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It all started at 1-Across. The genesis was a brief conversation I'd overheard about Washington. "Which one?" was the question, meaning to clarify whether city or state, but the way my mind works, I thought, which one? Denzel? George? That triggered the CTD (crossword theme detector) in my brain, and pretty soon I had the idea of a double rebus playing off the various paper currency denominations. The dollar sign at the center of the grid needed to stand alone, more or less forcing the 13-letter vertical answers at 31- and 33-Down, which ended up being a variation of a title I'd had in mind. It fit nicely and added, I think, a certain element to the puzzle. That central $ forced the rebuses toward the perimeter, ate into the 140-word allotment of a Sunday grid, and posed a few challenges for the fill. In the end, it all came together, with just a handful of short answers coming from the B-list, so to speak.

Three final thoughts:

1. What do a dollar sign and a crossword grid have in common? Both have 180-degree rotational symmetry. They were made for each other, you ask me.
2. All denominations of U.S. paper currency now in circulation ($1, $2, $5, $10, $20, $50, $100) made it into the grid. Higher-value banknotes were officially withdrawn from circulation in 1969.
3. The seven rebus answers total $188. The number 188 represents the ranking of Creedence Clearwater Revival's "Who'll Stop the Rain" on Rolling Stone's 500 Greatest Songs of All Time. The (money) quote from the great John Fogerty: "Certainly, I was talking about Washington when I wrote the song." Coincidence? I think not. The only question is this: "Washington? Which one?"

– puzzle by John Farmer

This is my second published puzzle in the NYT and represents a return to basics. My cutesy theme ideas had been falling flat, so I went back to a simple theme and tried to make it as clean as possible. I'm not sure how I picked "AYS" as the syllable, but I was spoiled for choice. There were some great names/phrases I could have used (WOODY/GABBY/HELEN HAYES, HOLLANDAISE, LYONNAISE, PURPLE HAZE, WILLIE MAYS, POPINJAYS).

For this type of rhyming theme, each entry should have a different spelling for the syllable in question, but I put a couple other constraints on myself.

1. No plurals (aside from OAKLAND A'S which would be unusual in the singular) and HAPPY DAYS (which is a title). This ruled out some interesting words with different spelling (LEIS, CLICHES, DOSSIERS, CHEVROLETS, PARFAITS, BOUQUETS, MATINEES, as well as the afore-mentioned POPINJAYS).
2. The same three-syllable cadence for each entry. If you say one after the other, you should get a nice, even rhythm. Unless you slather your sandwich with "MAN-AZE" of course! =P

In the end, it came down to the most interesting choices with the right letter counts and which allowed a clean fill. A friend of my wife's says she loves the Monday puzzles because they make her feel smart. Here's to all the smart Monday puzzlers out there!

– puzzle by Jim Peredo

The origins of this puzzle's theme came from seeing the clue "Woman's name that sounds like two letters of the alphabet" for ELSIE. This got me thinking about all the possible names that could be clued this way. Left on the cutting room floor: LC THE COW, LN DEGENERES, LE GOULDING, and OB WAN KENOBI.

As for grid construction, with six theme answers I knew I had to alternate their placement on either side of the grid. This allows for the least overlap between theme answers (e.g. 36- and 46-Across only overlap at the last letter), which in turn gives me less constraints as I try to find clean and entertaining fill. I started with searching for a central 7-letter word that would overlap nicely between 36- and 46-Across and leave me with entertaining down answers at 22- and 24-Down. I was happy with LUDACRIS, given that many people my age will appreciate seeing a popular rapper in the NYT puzzle. After that, it was a matter of trying to fill each of the other eight corners cleanly. I try to take advantage of longer answers (like 10- and 45-Down) to put in new, fresh fill, as it's awfully hard to do that with four or five letter answers.

– puzzle by Joel Fagliano

An early version of this puzzle only had the revealer PORT, with four "P or T" squares. I wasn't thrilled with how it came out, but I liked the idea, so I set it aside in my (massive) "Puzzles To Rework" folder. Over the next few weeks I made note of any "letter x or letter y" words that came into head. Once I got enough decent ones I made this puzzle.

I was surprised by how constraining the theme was in constructing. The four symmetric revealers made the fill tougher than I expected. Many times I put in a snazzy long answer, only to delete it shortly thereafter. The original version I submitted had OSCARBUZZ instead of OSCARNODS, but the double zees caused a chain reaction that lead to PROTONIC being 39-Down. Mr. Shortz didn't like it, which I understand. Protonic is an inferable word, but... it's no electronic, that's for sure.

Overall I'm satisfied with the non-theme fill. (Thanks to Frank Longo whom Will enlisted to fix a potential Natick.) My biggest regret with this puzzle is that I thought of better theme answers shortly after it was accepted: JANE[D/R]OE is great, as is [C/P]RANKCALL. Oh well. Is there such a thing as a puzzle sequel?

– puzzle by Damon Gulczynski

Brad:

Doug and I usually achieve something close to a 50/50 split on the fill in our themeless puzzles. The kind of balance we're looking for is helped along by grid patterns that are fairly modest in their demands — whatever progress I make somewhere should leave Doug lots of flexibility. What I like about grids that Doug picks (like this one) is that they are manageable but they usually present some extra degree of difficulty, like a pair of 10s feeding into the center or reaching into the corners, when we could have bailed out with cheater squares instead. Doug plunked down a nifty new 1A here and worked to 32A. We took turns on the other corners until we were done. We've got movie trivia, history, gastronomy, and baseball here — all elements we both like. I humbly submit a fresh clue for 16A. Doug has concocted some crafty ones for a couple of the 9-letter entries.

