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Daniel Bodily: I sat on this idea for a while, wondering if it needed some kind of Thursday-level trickery. After all, shouldn't a puzzle about tricks be … tricky? Finally, I decided a Monday-level approach was best — and knowing that it wasn't my forte, I reached out to Andrea.

There's an art to keeping a grid both simple and fun, and Andrea's mentorship in exploring that art did not disappoint. She has a knack for keeping the puzzle-making process fun without sacrificing the rigor required to execute on an idea.

On a separate note: After a 20-year hiatus, I recently picked up a skateboard and landed a kickflip, so 38-Across feels timely. With that said, I think it might be another two decades before I try again.

Andrea Carla Michaels: One of the benefits of being one of the "Queens of Monday" is that complete strangers write to collaborate with me, usually in hopes of "hitting for the cycle." Having a puzzle published every day of the week is not an idea I'd care to pursue … but it puts me in close touch with these accomplished constructors who are more adept at creating deep and complicated puzzles than at a bouncy Monday creation (though it's deceptively difficult to pull off at times). This time, I was fortunate to be approached by Daniel Bodily, who was delightful to work with and was coincidentally living in Minnesota where I grew up. As a matter of fact, I'm in town on the day of publication and hope to celebrate with him!

After lightly debating "SantaCon" versus COMIC-CON and figuring out which words best represented the concept of a RACKET, Daniel tackled several iterations of the grid, while I forced him not to get overly complicated. Voilà!

I love being involved with crosswords! WHAT A RACKET!

– puzzle by Daniel Bodily and Andrea Carla Michaels

Some thoughts on construction:

• The seed for this puzzle was the central answer, which I thought was going to be a debut. Alas, I got scooped four months ago.
• I submitted this on September 7, 2023 and it was accepted 90 days later on December 6, 2023. It ran 219 days after that on July 12, 2024.
• There are 72 clues in this puzzle. Twenty-three (32%) were kept identical. Twelve (17%) were updated slightly. Thirty-seven (51%) are new from the NYT editors.
• My original clue for CRAZY STRAW was [Glass tube?] and my original clue for DIGITAL ART was [Piece of technology?]

Some thoughts on the entries:

• When I made this puzzle, neither "Tortured Poets Department" nor "Cowboy Carter" had come out, so POST MALONE got a much more generic clue. NYT added the Taylor Swift reference. I asked if they could change it to a Beyonce reference but they pointed out that "Fortnight" was a bigger hit than "Levii's Jeans"
• DIGITAL ART made by humans is more interesting than the slop that DALL-E generates. You can look at my notes on Wordplay for some cool pieces.

– puzzle by Malaika Handa

I have a tough time when my mind doesn't have enough to chew on. It's such a blessing when a rough idea pops into my head, compelling me to dig in. (To clarify, a blessing for me, not for my poor wife, who has to deal with my constantly glazed-over eyes.) The rough idea for this puzzle came to me when I saw headlines about ISSUES around Dr. SEUSS — that was a good start, but so many palindrome puzzles have been made that I wanted some extra layer to help elevate this.

Aha! What if I strategically placed black squares throughout the grid, so that I could clue the themers normally, and then clue them a second time — backward! For instance, 22-Across would be [Rock group clashes over album art?], and then I'd add in the tricky 24-Across, cluing it as [tra mubla revo sehsalc puorg kcoR?]. That seemed interesting enough for me to dive in, using a combination of manual letter-doodling into pages of graph paper, and spending dozens of hours of scouring computer-generated search strings.

Alas, Joel and the team thought the palindromes were solid enough that we didn't need those backward clues, and I realized too late that adding seven extra clues would make the list of clues overflow The Times Magazine's space limitations. It's a bummer that I didn't think this through carefully enough and figure out a way to conserve more cluing space, but it's something I'll take away for the future.

Now, will someone please write me with something interesting to occupy my stupid brain?

