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As you might have guessed, this puzzle started with the upper-right corner. I thought that I might be able to build around the double-stack of FIZZLES OUT and FUZZY WUZZY, as the letter combinations seemed rather promising. I did not think that I would be able to come up with such a smooth corner— and especially not one that also works in other long answers as nice as JAINISM and RIVER STYX, or that bookends a section that already has seven Zs with a J and an X. I guess I must be doing something right (besides evidently being a practitioner of black magic).

In completing the rest of the grid, I strove to elicit the desired feelings toward the majestic upper-right corner by incorporating as many positive subliminal messages to solvers as possible, such as BODE WELL, IN AWE, "DAMN!", and "NICELY DONE!" Seriously, though, I really liked the fun, light, and uplifting vibe of this puzzle when I submitted it, and it looks just as good to me now — in fact, I think this might be my favorite themeless puzzle of mine to date. It feels quite cohesive to me, and from the GIN SLING / OENOLOGY pairing to REVERSI above EN PASSANT, hopefully there's something here you enjoyed. The inclusion of PRECALC might put a bit of a damper on the fun, positive vibe for some (I speak from experience), but hey, at least it means that FUZZY WUZZY isn't the only bear in this puzzle.

I feel like the tone of the cluing here only adds to the fun, and in particular, there are several clues of mine for shorter entries that I am glad to see make it into print. As an avid Scrabble player, I thought my ZZZ clue was especially fun (and easy enough to infer). My clue for LINE takes an angle that the NYT has never used before, and is evocative of the unfabricated mirth of blooper reels. I also think that the clues for ADA and LEO X include some interesting pieces of trivia (who needs a Popemobile when you can have an elephant instead?).

It brings me joy to have this puzzle published, and I hope that it will brighten your day as well. Happy solving!

– puzzle by Trenton Charlson

BEN: It's a real pleasure to be making my debut as a Times crossword constructor, and it feels like it's been a long time coming. I've been addicted to crosswords — and word puzzles more generally — ever since I was a wee lad and joined the National Puzzlers' League. As an adult, seeing the documentary "Wordplay" rekindled my love of crosswords, and I started attending tournaments and falling in with the cruciverbalist crowd. Around the same time, I became executive editor of the Visual Thesaurus and got to know Brendan, who created a monthly crossword for the VT. Since then, Brendan and I have had countless conversations about puzzles, music, and life in general. I suppose it was inevitable we'd make a crossword together.

The original idea for this theme came from Erik Agard, who has been nudging me into crossword construction for quite a while. Erik actually suggested a phonetic theme going the other way, with the vowels changing from /aʊ/ to /æ/. (As a linguist, I feel compelled to use the International Phonetic Alphabet!) Erik's proposed title for the puzzle was "Shifting Sands." Brendan and I kicked the theme around and discovered there were better possibilities doing the phonetic substitution in the other direction, so we switched it up and called it "Shifting Sounds."

After we brainstormed theme entries, Brendan took the lead in grid construction, and then I took the first pass at filling the grid. Brendan fine-tuned the fill and also improved the clues I came up with, bringing everything up to his usual sparkling professional level. Thanks to Will and team for tweaking the clues even further.

I'm glad we were able to make this into a Sunday puzzle, since it's a delight to make a return to the Magazine, where I had the honor of writing the "On Language" column for a couple of years after the passing of William Safire. These days you can find me in the Wall Street Journal's weekend Review section, where I write a weekly column called "Word on the Street," as well as in The Atlantic, where I'm a contributing writer.

– puzzle by Ben Zimmer and Brendan Emmett Quigley

Hello again from London. It's nice to be back. I hope this puzzle finds you safe and well wherever, ahem, UR.

Although I'm only a couple of years into constructing US-style puzzles, I'm already no stranger to the all-too-frequent "Simpsons Already Did It" moments that come when you discover that your latest theme idea has already been covered elsewhere. At the time of construction, I couldn't find anything to suggest that the UR/you are homophone trick had been done before. 18 months on — and with better sources of info at my disposal — I still can't find any to show it having been done as a rebus, so hopefully, this one felt relatively novel.

