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This puzzle started with the oversized groups of black squares in the corners because I liked the look of those big pools of ink. How the crossword looks before you solve it is part of the experience! (I think it's like the plating of a dish at a restaurant, in an awkward metaphor I've tried to force before.) With this many black squares, I could afford a pretty low word count, and I'm pleasantly surprised at the quality of fill I could get. (ENIGMATOLOGY, most famous as the invented major of a young Will Shortz, was a happy accident, not an attempt to curry favor!)

Glad to make a Times debut and that they went with a somewhat odd puzzle. Tremendous thanks to the many resources out there that greatly reduce the barrier to crossword construction: in my case, the many helpful users and hardworking admins of the Crosscord discord server, free wordlists including Peter Broda's and Spread The Wordlist, and the Phil web app originally developed by Keiran King. I am always down if any puzzlers want support, feedback, to collaborate, or just to chat about puzzles; find me online or wandering about Cambridge, Massachusetts.

More notes are online.

– puzzle by Ben Tolkin

REBECCA: What a thrill to see this puzzle in print! The revealer and concept came to me relatively easily, but after a few hours of trying to fill around the double letters by hand, I was completely stuck. Rafa's coding skills to the rescue! Once we had a promising layout, Rafa ran some code to generate a wordlist with all the possible entries that could work around the double letters. We filled the grid, and ended up deciding that the theme entries could be sparklier, so we started all over. Getting everything to work — after a few more layouts, coded wordlists, and rounds of fill — felt like a miracle. This puzzle couldn't have happened without Rafa's coding; his stack at 45- and 46-Down and signature colloquial fill at 109-Across are just the cherries on top.

RAFA: Beyond excited to be back so soon for another Sunday! I'm always in awe of Rebecca's theme brain, and I was immediately in love with this revealer when she approached me with this theme idea. It was cool to use the knowledge from my software day job to write code to make it easier to fill this grid. Stacked themers are no joke to fill around, so I'm particularly proud of the fun bonus fill we were able to squeeze into this grid, as well as the nods to our Bay Area home at 54-Across and 45-Down.

– puzzle by Rebecca Goldstein and Rafael Musa

It all started when Franz Ferdinand's song "Take Me Out" got stuck in my head. I thought, "That could be a fun revealer." I searched XWord Info for words and phrases containing "me." Luckily, I came across "cement" and "come in" early in the 42,000+ results, and a theme was born. (And that was before I discovered XWord Info's Replacement Finder, which would have made the job much easier.) I felt like I struck gold when I realized my theme answers could become members of the same category (i.e., money) following the deletion of "me."

I've been a fan of cryptic crosswords for years and am still fairly new to the daily New York Times crossword. I fell in love with Thursday puzzles — which often have cryptic elements — and felt compelled to start constructing puzzles in that style.

Also, I should acknowledge that Hoang-Kim Vu and Jessica Zetzman's clever Nov. 17, 2022 puzzle has a similar theme. Their puzzle was published about a month after mine was accepted, and I'm delighted that the editors decided to run both.

– puzzle by Alison Perch

It happens to every themeless constructor — the feeling after you finish your last clue, step back from a puzzle, and finally go, "Well, THAT is me." As someone who first started solving and then constructing crosswords as a coping mechanism to manage a bad relationship, I fell into that all-too-familiar anxious trap of writing puzzles with editors' voices in mind rather than my own. With that mindset comes a lot of "am I good enough" anxiety, and when you run out of ideas about what will please editors, you hit a creative wall like I did last summer.

This puzzle was the first one I made after taking a month-long break to prevent burnout, and represents me finally realizing that the best work I have to bring to the table isn't for anybody else but myself. Anyone's best crosswords are, for that matter, love letters to the many worlds around them that they love and care for so deeply.

To my Muslim friends: I hope you had a joyous Eid al-Adha. To Jade (my partner's family dog): happy third birthday! And to my parents: hope you have a seamless move to Iowa next week (and thanks for spending your birthday with us mom). Happy solving!

– puzzle by Adrian Johnson

As Will mentions in his intro, the first draft of this puzzle was an 11x11 grid where every single clue was an emoji. The theme entries were things like for FASHION ICON and for MIRROR IMAGE. I eventually expanded it into a 21x21, but dropped the emoji clues and just kept the fundamental idea of using visual puns for theme entries. I sketched these pictures on the back of an envelope and took photos of them, which I pasted into a Word document with the rest of the clues. I had assumed the editors would find a professional illustrator, but they liked using my originals.

– puzzle by Christina Iverson

Q: So Brad, tell us about today's puzzle.

