people still around who were alive when the first crossword was published in 1913. For all I know, she could've babysat Bernice Gordon. She was born when Taft was president, she was nearly two when the Titanic sank — but she still hasn't seen the Cubs win the World Series.

This puzzle has a bit of history behind it, too. The first version I submitted had the same (more or less) grid design — my intention was for a cross-stitched kind of vibe, with the big M-O-M running diagonally through the grid. But aside from the grid art, the only themed answers in that one were the last two Down entries — MOTHERS and DAY (where MITTENS and DAY are in this version). It was a low word-count (132) puzzle that I intended to feel like a themeless. I think it had some really nice long entries. It got nixed due to the paucity of themed material. After that, I let it sit for a year and a half. I dragged it back out this winter and upped the themed entries, putting in a whole bunch of "mothers" all clued as "Mother ___", as in the current version. However, I also included a couple of other themed entries, both clued as "Ma ___" (BARKER and RAINEY). Will said I was getting closer, but because of that inconsistency (which I chose to look at as "variety") and a bit of iffy fill, I was asked to do a rewrite. Then another. Then another. Then another. Counting the "themeless" version as number one, what you're looking at is version six. As I told Will, luckily I enjoy the process as well as the product.

Who can plan things like having the clue for RODMAN immediately precede the clue for KOREA? Serendipity is a wonderful thing, as well as a wonderful word.

Did you notice that the grid has near-symmetry? In order to be fully symmetric, the blocks would've had to spell M-O-W. Maybe I'll save that for my John Deere tribute puzzle.

Finally, it's a bit unfortunate to have PUTTING ON WEIGHT, MATURATION, and LAUGH LINES in a Mother's Day puzzle, but please — DON'T START IN ON ME!

– puzzle by Peter A. Collins

My husband and I own a lawn/landscaping company and monitoring the weather is an obsession with us as our livelihood revolves around working in the great outdoors. In 25 years of business, we have worked through every imaginable type of weather condition including Nor'easters, tropical storms, blizzards, ice, freezing rain, hail, droughts, wind, thunderstorms, etc. and thankfully, a lot of gorgeous, sunny days as well. For someone like me who watches "The Weather Channel" every single day and follows three other forecasters on Facebook, it was on my "radar" to construct a weather-related puzzle.

I initially submitted this puzzle back in November 2011 with 4 movie titles that each described the weather for a particular U.S. city/state and clued as such. "THE BIG CHILL" was clued as [Weather forecast for...International Falls, MN]; "TROPIC THUNDER" [Weather forecast for...Honolulu, HI] and so on. In Feb. 2012, Will responded that he liked the concept in principle but did not think that the movie "A MIGHTY WIND" was well enough known (but worked for Chicago, IL) and "MERCURY RISING" (for Miami, FL) could apply to any place that got really hot and therefore, not as good a candidate for a theme entry. So, I went back to my notes and eventually submitted two different theme concepts to Will — one with movie titles and the other with song titles, clued as the Weather Forecast (revealer) for a specific city/state. The song title version was accepted in August 2012.

I was a bit surprised to see that my original cluing concept of weather related to a city/state was dropped in the final edited version, but I am still happy with the theme entries clued as song hits from various years. Also, Will kept almost 60% of my clues as submitted, which is also very pleasing. For me as a constructor and a solver, it is all about the theme. However, like many other new constructors have stated in their notes, I am now focusing on improving the fill and striving for less crosswordese in my future puzzles.

Now, it's time to go outside, weed my garden, and enjoy "1966 Beatles hit" [Good Day Sunshine].

– puzzle by Tracy Gray

I started with the punch line (conveniently 15 letters) and wondered whether there were good examples. MOSES quickly gave WINSOMELO(SESOM)E, which I liked. The other two themers came with minimal effort, and I loved SCHW(ARZE)NEGGER — I'll be back, and all that. The fill was not too hard, and I had all of those uncommon letters in SCHWARZENEGGER, so I decided to make it a pangram. It kind of screams "look at me, I'm a pangram," with QTIP and JINX in the corners, but I still thought that it was okay.