My earlier attempts at creating a grid involved trying to cram as many UR squares in as possible, but I eventually settled on mainly trying to distribute them within the longer answers. The end product is what the team described as an "entry-level rebus puzzle" (from someone I would describe as an entry-level constructor!)

Clue-wise, I'm glad to see a fair few of mine survived, though my ongoing attempt at getting some British slang into the puzzle has failed again. One day. And spare a thought for Fred Durst. I'm sure he's never forgiven me for the letter I had published in a 2001 issue of Q magazine saying how much I didn't like Limp Bizkit's music, and he was edited out of 19A here.

Happy solving, and stay safe.

– puzzle by Ali Gascoigne

BRUCE: This puzzle started out as a Sunday attempt named "Flips," with entries like STATE OF MY OWING, MERE DEAD WHEAT (crop circles), and HAVE ME WET BEFORE? (imagine your own clue here). Will liked the two 16-letter ones that appear today but was not keen on the rest. I spent eight or ten hours searching for one more, and with Pete's help we finally came up with one.

It didn't dawn on us until after the acceptance that Pete went to the University of Michigan, and I went to the University of Wisconsin — what a wild coincidence! I decided early on it would be nice to put M's and W's in the grid — we asked Will if he could make two of them red and white and the other two maize and blue, but he did not promise anything. We decided putting FLIPS or SPOONER in the grid was not worth the price of admission.

I always enjoy working with Pete — he and I were childhood friends growing up in the Midwest, and he mentored me when I first started constructing puzzles. As you can see, he is still mentoring me now — thanks Pete!

PETE: Bruce and I go way back. Before he started constructing, he'd occasionally send me theme ideas. Finally, I encouraged Bruce to try his hand at building puzzles himself, and he's never looked back. He's a master of using black-square art as part of his gridwork — as in today's floating Ms and Ws. Our first collaboration (another Bruce brainchild) used black squares to depict a kite and two lightning bolts.

– puzzle by Bruce Haight and Peter A. Collins

The grid design for this puzzle was inspired by Patrick Berry, since many of his puzzles feature similar staircases of black squares (for example, 4/7/2017). I wanted all of the central answers to be fresh phrases that had never been used before in the New York Times. This version of the center was the very last possibility I tried since I could only see the first word: the unexciting DID ONE'S PART. But DID ONE'S PART did its part, allowing the other answers to fit into place. Originally, the crossing ASIS/ANET was CSIS/CNET, but I decided I should accept the partial since otherwise, it might be a sticky crossing for some solvers.

I've been working on my cluing, but it's still an uphill climb. My two favorite ideas, (DC insiders?) for SUPERHEROES and (You might see it on Mulberry Street) for LITTLE ITALY, were both changed. I guess those clues were too much of a stretch.

Anyway, in these terrible times, I hope crosswords can remain a welcome break in solvers' lives.

– puzzle by Daniel Larsen

The problem with having crossword-brain is that you can't turn it off. I might be nodding and making eye contact, but in my skull, it's all theme ideas and seed entries up in here. One day I spotted "Mexico/United States" in print somewhere, then noticed that if it weren't for a stray "i", you could read COUNTED across the break. From there, it was the inevitable, "Well, are there pairs of bordering countries that do work?" followed by the shock that yes, there are.

Before I took up construction, I didn't realize how much of the process is cost-benefit analysis, where the grid turns into a mob negotiator gnawing on a cigar and purring, "Say, that's a lovely word you've got there. What's it worth to ya?" There's almost always a trade-off: you can have that ultra-hip, cutting-edge entry, but it'll cost you a Danish seaport and a 1950's government acronym.

I ran into a ton of that here: is TIDE POD important enough to warrant DOGE and OENO in the same corner? Do you really want to stack NEWSCLIP and TEDCRUZ if it takes LUND to pull it off? And FLEABAG … well, there was no way I wasn't going to crowbar FLEABAG in there. (Seriously, go watch season 2. I'll wait.) It's the sort of temptation that gets me into trouble, and I still have no idea if I made the right call, but here we are, so I won't fret unduly.

