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This one takes me quite a ways back! Although this is my sixth themeless puzzle in the Times, it was the second one I constructed, over two years ago—I enjoyed working with the layout of my first themeless and decided to try another similar one. I started in the upper-right with IZOMBIE, as I had just watched the first two seasons (and fittingly, its fifth season premiered yesterday!) I remember being quite pleased with how that corner turned out, and it still stands out to me now—I especially like how the J, X, and Z are each at the intersection of two 7- or 8-letter entries.

I think the rest of the puzzle still looks pretty good; it's perhaps not my flashiest puzzle ever, but I think it's solid all around, and filled with some nice entries that are accessible to a wide range of solvers. And what's not to like about the three instances of ‘AO' in down entries in the lower-right section?

Some of the clues of mine I'm particularly fond of in this one are those for 18-Across, 30-Across, 7-Down, 36-Down, 38-Down, and 40-Down. That said, I'd like to give a special mention to my clue for 22-Across, which I am delighted to see in the final version of the puzzle. Not only is "The Bottle Imp" one of my all-time favorite short stories, there's also a devilishly diabolical trick-taking card game of the same name that somehow manages to capture the feel and tension of Stevenson's story perfectly. Both are highly recommended!

– puzzle by Trenton Charlson

Pret a Manger is my go-to lunch place when it's raining. It's on my block on 45th Street, and I can get there in about 20 steps, so I barely get wet. (I like the tuna and cucumber sandwich.) A few months ago as I left work, I saw the store sign across the street, and pronounced it to myself as "Manger" as in "Away in a Manger." I realized that ?ANGER can have three very different pronunciations, depending on what the first letter is. Before I was halfway to Penn Station, I had the theme, and I even figured I could put EYE coming down from the E of MANGER and cross the other E of EYE with RHYMES. In my head, while I was walking, that was in the lower right corner, but it didn't work out that way.

Another thing that didn't work out was using Margaret Sanger. A 14-letter answer can't go in the middle. I considered using Bernhard Langer (a German golfer who twice won the Masters) as a fourth theme answer, but I wasn't exactly sure if that didn't rhyme with "hanger," and given that his biggest win was 26 years ago, he's hardly a household name.

When submitting puzzles, I always include possible titles for when they are collected in books. My title for this one was "Looks Can Be Deceiving."

– puzzle by Peter Gordon

The toughest challenge for any constructor is to come up with a theme that is going to excite Mr. Shortz. Three years ago, when I started on this grid, I thought to myself, "Aha! I know this theme will excite Will. Can I pull it off?" Today, my question is finally answered: "Yes!!!"

When I began this journey, I was amazed to find that TABLETENNIS is bisected by the T in NET (a serendipitous discovery indeed). I was equally amazed to find that BOUNCING BALL is bisected by the N in NET (not quite as serendipitous as you will soon see). Hence, my first of fourteen versions of this grid:

Will and Company responded apace, "Cute, and we really liked how NET crossed TABLETENNIS in the middle, but the SPACE rebus felt too much like a crutch (and the LOS rebus too random)." A year later, I received this response to my third submittal: "We thought the visual worked really well, tho the BLANK felt like too big of a curveball to throw at solvers. We're not sure how you'd fix this, tho, so we figured it was best to say no". Such is the life of a crossword constructor.

Exactly an hour and a half later, I get the following directly from Will in response to a question on a completely different grid: "I still like your PING-PONG 15x, which I hope you can make work." Well, we made it work after only eleven more tries. I hope it got you excited, too!

– puzzle by Stu Ockman

This puzzle went through not one, but two rounds of revisions. The first time I needed to get rid of a bunch of unimpressive fill in the SE corner, which included ESAI, SHIA, ENLAI and other junk — but which held together, amongst other things, the totally adorable entry I LOVE TRASH, a favorite tune of mine by Oscar the Grouch. Sorry Oscar...

The second revision was requested because my solution to fixing the unimpressive fill in the SE corner unfortunately yielded a series of unimpressive longer entries. It was hardly my best work, and I completely understand why Will sent the grid back again (and thankful that he gave me the opportunity to revisit it one more time).

Ultimately I had to pull out about half the grid and experiment with endless variations of cheater squares to get something that scored both high on my "that's cute" meter and low on the "dreck" meter. Fortunately, it finally came together and I'm pleased with the puzzle you're seeing here today. I hope you like it too. Happy solving!

– puzzle by Robyn Weintraub

The triple-checked letters make for a fair amount of work to get everything to fit, especially with fairly long words as in here. That resulted in some sacrifices (TELIC next to ERENOW, for example), but, on the whole, I thought that it came out reasonably well.

The northeast section (around and including CELSIUS) was the worst part, with several failed attempts. The original version that I submitted had DESECRATE at 12-Down and RADIO DIAL / EVACUATES at 40- and 41-Down, but that led to too much bad fill around it.