My original had the biblical partial EATOF at 43-A and a bunch of other garbage in the S and W blocks (in its defense, it did have ZINGER crossing SUNDAE, which I probably tried too hard to keep), but Will nixed it as too clunky. The version you saw was much better. My favorite clue that Will didn't change was undoubtedly the RWANDAn 5000-franc note because any clue that mentions a large animal is better than any clue that doesn't. My favorite clue that Will inserted was probably "Put the whammy on" for JINX, but I liked his pairing of identical clues for YIPES and UHOH also. My favorite clues that didn't make it in? I'll save those for another day! I hope that everyone enjoyed the puzzle, and I'm sorry that I couldn't come up with anything with HAINAHPEZ in the middle.

– puzzle by Victor Barocas

I had been playing with letter for word ideas in various forms and with different letters for a while, but for the longest time I hadn't gotten anything to work. Finally, I decided to focus on the eye/I switch, and in a fit of ambition I wrote a Sunday-sized version of this puzzle that got rejected. That version had "eye" being replaced by "I" and the answers clued with a question mark, interpreting "I" as the letter. (Example: Warning from a tattoo artist? = CAN'T TAKE MY I'S OFF YOU).

About a year later, I decided to give it another go with a daily puzzle that had AN I FOR AN EYE as a revealer. I submitted it thinking it could be a Tuesday or Wednesday puzzle, but Will thought it would work as a Thursday puzzle with straight-forward cluing of the theme answers. This idea has been with me so long that I have no idea how difficult solvers will find the theme — it's not the craziest Thursday theme ever, but I hope it will give solvers a moment or two of pause along the way.

Since the fill in the middle of the puzzle in my original submission was pretty rough, Will gave me a shot to clean things up, and the fill in the final product is much better as a result. Seeing what clues Will changed (and what he kept) is always great fun, and this one was about 60% my clues, which, based on the few other puzzles I have had, I'm counting as a success!

– puzzle by John Lieb

A noted crossword blogger wrote recently that quadstack (15s) crosswords had officially become my "shtick". And you know what? He's right... especially regarding my NYT contributions over the last couple of years.

Anyhow, today's puzzle almost never left the drawing board. Here's why. I'll start with a mini recap:

Solvers who've read my recent write ups, will probably be aware that quadstacks crosswords (at least for me, and as far as I'm aware, Joe Krozel too) are not constructed in the same way most other themeless crosswords are. So far, with every quadstack puzzle I've constructed, the stacks have always been assembled (for want of a better word) first. Then, any stacks that look like they may have potential, get moved on to the second stage: designing a custom grid that can fit symmetrically around the stacks.

However, this set of quadstacks featured a potential puzzle-killer: one of the 15-letter words "A TEENAGER IN LOVE", had been singled out by both blogger Amy Reynaldo and master constructor Patrick Berry (in his wonderful book "Crosswords for Dummies") as an example of a 15 that had been overused in stacked-fifteen style puzzles. Although I'd never used it in any of my NYT puzzles before, I shelved the offending stacks for a while, and got on with other projects.

Several months later, I decided to take a second look, because my "spidey" sense told me that this particular stack looked like it could work with practically no obscure crossers. It turned out that my "spidey" sense was right and the resulting grid was particularly clean. I mean how can you not like a quads with KITTEN CHOW running through them? Therefore I decided that the cleanness of the fill overrode yuckiness of the one overused 15.

Also couple of pluses this puzzle has that helped tip the scales from "shelve" to "send":

1. Only three 4-letter words cross the stacks (as opposed to the usual gazillion), and ...
2. it has none of those dreaded "ONES" 15s. You know, such as "SORT ONES ONES OUT" ("Do a cashier's job, maybe") ... OK I made that one up ;)

Also, for those readers who are still awake, you might be interested in an alternate grid I sent Will with two fewer cheater (black) squares. Which grid do you prefer?

– puzzle by Martin Ashwood-Smith

On a good day my commute to and from work is two hours, and if the traffic gods are conspiring against me I can be stuck in the car even longer. To maintain my sanity I listen to a lot of podcasts. During one of these long car rides, the fresh fill alarm went off in my head after one of the guests on "Doug Loves Movies" used the phrase "phone it in". I made a mental note to check it against the databases when I got the chance. Then, realizing that my mental note would likely fail by the time I got to work, I told Siri to make a note.

Over my lunch break, I found no previous uses of the phrase. It dawned on me that it would be a perfect revealer for a puzzle of "phone" phrases. After working my way through duller theme answer possibilities like ROTARYCLUB, I landed on the livelier ones you see in the final version. My favorite is the exasperated WHATISTHEHANGUP.