– puzzle by Jeff Chen

Hey, Crossworld! I'm a 16-year-old rising senior in high school based in Seattle, WA. I have been constructing for roughly a year, and I am thrilled to publish my New York Times debut and be on the list of teenage constructors! Besides constructing crosswords, you can find me playing percussion instruments and listening to dubstep music.

I first became fascinated with crosswords in late 2022 after stumbling upon a video of the final round of the American Crossword Puzzle Tournament. Having always enjoyed puzzles like mazes and word searches since an early age, I found crosswords to be the perfect new challenge. After solving a few and perusing various crossword sites like XWord Info, I was surprised to find that many other constructors like Jeff Chen and Sarah Sinclair live here too, which gave me even more motivation to be a part of this growing crossword community in my hometown.

The motivation for this Times puzzle's theme arose from another puzzle published in 2023 that utilized a similar concept called grammagrams—words or phrases that can be phonetically expressed as a sequence of letters. I wanted to go further and then settled on C-N-M-N-E, or SEA ANEMONE. I assumed there would be a huge list of theme entries that I would have to slog through, but the theme was pretty tight, so it all worked out. And with 59 theme squares, the puzzle surprisingly filled cleanly, with two bonus down answers that I appreciate.

I am grateful to the editing team for keeping the fill the same and retaining most of the clues. I am especially glad for HOLI to be featured as I am an Indian-American. I hope I can include more references to my cultural background in my future puzzles.

I hope you enjoy the crossword!

– puzzle by Tarun Krishnamurthy

I had a list of logical fallacies on my phone for a long time, but it took me ages to figure out a way of not making something that wasn't just a boring list. Eventually I had the idea of defining the fallacies using examples (which is usually the best way of explaining them anyway) and then adding a meta-twist of defending the puzzle from criticism. It would have been nice to squeeze in a couple of other classics like Ad Hominem (attacking the person making the argument instead of the argument itself) and Straw Man (misrepresenting the argument so you can attack it more easily), but alas, there wasn't space.

NO TRUE SCOTSMAN was new to me — it's a way of defending a sweeping generalization ("No Scotsmen put sugar on their porridge") from a counter-example ("But my uncle Hamish does") by subtly shifting the goalposts ("But no true Scotsman puts sugar on their porridge"). And like all fans of The West Wing, I know that POST HOC ERGO PROPTER HOC means that President Bartlet didn't lose Texas because of the hat joke.

– puzzle by John Ewbank

Greetings, friends and fellow crossworld denizens! I'm honored to make my debut. Thanks to Christina Iverson, Tracy Bennett, and the rest of the New York Times puzzle team for their thoughtful feedback and editing along the way. I also want to thank the many constructors who built wonderful, creative puzzles over the years that I derived relaxation, education and joy from solving.

As with my luck using the consternating contraption depicted in this grid, only after many "dropped" attempts did I finally snag a prize with today's puzzle. To all of you budding constructors diligently feeding your time and energy tokens into the puzzle-building process, I'm rooting for you! It's worth $18 of quarters (emotions) to haul in the $5 stuffed animal (published debut) that you can brag about to your friends who really only came for the pizza (Wordle) and candy (the Mini). Darn. My metaphor is giving me a "game over" alert.

The inspiration for this puzzle took hold when my longtime love-hate relationship with 35As bumped into my newfound love-love relationship with the niche and nerdy art form that is crossword grid art. An artsy nod of respect to the aficionado Jeff Chen, whose curated collection of beautifully blocky pieces and master class of insights helped immensely in developing my tastes.

My home is Silicon Valley, where 31D-powered doohickeys frolic autonomously like herds of wild antelope, but I grew up in Middle Tennessee, so I'm pleased that the editorial team allowed my decidedly tougher, but refreshingly G-rated and bedazzled, clue reference for 49D. I have three amazing daughters and an incredible wife who will appreciate this puzzle's remaining family-friendly. Next time any of you are out on Broadway in Nashville, be sure to visit the iconic 49D's Honky Tonk.

I hope solving this puzzle gave you a nice pick-me-up!

– puzzle by Shaun Phillips