After Will and company sent it back, I also explored versions with NO SECRETS / ANTIDOTAL / THE TUDORS and CASH CROPS / ARTISANAL / THE TUDORS, but the MOSS CRABS / ANTIPAPAL / THE TUDORS version won out in the end because it gave the best fill around it and both MOSS CRABS and ANTIPAPAL, although not in most people's normal vocabulary, are guessable with some crosses.

THE TUDORS was critical - it had the right structure, used the forced U and put a T before it, so there was lots of maneuvering room with ????IT at 57-A, and was a nice entry.

Harold and Maude is among my favorite movies, so a chance to get Bud CORT into the puzzle at 71-D was a plus; Harold and Maude is not for everyone, but there's a lot to like about it.

Finally, I hope that people enjoyed solving the puzzle as much as I enjoyed making it.

– puzzle by Victor Barocas

Fun Google facts:

1. Homer Simpson was "inducted" into The Baseball Hall of Fame in 2010.
2. One of Mitt Romney's relatives, L.C. Romney, had a park named after him that was featured in the classic baseball movie, "Sandlot."

As far as I know, Bat Masterson, Diamond Jim Brady and D.H. Lawrence never played the game.

I, on the other hand, played — and played badly. On defense, I was stationed in right field (a PeeWee League no-man's-land). On offense, my lifetime batting average was .000. To opposing teams, I was known as an "easy out" while my team complimented me for having a "good eye" — a term used by parents and coaches to encourage boys like me who were too terrified to do anything other than rest the bat firmly on their shoulders and pray for a walk. Why did I play? Quite simple, really. We had great post-game snacks.

Not much has changed since then. Whether I'm playing baseball (badly) or just creating a baseball-themed puzzle, I still enjoy a good snack. Mmmm.

– puzzle by Gary Larson

I'm not sure why I decided to try burying a mini-theme in a 15-stack, aside from the not-always-advisable "just to see if I can" impulse. (For me, that usually turns into the regrettable crossword version of "hold my beer and watch this": four killer seed entries, surrounded by 20 medical abbreviations and three Peruvian tree frogs.)

I think it started by accident — I was tinkering with stack ideas, noticed I'd inadvertently thrown in two different military ranks on top of each other, and decided to steer into the skid. I do know that I got pretty lucky, finding spans that clicked with each other within a few tries, and from there I fought my usual angsty longing for the crunchiest fill imaginable, in favor of clean, crisp, and light on the word putty. Whether I succeeded on that count, I have no idea, but there's nothing that makes me cringe for a change, so I'll take it.

It would have been nice for the ranks to appear in proper order, with GENERAL at the top and PRIVATE at the bottom, but, well, beggars, choosers, and all that.

– puzzle by Adam Fromm

Glad to be back! The inspiration for this puzzle was a concept I very much enjoyed by Andrew Reynolds. I remember wondering how in the world he extracted those theme answers! A brute force approach would require testing 5,040 permutation strings of seven letters against a word list, so I figured a bit of skillful coding was involved. "Change the world" struck me as an interesting concept with lots of options to consider, and I hope this interpretation of the phrase does it reasonable justice.

I took a unique approach for finding potential theme answers, involving Excel, that didn't involve real coding expertise. I tested out every planet, sans Mars, and not all were suited for the job. (Jupiter yielded nothing, Uranus only "PURSUANT," and Neptune merely "ANTEPENULTIMATE"!) The most fun entry I didn't use: "MERCY RULE" for Mercury! Hopefully, this set of theme answers is satisfying.

Looking back, if I were to write the puzzle again, I might try to make the grid a bit less segmented (increase the "flow"), clean up a couple of bits of fill (i.e., TEHEE and LAIN), and add a couple of jazzier long answers. My favorite corner here is the SW. Hope you enjoyed!

– puzzle by Evan Kalish

This puzzle took some back-and-forth before it was accepted for publication. The sticking point was the answer for [Three to get ready]. My original submission used APPETIZER TRIO (balanced by PAIR OF TICKETS), but the editorial team thought that phrase wasn't sufficiently common. Will and crew did, however, like the basic idea well enough to invite me to suggest alternatives for that slot. Among the others I proposed my favorite was PREQUEL TRILOGY. Unfortunately, none of my ideas worked for them.

However, in a stroke of luck for me, they counterproposed STOP DROP AND ROLL (in the sense of getting ready for an emergency) and asked if I could come up with something to balance it out. I found BROADWAY TICKETS and the rest is history.

Regarding cluing, I'm generally a big fan of the editorial team's revisions — they know their audience and the types of clues that work well. This time, however, there were a few changes I was disappointed by.