Not wanting to phone it in myself, I worked six 9-letter long non-thematic entries into the puzzle. I am proudest of the debut words CHINASHOP (and its clue) and ICEBRIDGE.

– puzzle by Michael Hawkins

Some puzzles go from conception to publication in a matter of several weeks. Some others languish in prison for years. This is one of the latter. I mailed it in over three years ago, and for three years it's been peeking through the bars of its cell wondering when it would be set free. My very own little Jean Valjean. Maybe the Innocence Project needs to look into this.

I'm glad that all the themed entries are two words long, so there aren't any unnecessary tag-alongs that don't contribute. Including extra words always makes the theme a little less elegant. For instance, if I'd chosen to use NEW MEXICO STATE, the NEW would just go along for the ride — like it's third-wheeling on a date or something. Never a good idea.

I do remember trying to brainstorm themed entries that break COST other than between the O and S (MAGIC OSTRICH?, Pecos Bill's little brother PECOS TIM?), but didn't have much luck, so I went for the consistency of having them all split the same way.

As for the fill, I like A MAN DOWN. It's one of those rare phrases where the indefinite article is necessary. MAN DOWN doesn't make sense, and no self-respecting hockey player would say "the Blackhawks are playing ONE MAN DOWN."

– puzzle by Peter A. Collins

This will be my tenth puzzle for the New York Times, my first during the Jeff Chen Era (long may he reign). It was submitted in October of 2012 and accepted two months later. The theme of the puzzle is: common two-word phrases with both words replaced by homophones. I made a list of possibilities in the hope of finding four that would work together. The seed might have been CEILING WHACKS but I couldn't find another 13-letter phrase to balance it.

One English-speaker's homophone is often another one's heterophone if they live far enough apart. A distant friend insists that WORLD and WHIRLED don't sound alike. Apparently Will thought they did and WHIRLED PIECE ("top?") was accepted. But KNIGHT MAYOR was rejected because MAYOR doesn't sound like MARE. I pronounce them the same but that may be because of where I grew up.

I was excited to get a preview copy of this puzzle (praise be to Jeff) because I wanted to solve it pretending I hadn't seen it before. I have a few puzzles in the pipeline so I didn't know which one it would be, also I knew that many, if not most, of the clues would be rewritten. It was hard going; the thematic content was easy to recall but a lot of the clues weren't familiar. I entered ART for 16-Across ("Wall cover") and got stuck in the northeast. Luckily my wife was nearby and helped me finish it.

The cunning misdirection of "Put locks on" for BEWIG was amusing, and "Ben Jonson wrote one to himself" for ODE was fun to know. I didn't write either of those clues. In fact, of the 76 clues, only nine are mine. I like to think that, because I don't know on which day of the week the puzzle will appear, I'm not able to write clues at the appropriate difficulty level. Or maybe I'm trying to be too clever (like "Pack with an extra suit" for TAROT) or too cute (like "Quarters for daughters" for GIRLS' DORM). That plus the fact that my acceptance rate is a mere 23%, reminds me I still have a lot to learn.

I had a "Mint on the grill" while constructing this puzzle and I hope solvers have a GRATE THYME too. (Sorry about that.)

– puzzle by Mike Buckley

The initial inspiration for this puzzle came from "See Me After Class," which I transformed into CLASSSEEME, but the 10 letter mate to this themed entry proved much more difficult. Initially I had NOONDOGDAY (Dog Day Afternoon), but Will rejected it on the grounds that AFTER was a part of the larger word, Afternoon, while in all the other themes, AFTER was implied as a single word. I spent weeks and weeks trying to come up with a good 10-letter substitute, all of which fell short(z).

In all of the earlier versions of the puzzle, I had the word AFTER at the bottom as a revealer, but Will thought it was unnecessary. I had one version with ten themes, one that was a pangram, but Will kept encouraging me to keep it simple.

I finally had to reluctantly abandon the two 10-letter entries and went to a pair of 15-letter themes instead. I had ANOTHERONETHING (One Thing After Another) but couldn't find a suitable mate until I came up with CIBEFOREEEXCEPT (I Before E Except After C). By this time I had made 18 different versions of the puzzle! I am particularly pleased that Will kept my clue for this last entry, "Rule contradicted by science?"

So when people ask me how long it takes me to make a crossword puzzle, I answer "Anywhere between 45 minutes and three months."