– puzzle by Adam Fromm

As I recall, this idea came after completing Howard Barkin's Sunday puzzle that gradually zoomed out from ANIMAL HOUSE, ON EASY STREET, etc. until its revealer GOOGLE EARTH. I sought a well-concealed progression with a snappy revealer and was working my way up from LETTER to BOOK for the longest time. The theme didn't seem worthwhile, though, until I zoomed out more and found OEUVRE hiding at the end of the last themer. Tying the progression up with a profane confederation of vowels seemed like the sort of thing a solver might enjoy. After triple-checking the French spelling, the puzzle came together.

The grid is a bit name-heavy and has a few warts holding it together, but hopefully the good outweighs the bad. Thanks to Will and company for polishing up the clues and keeping a couple of my favorites (26-D, 47-D). In these tumultuous times, I'm delighted to contribute a few minutes' diversion to the world. At minimum, I offer up the puzzle as a belated Mother's Day gift to my dear mom, Chris, who has always been a voracious reader and willing francophone.

– puzzle by Benjamin Kramer

Indie crossword constructor here with what is now my fifth puzzle for the New York Times. Somewhat surprisingly, it's the first one with normal symmetry; it's also the first one that's a freestyle, rather than a themed puzzle. And I'll be honest, it's not my favorite of the bunch. Nothing wrong with that; not every puzzle can be the best. And this doesn't mean that it's a bad puzzle either; I certainly don't think so. But I'm always striving to make my puzzles better, and I do think there's some things I could have done better when I made this (and would do better if I was remaking it today).

That said, I really like the center here, which (unsurprisingly) is where this puzzle started. This puzzle came from a period of playing with common layouts, and I liked how the two stagger stacks came out here. Sure, some of the stuff is a little iffy: TEENTSY, I MUST, and ANI with a cluing angle that (as both a solver and a constructor) I hate, and doubly so because it could (and, IMO, should) have been clued as a name. But the long answers are great; at the time of construction, all but MEAN STREETS would have been NYT debuts (though I got scooped on FASHIONISTA), and all but RESTRICTIVE are pretty interesting and add a lot of flavor to the puzzle.

But RESTRICTIVE kinda sums up what this center did to the rest of the puzzle. It was rather hard to get the ring of sevens (BAT NEXT / BEER HAT / TEENTSY / TACITLY) to work, since all four of those entries have to cross three elevens and still work with two of the other sevens. This, in turn, constrains the five letter answers: four of them (SPARE / I MUST / BEGAT / CHRIS) must cross a stagger stack while also working with the sevens that are right next to them, and then the other eight five letter entries now have two letters locked in place, with four of them (LOTSA / EBERT / JUNTA / LSATS) still needing to work with the ends of the stagger stacks so as to feed into the corners.

The point being, each of these constraints further constrains the next entries out, and that's how things like LSATS get forced into the puzzle. And having that then constrains the corners; EV?????? has a lot more possibilities than EVA?????, which allows for more flexibility and freedom and makes it much more likely that you can have sparkling fill / interesting entries in the corners.

Still, for the most part, it wasn't too constraining, but I definitely feel like there was a lot of unmet potential for those corners. Even with interesting things like MATHLETE, SKYNET, BANK ON IT, FUN HOME, ARIANA Grande, and LIL KIM, there's things like ATS, RETAGS, SONARS, and I PUT; is it worth it? Maybe; some solvers won't mind, some solvers will. But as a constructor who takes pride in prioritizing clean fill, I definitely think I could have done better.

In any case: I'm not trying to beat myself up here; like I said, I don't think this is a bad puzzle. Mostly, I'm trying to explain to solvers (and especially non-constructors) how this was made, and offer a look behind the curtain at some of the hidden challenges of construction that aren't always apparent in the finished puzzle. But I also want to make it clear that constructors (myself included) should have high standards, and that they should always strive to do better, even if the puzzle's already good enough.

– puzzle by Christopher Adams

Tracy: Many thanks to Jeff for collaborating with me on my very first themeless puzzle and for helping me reach my goal of hitting for the cycle!