As a mathematically inclined person, I was sad to see the inspirational ADA Lovelace replaced by the Nabokov title character. I also miss my echoing clues for AREA and OCTANT (Pi r squared, for a circle & Pi/4 radians, respectively). But, I can see how those changes make for a better Wednesday solving experience. Likewise, I understand replacing Rita ORA and ANA Gasteyer to reduce the number of people in the grid.

On the other hand, I'm not a fan of the published clue for OPHELIA. Although the line is well known, it marginalizes and dismisses Ophelia and, by extension, women generally. The clue also defines Ophelia through the lens of Hamlet rather than allowing her to stand on her own as a character. I hope it doesn't engender any unpleasantness for solvers.

– puzzle by Alex Eaton-Salners

I conceived of this puzzle five years ago this month, not long after the publication of two Tuesdays that would later factor into a decision that may have made the difference between rejection and acceptance (more on that to come.)

At first, I tried making the themers as long as possible to fill out a 21x, but I quickly abandoned that, as it became clear that the single-word themers wouldn't make for an entertaining Sunday solve. Shortly after, I asked my friend Jacob McDermott, whom I'd first contacted several months earlier about a themeless (and is getting married on Saturday!) if he could breathe new life into this concept.

We both ended up making two lists of themers, each of which had between 74 and 82 total letters, which felt like "no puzzle's land." That was too few for a Sunday even with the revealer but too many for a daily without many compromises in the fill. Moreover, there were 22 different themers among the four lists, but only six of them appeared in all four, and this fell into development hell.

Trying 15x14 and 15x16 grids about a year later did not revive it... not directly, that is. It was while I was playing with one such grid that I hit upon splitting FOURTEEN and POINTS, making a symmetrical 15x grid possible. The two-part revealer stayed in its current place from the very start, as I immediately noticed that BROWNIE would work nicely crossing it, and coming up with TIPPING was indeed a tipping point for the puzzle, as it allowed not only PRESSURE but also GRADE and STAND to form theme crossings. I am also glad that Will kept my reference to Gladwell, as he was one of my sister Maria's favorite authors at the time.

Still, by spring 2016, it had become clear that packing in all this theme would indeed force many compromises in the fill. I had not yet found a complete fill by April 20, when Tom McCoy's puzzle with the same revealer ran. Grudgingly, I shelved this even though it was a very different take on the phrase, and I suspected that it might not be fair game for the NYT when I was able to bring it back out. But remembering the two Tuesdays from early 2014 (January 14 and February 18), which both had over a dozen themers that nicely justified going over 78 words, I split up 2-Down and the then 39-Down. That made all the difference in the world when it came to filling the NW and SE, in both avoiding those nasty 3's and 4's and opening up a lot more and livelier possibilities for the two remaining 8's — which Will said he liked when he accepted it last September 13.

Thanks as always to Will and his team for polishing this, both with the clues (I got a real kick out of theirs for 35-Across) and fill, specifically removing the Roman numeral I'd had at 65-Across. Seeing GREECE as the new 48-Down made me remember my Pappou (Greek for grandfather), who died at 93 in 2013, and my Yiayia (grandmother), who turned 91 on May 10. She solved crosswords almost every day for many years, but since this may be my last chance to do so, I dedicate this puzzle to her. And thanks as always to my fellow constructors, especially Jacob (congratulations again on getting married!), and to you, the solver. Hope you enjoy this!

– puzzle by Alex Vratsanos

This is my 24th New York Times crossword. It has been 983 days since my 23^rd. My first was 35 years and 19 days ago. You see, I can't help counting things, and looking for chronological milestones. So you ought to be able to deduce how today's puzzle came about.

Early this year, I discovered that the bicentennial of Queen Victoria's birth was coming up and that it would fall on a Friday. That cried out to me for a Times themeless with QUEEN VICTORIA in the center. So with Will's approval, and a couple of revisions, both to "lively it up" and remove the unfortunate dupe of MEXICANS and TEXMEX (now TEXTED at 40 Across), today's grid was born.

My cluing was intended to be top-to-bottom tough, endeavoring to have as many never-before-seen clues as possible, with as much wordplay meanness as possible. Will did ease up on the overall difficulty but kept my favorites, including the double-twist "Opening of an account" for AS I RECALL (63 Across), "Grp. that no one under 30 can join" for U.S. SENATE (36 Down), "Priciest 1952 Topps baseball card" for MANTLE (27 Down) and the rather long and weird "Fictional land named in some real-life international law cases" for RURITANIA (60 Across)—which avoided the usual citing of "The Prisoner of Zenda".

In the memorable words of the eminent American philosopher Forrest Gump, that's all I have to say about that.

But wait, one more thing. My snooping around 1819 a few months ago turned up another very famous person born exactly one week after the Grandmother of Europe. I think it rather unlikely that next Friday's Times puzzle will mention him, but whether it does or not, you'll be able to find him quickly enough with a Web search.