A: Well, it's full of dangerous animals in various states of conflict — poking and shooting and whatnot. Then in the center it has "LAMBS" — one of the LEAST dangerous animals, but with no conflict — since no one would ever fight a cute little lamb!

Q: What's the point?

A: Because there's no verb with LAMBS, it's kind of silent. So it's like "Silence of the Lambs" — get it? That's the theme!

Q: I'm not getting that at all from the clues.

A: Yeah, it's a hard one I know. I'm kind of surprised the Times decided to run it on a Monday.

Q: Also, while shark, bear and bull are dangerous animals, a bird isn't.

A: It can be. My daughter is deathly afraid of chickens, for example. She panics if she sees one. She has nightmares about poultry. So she joined this great support group called "Flip the Bird." That was actually the inspiration for this puzzle — to support her and her peers.

Q: OK but four animal phrases seems pretty meh.

A: Well, I would have liked also to use WAG THE DOG, but I figured that would just be a distraction.

Q: Terrible.

– puzzle by Brad Wiegmann

The inspiration for this theme was this puzzle from Andrew Ries from February 2021. The PARADOX wordplay was fun, so I tried to see if a puzzle could work with various other PARA-items. I submitted a 21x21 query to another publication with the PARA-formulations as mini-revealers cross-referencing theme answers: PARADIGMS — PA(TEN)(T EN)GINEERING; PARABLES — V(OX) POPULI V(OX) DEI; PARALYZE — IN DRI(BS) AND DRA(BS); PARAKEETS — (JOHN)SON AND (JOHN)SON. The idea was rightfully rejected, but I tried different angles and landed on the successive rebuses you see here.

In this case, the gimmick is the puzzle — if the gimmick doesn't give you enjoyment or eludes you, then you probably will not like the puzzle.

For those constructors keeping track, this puzzle was submitted on January 15, 2022 and accepted on April 7, 2022. The editing team kept 32 clues as written, slightly revised 12 clues, and changed 32 clues. All revised and changed clues were, in my opinion, improvements.

I also want to acknowledge David Steinberg and Amanda Rafkin at Universal Crossword, who worked with me when I first started submitting crosswords for publication. Their extremely helpful feedback was so instrumental in my progress as a constructor. Thank you to them both!

– puzzle by Hanh Huynh

Greetings, crossworld! I'm an attorney based in Palo Alto, CA. I began solving the NYT crossword daily in mid-2018, and started constructing soon thereafter in my gap year before law school. Over the last 4+ years, I've made and distributed puzzles (all of which were themed) to my family, friends, classmates, and coworkers — but this is the first themeless I've ever shared publicly! Thanks to everyone who solved those puzzles for their patience as I worked out the kinks of crossword construction.

This puzzle started with the supersymmetrical grid pattern. Elements of the grid were inspired by themeless constructors who I admire, but this particular layout felt like something I hadn't quite seen before and proved to be a good canvas to work from in an iterative fashion — first, finding a set of six juicy entries in the center and then filling each of the four corners as cleanly as possible (minimizing the "dabs of crossword glue," as Jeff Chen would say).

I'm grateful to the NYT team for preserving my cluing angle while improving the clues at 5-D/26-D/42-D and for their new clues at 23-A/1-D/10-D. My favorite clues that made the cut are 21-A/6-D/47-D.

Hope you enjoy the puzzle!

P.S. If there are any aspiring constructors out there who have questions or are looking for a resource, please feel free to drop me a line at: kaufwords [at] gmail [dot] com — happy to help however I can.

– puzzle by Jonathan Kaufman

I hope solving this puzzle was less difficult than trying to fall asleep on a train (or in a car or on a plane, for that matter). Thanks to Sid Sivakumar and Matthew Stock and their puzzle from early 2021 for inspiring today's theme. I briefly considered using the revealer SLEEPING BAG and transforming BAG to ZZZ, but once I realized there were enough theme answers to use SLEEPING CAR, I put the pedal to the metal and got to work.

There were some speed bumps along the way. The editing team accepted the puzzle with the caveat of revising the fill. I had to accept some trade-offs because I was using the second-most number of Zs in a weekday puzzle in the Shortz Era — the record is 18! — so I couldn't avoid some crossword-ese like LST. My initial grid had all the theme answers placed horizontally, but to minimize the questionable fill, I had to change my approach and position two of the theme answers vertically. Fortunately, that worked, and I was able to finally put the puzzle to bed.