My vision was to have a grid with 12 multi-word phrases of 9 to 10- letter lengths, swaths of white space, and an uncluttered pattern of black squares. CRAZY BUSY came out of my mouth in a telephone conversation just prior to filling, so I used this fun 9-letter entry as my starting point.

Having no experience with filling a themeless, I took off like gangbusters in the NW and SW with no real constraints to stop me. "So far, so good," I thought, as I enthusiastically ventured into the other sections. "Don't underestimate the center," Jeff cautioned by email, as I started to encounter constraints. He suggested we start filling the larger NE section first, then the smaller SE section, and finish by merging the different sections through the center with 15- and 33-Down as our crossword linchpins. We collaborated back and forth in earnest, section after section, email after email, looking for the best phrases and fill and avoiding the gluey bits.

Jeff wrote the majority of the clues, especially the ones with wordplay, whereas I pretty much stuck to the words that had straight-out-of-Wikipedia cluing. Will and the editing team did a fabulous job, but I was happy to see that one of my favorite clues that Jeff wrote made the cut: NAPA [Where many stop and smell the rosés].

– puzzle by Tracy Gray and Jeff Chen

This was my first accepted puzzle made without direct input from a mentor.

The original theme set had HORSE SENSE instead of THIMBLERIG. Will and the team liked the theme, but asked me to get rid of HORSE SENSE, since the token is really the "horse and rider," and is less iconic than the other tokens in the puzzle. I felt a little worried that I wouldn't be able to come up with a clean grid with their suggested replacement "THIMBLERIG," since it seemed like a fluke that I pulled off a grid with six theme entries as it was. I did end up having to do a total grid re-work, and looking back almost a year after finishing it, I wish I could get rid of some of the crossword-y fill like EEO and DIALER.

Thanks to the editing team for working with me on this one, with multiple drafts (including an embarrassing submission with the typo BOOTMAMP in the grid). A lot of my clues were changed (for the better), but I was glad to see AMY Klobuchar still represented, and my clue for RINGO Starr unchanged.

– puzzle by Christina Iverson

I constructed this puzzle almost two years ago in June 2018. At that point, I did not yet have any published puzzles. So I can look at this now almost as if I was evaluating someone else's puzzle. I like that the theme is humor-based. I had no idea back then that there had been a Tom Swifty puzzle or two done already. I'm glad I didn't because I might have abandoned it for fear it would be rejected on that basis. I'm sure there will be others who solve this today who are, like I was back then, new to the Tom Swifty party. If so, welcome!

I'm pleased with the bonus downs: HATE WATCH, TAKE THE RAP, BEAM ABOARD, and PLOT HOLES. Fitting those in with 57 squares of theme material is pretty good, I think. On the other hand, with two years of additional experience, I would try to excise as much of A FLAT, SISAL, INRI, BESOT, and YAH as I possibly could. Also, there are six men and three women in this puzzle by my count. I'd try to improve on that if coming at it again today.

Check out my recent puzzles at gridtherapy.com if you like. They're free and fresh-baked. You can sign up on the site to be notified when new ones are published, which happens every week or so. There are also many other good free indie puzzles out there right now for your pandemic-solving pleasure. You can find those through Matt Gritzmacher's Daily Crossword Links at crosswordlinks.substack.com.

Puzzle people are the best people. Therefore, I like you. Please take good care of yourself. We need as many people like you in the world as we can get!

– puzzle by Trent H. Evans

Thank you to the editorial team for encouraging and bearing with me through two revisions. They rightly pushed me to get more out of the SE corner, and the puzzle is much stronger as a result. I hope my fellow "30 Rock" fans enjoy seeing 46-Down — he was the key to smoothing out that section. In today's episode, Jack travels back in time and becomes an unlikely ally of 45-Across (perhaps recalling Edie Falco's story arc). 49-Across, led by the great Gwen Dickey, provides the soundtrack.

The classic triple stack seems out of fashion, as many constructors opt for wide-open middles with stairstep/pinwheel patterns and other heavily interlocked grids. These are visually stunning, but stacks are tried and true. I have also been experimenting with more adventurous grids, but this type of 72- or 70-word design will remain reliable.