– puzzle by Stanley Newman

My last puzzle (with Erik Agard) had a stack of 13s across the middle, and making it was a lot of fun; we got to showcase long entries in the middle, and the corners were free enough that we could have interesting answers in the corners. Chasing the fun of the last puzzle, I made a solo attempt at a grid with staggered 13s. This is my first (and probably only) successful attempt!

I started with 36A — after watching "Ocean's Eight" and "Thor: Ragnarok" in one summer, I made it a goal to debut her ASAP. What a talent; the bio for my Instagram is "Cate Blanchett fan account," and I'm only half-joking.

The rest of the puzzle came together pretty quickly; I had fun with the clues for 39A, 45A, and 11D. As for edits, I love the new clues for 17A, 24D, and especially 20A.

Hope you enjoy the puzzle! If you'll excuse me, I'm gonna watch Cate Blanchett's "Documentary Now!" episode on repeat.

– puzzle by Paolo Pasco

Ideas come from many different sources. Usually, once I have an idea for a theme, I search through lists of words, idioms, or phrases to find material that fits the concept. This time, remembering many years ago when my kids had to learn to pronounce "R"s, I sought out speech therapy worksheets! These offered many examples of legitimate words created when "S" and "Z" sounds become confused ("minimal pairs," to a speech therapist), and that was exactly what I needed.

Once I had a list of fun phrases, switching either "S" to "Z", or "Z" to "S", the challenge became finding a way to unify these theme answers with a reveal or a title. At first, I planned to use phrases that humorously changed "Z" sounds to "S"s, which in my mind was adding a whistling sound. I kept thinking of Lauren Bacall saying "You know how to whistle, don't you?" and I would have used that idea somehow in the title or reveal answer. But the quote didn't resonate with my test audience (a.k.a. my now adult children), and they didn't perceive the whistle. (Which is actually a good thing, in speech therapy terms!) It wasn't until I came up with "BUZZ CUT" that my theme felt coherent.

Then the puzzle formed around HISS AND HEARSE, which ended up being the only theme entry that included the S/Z confusion twice. That meant that either I couldn't use it or I had to put it in the center where you see it now. And from there, I picked too many of my favorite entries and tried to squeeze all of them into a puzzle. Alas, after several tries (Thank you Will, Sam, and Joel for your patience!) I faced the fact that I had to eliminate a theme pairing to get better fill.

Some of the many theme answers that were left on the "cutting room floor":

• LACE A GOLDEN EGG [Do an elegant Easter dye job?]
• LACY BOY RECLINER [Comfy chair for a guy who is unconstrained by social norms?]
• PACE HER OWN WAY [Marches to a different drummer?]
• FALSE IN LOVE [Unfaithful?]
• PASSING FACE [Asset for a teen with a fake ID?]

and my personal favorites:

• ASK FOR A RACE [Yell "Last one in's a rotten egg!"?]
• ICE IN THE BACK OF MY HEAD [Brain freeze?]

It was fun to make, and I hope it was fun to solve!

– puzzle by Ruth Bloomfield Margolin

Ironically, in a puzzle about lots of choices, theme entry lengths of 14,14,14,11,11 left me scrambling for options to make this work. I never like dropping down to a 14x15 grid because it makes for fewer words and more short words, but that seemed to be my best option here. I tried adding REPORTS FOR WORK and going to 14x16 with six theme entries, but that was too clogged.

My original puzzle was accepted with SERBO-CROAT vertically in the upper right, but after acceptance, I played around with the three letters I had to cross and eventually came up with TURBO-BOOST, which was not in any word lists. Way more pop! I emailed the idea to Will on a Sunday evening, and he wrote back an hour later:

Thanks for the turbo-boosted version of your MULTIPLE CHOICE puzzle. I like it!

As long as you're revising the upper right, I'd suggest you also revise the upper left:

This avoids the weird and iffy BACO, the obscurish MARM, and the pileup of exclamations UH-OH, AHA, and OH ME. Also, to avoid the obscure GAR in the lower-right corner, I'd suggest making this TAR.

So this puzzle was partly constructed by Will Shortz! Did he use any of that new-fangled construction software? I'm betting not.....

This puzzle might be a bit crunchy for Monday solvers, both in terms of theme and vocab, but to shade or circle the ORs would totally kill the aha moment for more experienced solvers. If you had to check the reviews to find out the theme, I suspect you're not alone.

The timing of this puzzle is nice, because the Toronto Raptors are finishing their best season ever, and last week beat the 76ers (Joel Fagliano's favorite team) on a buzzer-beater in game seven of their playoff series. The final dramatic shot bounced FOUR times on the rim before dropping through. Ouch — sorry Joel.....

ADDED NOTE: The TORONTO RAPTORS just made their first NBA finals! Good timing.

– puzzle by Bruce Haight