– puzzle by Drew Schmenner

I hope you enjoy today's puzzle. I'm amused to see the clue to YOU GUESSED IT, ["Ding, ding, ding, we have a winner!"] because that clue was the genesis of my 2023 American Crossword Puzzle Tournament puzzle (apologies for the spoiler if you haven't yet solved this year's ACPT puzzles but still intend to).

After submitting this NYT puzzle, I began working on themes for the ACPT. I sent Will Shortz some theme options, including one of the simple add-a-letter(s) variety, putting DING at the end of common phrases to make new and amusing entries. I thought the resulting phrases were fun, and the whole thing could be tied together with the title "We Have A Winner" which seemed like an appropriate sentiment for a tournament puzzle. He nixed the other themes I submitted and chose this theme which became the Sunday puzzle #7 at the tournament, though he did go in a different direction for the title, naming it "Clear as a Bell".

Also, I wanted to take this opportunity to comment on the new Easy Mode versions of Friday puzzles. As someone who has now constructed 30 Friday NYT crossword puzzles (and I'm just getting started!) I'm definitely conflicted about this new offering. I am 100% in favor of easy themeless puzzles; in fact, I currently construct two easy themelesses per month for another publication.

And if you have to have your grid reclued, then it would be hard to find anyone better than the wonderfully talented Christina Iverson for the job.

But that's the thing … it's my grid getting reclued, and it just feels weird. I hope Easy Mode is wildly successful and has the desired result of introducing many new solvers to themeless puzzles. But I also hope the NYT takes the next step and begins offering ORIGINAL easy themeless puzzles rather than this questionable hybrid.

However it plays out, though, it's been an honor to join you for every one of these 30 Fridays (plus all my puzzles on the other days of the week, too), and let's do it again soon : )

– puzzle by Robyn Weintraub

"I should try an ultra-low-word-count themeless."

HA HA HA Ha Ha Ha Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha

What in the hell was I thinking? (There wasn't even any rum involved in formulating that thought. Well ... not a lot, anyway.)

Seventeen months, 42,420 gray hairs, dozens of grid variations, a thousand dead ends, case after case of Red Bull (and a few bottles of rum) later...

This one was truly a labor of love — and perseverance. I'm honored that it was accepted. And I'm beyond honored to be sharing a themeless weekend with the esteemed Ms. Weintraub. I'm also a bit nervous. She's a tough act to follow.

I rather like the graceful curves and flow of this grid. The seed entry was 13-Across. To be clear, it was the eleventeenth seed entry I tried for this particular grid iteration. But it did seem appropriate for the challenge I had laid out for myself way back when, and I'm very happy with the result.

I hope you are too.

– puzzle by Robert Logan

Finally, you've found a good theme.

When you're on a roll like this, it feels like you should be able to just plunk the themes down in the grid and sail away, but of course it's not that simple. After I set up my first grid, I could have sworn I heard the whole thing make a clunking sound and grind to a stop, so, I rearranged the words. Clunk. Move the themes to different rows? Nope. Scoot the letters over a square? Two squares? And so on, until about thirty attempts later the grid that had once felt strained was now purring with possibilities.

This puzzle taught me to listen to what it is telling you. If it feels stuck, it probably is.

For me, the clue to 49-Down will always be: my mom. Rita Mondville was a music and nature lover, a wild mushroom expert and the most loving person I've ever known. I dedicate this puzzle to her with much love and thanks for many happy hours playing scrabble around the dining room table.

Special thanks to the Diverse Crossword Construction group and editors, especially Tracy Bennett, who graciously shared her time and talents with me.

– puzzle by Mary Crane

RAFA: Last November, I was in the car with some friends who were discussing a 57-Across they knew and I thought it would be a fun word to debut in a crossword. Soon after, I was working on this grid and saw the opportunity present itself in the bottom right corner ... I had to make it work. This grid started with the spanner, though, which felt relevant because it seems like every person I know is getting engaged these days!

Looking back, I clearly had relationships in mind while working on this one even though I was, and remain, single as a Pringle. Perhaps there is something to psychoanalyze there ... but I will leave it be! Anyhoo, Kim was an absolute pleasure to work with, and my favorite of his fill is 17D.

KIM: About eight months ago, I made a joke on Twitter about Rafa's prolific puzzle output, he DM'd me about collabing, and now here we are with our second puzzle together. All credit goes to Rafa for the grid shape and the spanner, which let us really tinker with each corner until we got it just right. My favorites of Rafa's clues are 16A and 2D.

Also, congrats to my sister, whose own 34-Across was this past weekend. Wishing you and Jon a wonderful future together.

– puzzle by Rafael Musa and Hoang-Kim Vu