The seed entry was 1-Across, which felt evocative to me, and I think the old-timey 68-Across provides an appropriate bookend. I tried to make the NW corner lively while preserving flexibility for those medium-length Downs. For example, with a few black squares shifted 4-Down could have been a certain Swiss-German artist; 7-, 9-, and 10-Down each had several possibilities. That, in turn, allowed me flexibility with the placement of the central black squares.

We must be wary of 61-Across in these troubled times, including people like 64-Down. To make myself feel better, I imagine that in the movie of his life, he would be played by Rowan Atkinson as Mr. Bean.

– puzzle by Hal Moore

ERIK: This grid took a long time to come together (i.e., many iterations of us talking each other out of bad fill) and I'm so happy with the end result! One of my favorite themeless puzzles I've ever been involved in. Thankful to Wyna for the opportunity to collab and to the Times team for preserving many of our clues.

WYNA: This one took a while! I was inspired to start this grid by Erik's excellent DIA DE LOS MUERTOS, one of the entries from a word list we'd made. Probably went through about ten iterations before arriving at the grid we submitted, which is almost entirely different from what we started with. The editors (correctly) requested one more revision to get rid of USIE. In that process, we lost FAITH HEALER and gained A BIT STRANGE. I really enjoyed all the work we put into this grid, and I'm proud of the result!

Favorite clues in this puzzle are all Erik: 15A, 33A, 8D, and 34D. Thanks to the eds. for some great revisions, 49A and 29D in particular, though I was sad to lose our original clue for 16A [Watered-down drink].

– puzzle by Wyna Liu and Erik Agard

I loved crafting an Agatha Christie-style whodunit. A detective summoned to a lavish manor. Characters spanning the class divide (confined to their rooms, like many of us these days). And a priceless McGuffin, literally at the center of it all.

I loved making the grid symmetrical, with rooms arranged like a Clue board. (The diamond is hidden in a diamond-shaped room, in a diamond-shaped floor plan. The grid itself was a clue!)

And I love pushing the envelope of what a crossword can do! I'm grateful to Will for supporting it. I hope you enjoyed the journey.

My original version was more difficult: ELLEN, MINNIE, TIKI, etc. were clued normally — with no indication that they figured into the story. The solver needed to discover the names hidden in the rooms, unlocking the rest of the mystery. (I kept other first names out of the grid — a surprisingly challenging restriction!) But after extensive testing, Will and his team decided to indicate the suspects more overtly.

This puzzle took a hamlet: Mike Selinker, Alison Muratore, the whole Chaikin family, Debbie Goldstein, Jenny Gutbezahl, Rick Rubenstein, Sandor Weisz, and Dave Shukan all provided crucial feedback. And as always, the guidance of my crossword sensei Tyler Hinman was invaluable.

If you enjoyed this, please visit Puzzle Bouquet — our Mother's Day puzzle spectacular! We're raising $10,000 for safe maternity care for low-income moms in quarantine worldwide. Download our beautiful puzzle suite dedicated to moms, then hit Donate — and change the world.

– puzzle by Andrew Chaikin

ACME: As a Libra, I'm very familiar with the phrase, "I've changed my mind" so decided to see if I could literally do just that within the confines of a puzzle. When I realized LEONARDNIMOY contained the word MIND reading backwards I got very excited about trying to do a MINDMELD puzzle. Then I found the matching-in-length FINDMYIPHONE and I was off to the races.

MIDNIGHTCOWBOY, one of my favorite films of all time, morphed into MIDNIGHTINPARIS...fittingly, as it's the only Woody Allen film I've enjoyed in the past 20 years. He was my idol as a young girl (ahem) and I had a long correspondence with him (see photo) after we met in the 70s.

I approached Victor Barocas whom I coincidentally saw made a CHANGEDHANDS puzzle for the LA Times while I working on this one. We had met through a puzzle tournament in Minnesota, where he is a professor at the U of M, just as my dad had been decades before. Victor is phenomenal with dense material (just look at those nice sixes: ACIDIC MERMAN BENIGN SLIPUP... that's a short story in itself!) and was able to wrangle my all-over-the-place-ness with a nice grid.