– puzzle by Adam G. Perl

At the time I submitted this puzzle (early 2013), I had been experimenting with sticking chains of the same bigram in the centers of themeless grids with staircases of 7-, 9-, and 11-letter entries. I wasn't expecting a grid with a chain of double Zs to fill very well, since Z is such an uncommon letter, but I decided to give such a grid the old college try (or should I say the old high school try?). To my surprise, the fill for the middle section turned out pretty cleanly, and I liked how it contained a handful of Friday/Saturday-level entries that don't show up very often in crosswords, such as DEGAUSS, FOOZLED (which Will changed to FOOZLER, probably to allow for the stronger down entry EMBEZZLER), POSEURS, HENNAED, and TONTINE. I got lucky with the upper left and lower right corners, as the handful of letters forced by the middle section of grids like this one don't always allow for a clean fill. The cluing went relatively quickly, since the grid contains many fewer words than usual. My favorite clue is "Make less attractive?" for DEGAUSS, an entry that one wouldn't expect to have many cluing options that aren't straight definitions. I hope you all enjoy solving my puzzle!

– puzzle by David Steinberg

After many attempts, I'm very pleased to see my puzzle being published in the NY Times! The first puzzle I attempted to construct years ago was on graph paper, and I had so many erasures that I tore through the paper in several spots. Much easier to use Crossword Compiler!

My inspiration for this puzzle came when I saw the term "hip hop" in a music review, and started thinking about the origin of the term. And that's when "White Rabbit" by Jefferson Airplane came to mind and it all flowed from there. I really wanted to use "pop song" for one of the theme answers, but couldn't come up with a song with "father" or "dad" in the title that was well known enough. I have to thank my extended family for some of the others, as we sat around the Thanksgiving table bouncing around ideas and eventually I was able to come up with three other music genres.

When Will contacted me to let me know he had basically accepted it, he said that I needed to revise my clues and answers to reflect a Monday level difficulty. Much easier said than done, I have a new found respect for Monday constructors, as it's difficult not to have a few semi-tough clues in an entire puzzle. On the other hand, I'm glad my first published puzzle is a Monday, as most of my friends and family can at least take a shot at finishing it (and they should have plenty of time as Monday is a holiday).

I continue to work on other puzzles but am very relieved to no longer be a cruci-virgin!

– puzzle by Dan Margolis

This puzzle was among my first ever constructed, back in 2010. Its first iteration included BANKNOTE, FIELDWORK, and OVERHAND among seven theme entries and the revealer was the plural BOOKENDS. The construction featured elegantly crossing theme entries and had the revealer located in the southwest of the grid. Ultimately the grid proved to be too difficult to fill reasonably, and so it was back to square one.

Round #2 scaled things back to 6 theme entries. The revealer was slightly modified to BOOKEND, and placed in the center of the grid. I submitted this grid and was pleased to learn that Will liked the puzzle enough to publish it, contingent upon my willingness to fix it up a bit. DOUBLEDATE, wouldn't fly since DOUBLE BOOK would be the only verb among nouns, and thus presented a nasty inconsistency. Back to the drawing board again.

For Round #3, SCHOOLWORK replaced DOUBLEDATE to allow for consistency and the grid changed considerably. Wasn't too happy to have to rely on fill like YEGG, SSTS, and AMAT. However MASSE and DETROIT being amid the grid soothed the concerns of this pool-playing Michigander. Hope you enjoyed it.

– puzzle by James Tuttle

Once the inspiration came for this theme (no, I wasn't at the zoo when the idea hit), I knew that this was the kind of theme that was just begging for interlock. I honestly wasn't planning for this much interlock, though. My original plan was to have the two vertical theme answers intersect the A two columns closer to the center than what you see here, but I decided for the heck of it to see if I could wedge a seventh in there. (Well, "wedge" is the wrong term, I hope... that implies it fits where it shouldn't have. I suppose you all will be the judges of that.) It was a happy accident that it turned out to have a themeless word count, because the interlock forced my hand here; I needed to keep the sevens in the top left and the sixes in the top right (the unsightly clump of five blocks on the top and bottom were necessary too).

It was also a happy accident that I was able to include 1A and 16A in the same stack; I'd like to say that I meant to do that. With the multitude of 3s and 4s that resulted, my concentration was on the sixes and sevens. I spent more time than usual trying to get as much good fill in the top left and lower right as I could.

– puzzle by Tim Croce