Actually, our initial attempt was rejected b/c of the weak fill, I blame myself, but we were given a chance to start from scratch on the strength of the not-in-a-grid previously themers. Glad Will Shortz and company CHANGEDTHEIRMIND and let us redo to a much better puzzle all around! As per usual, not originally intended as a Monday (given the anagramming and the theme density), but there you have it!

VICTOR: I had the privilege to work with Andrea for a few years on the (sadly, now gone) Minnesota Crossword Tournament sponsored by the Friends of the St. Paul Public Library. Andrea is both delightful and professional, and she always brings a combination of joy and flair to her puzzles. It was a pleasure to work with her on this puzzle, and I hope that the solvers enjoy it as much as we did.

– puzzle by Andrea Carla Michaels and Victor Barocas

I was inspired to write this puzzle last year while watching the first season of The Masked Singer; I thought that Ricki Lake was the Raven. (I was right!) I observed that her last name was a body of water and thought this could be the start of a straightforward puzzle theme. In particular, I liked the use of "body" to refer to both water and a person.

Unfortunately, I could not find a way to fit Ms. Lake into the puzzle while maintaining the symmetry of theme answers and including the revealing theme entry. For consistency's sake, I also kept surnames in the singular, so no Joan Rivers or Garth Brooks. Billy Ocean played more nicely than Frank Ocean when I worked to complete the grid. That's how I ended up with these particular bodies in the puzzle.

My friend and fellow crossword constructor Chris King pointed out to me a couple of weeks ago that the most common clue in The New York Times crossword since Will Shortz started editing the puzzle is [See 17-Across], and that I was the most recent constructor to include it in a puzzle (October 25, 2018). With today's puzzle, I am now also the most recent constructor to include the second most common clue: [Jai ___]. It's unintentional, and just indicative of my inability to find a better early-week clue for ALAI.

– puzzle by Neville Fogarty

My last puzzle in the NYT was in 2014. I quit constructing for a long time in order to complete a book on antique silver, Gorham Spoons: Sterling Souvenirs from a Bygone Era, a thirty-year project. (Anyone interested in such things can check it out at eBay or elsewhere.)

Now that I'm back, I find it more difficult than ever to make an acceptable puzzle. I suppose the number of constructors has increased so acceptance is more elusive. This one made its way through but not without a number of revisions. My second 15-letter entry, to correspond with FISH (for) COMPIMENTS, didn't meet with approval so I had to come up with a new one. OH (for) CRYING OUT LOUD seemed to be my only option but it appeared to be unclueable (is that a word?) until at last I thought of Sandra Oh. I'm pretty sure my clue for that entry is what put this puzzle over the top. The grid had been pangrammatic until Will and his crew replaced my ESKIMO with ASSISI at 48-Down and the K was lost. In this case, that doesn't matter at all.

But It reminded me of one puzzle I did for another paper with the theme "Long time no see" which removed the C from theme answers. The fill also included all the letters of the alphabet except C. The editor, possibly oblivious to that extra-nice little bit of construction work, edited a small spot and removed the only V in the grid. That one hurt.

I had been shooting for a Tuesday-ish puzzle with this one. Had I known it would appear on a Wednesday, I might have tried to open things up a tad to make room for some longer non-theme fill. But I still like it as it is and hope it's fun for the solvers.

– puzzle by Chris A. McGlothlin

These days most puzzle themes come to me in the liminal space between dreaming and waking. Other times I'll stumble on an idea while I'm in a rabbit hole researching a clue in editorial or fact-checking mode. I don't remember how this theme idea began. I do recall that the R&D phase was absorbing because it involved sorting, combining, and regrouping; tasks I find soothing whether I'm manipulating words, colored pencils, or socks.

I wanted to achieve formal as well as syntactical integrity in the theme, so I ultimately focused on TV shows that would fit a 2-word + 1-word pattern, though I considered other permutations along the way. The first version I submitted had four entries, two of which were deemed stronger than two others (alas, my Kung Fu Entourage will have to kick a$# in another theme). I did a second round of brainstorming, and we settled on three solid 15s in a 72-word grid.

It's great to be back in the NYT. I miss seeing my tribe at the ACPT!

– puzzle by Tracy Bennett