Doug:

1A is an example of my favorite type of themeless seed entry. It may not be familiar to most solvers, but the entry is quite figure-out-able. And most importantly, it's an interesting phrase to learn. You can use it to impress your easily impressed friends at your next cocktail party. I try not to use unfamiliar names as seeds, because they're quickly forgotten once the puzzle is solved. And let me add that I always learn something new (a cool word, some fun trivia, etc.) when constructing a puzzle with Brad.

– puzzle by Brad Wilber and Doug Peterson

This puzzle was really, really easy to construct. All I had to do was go to xwordthemegenerator.com, select a preset grid, click autofill, et voila! Quality puzzle achieved! Or not.

I originally submitted this puzzle as an early-week offering, but Will asked if I could re-clue it as a Thursday puzzle. Since it's a 76-worder, the puzzle could be easy or hard, depending on the clues. I suspect JEFF KENT is the main reason it's a Thursday, not a Tuesday. Maybe it's the lack of Thursdays in the queue, too.

Since I wanted to put the three revealing phrases at the bottom of the puzzle (or stagger the theme answers as they currently appear), the Kent answer had to be 8 letters. That made KENT STATE unusable, and also forced the revealing words to the end of the phrase. I also assumed there weren't any famous people with the surname Kal-El. So that's why Jeff Kent is in the grid.

I am, however, a little torn on Jeff Kent as an answer. On one hand he's a relatively famous baseball player with a M.V.P. award. On the other hand, I could probably name hundreds of athletes more famous than Jeff Kent that aren't grid-worthy because they haven't won any awards. But since Kent won an M.V.P., he instantly becomes grid-worthy? I guess so, but that doesn't seem completely right. Kent is essentially the Jim Broadbent of the sports world. Broadbent, of course, won the 2001 Oscar for best supporting actor.

– puzzle by Ian Livengood

Unsurprisingly, I started this grid in the center. I've come to like making themelesses with wide-open centers, because if you can complete the center you'll probably make it across the finish line. Making a wide-open corner is chancier, because you still have to fill in the equally-wide-open opposite corner—and for corner #2 you can't move the black squares (I have a lot of unmatched corners in my files).

My original plan was to have a central stack of lengths 10/11/9/11/10 with RUMOR HAS IT at the top, but that proved a bit too ambitious, so I added the cheaters on the sides to make the stack easier to fill. When choosing between adding dodgy entries and adding cheaters, always go for the cheaters.

Having decided that the U from RUMOR HAS IT would be a starting letter, I filled in UNDER as the start of that entry, knowing that would give me plenty of options for the remainder. Then it was just a long slow slog to find four more interesting Across entries that would create workable crossings. I ended up needing another pair of cheaters because of the –ORITE entry (METEORITE was the only familiar option), but again, it's a small price to pay for clean fill.

– puzzle by Patrick Berry

Everyone's a comedian.

Crossword construction covers five major areas: early-week, mid-week, out-of-the-box Thursdays, themeless, and Sunday-size. Many constructors can get proficient at a few areas, some can become an expert at one, but very few can become top-notch in all five. It's my goal to achieve all-around greatness, and I realize I have work to do in the themeless arena.

Starting with the good stuff, I liked how much of this puzzle turned out. PIZZA JOINT brings back memories of the time when I wasn't quite as lactose intolerant (my poor wife), and I find that saying I SCREWED UP comes in handy in disarming people during difficult situations. The wide-open middle sections took me a long time to work through, and I was happy that they came off with just an ETE and HTS as blemishes.

Areas for improvement: I dislike the same entries Will calls out. IN HIS is particularly egregious, being both a five-letter partial as well as an odd one. It feels worse than something like AN ACE ("An ace up one's sleeve" or "An ace in the hole") but I couldn't figure out a way around it. IN HOT was a better possibility, but I couldn't avoid duping HOT (in HOT TO TROT). Hours upon hours of trying hundreds of possibilities and I finally had to wave the white flag. I'd love to hear from other constructors to see if there was something different I could have done.

And my cluing is still a work in progress. I've come a long way from when Will used to change 75% of my clues, but I want to be mentioned in the same breath as Mike Shenk (editor of the WSJ puzzle), who Will gives as an example of someone whose cluing he barely has to touch. I continue to work at building my clue-writing ability by studying great puzzles like yesterday's masterful PB. And a lot of practice.

All in all, I'm making progress but realize I have work to do. Butt in chair, Jeff, butt in chair.

– puzzle by Jeff Chen

I remember the genesis for this puzzle came to me on a rainy night a couple of years ago as I was driving back to Ann Arbor from Detroit. For some reason, the Muse seems to speak to me while I'm driving my car or walking my dog. I was thinking about "Dances with Wolves", and noticed that the letters DATE were hiding inside. As I quickly tapped out the length with my fingers on the steering wheel, I was a bit dismayed to find that it was "plus-sized" at 16 letters. Before I had pulled into my driveway, I'd found "Dead Poets Society" — also 16 letters — and I was off and running.

I'm sure there are many "date" movies I could've chosen from, but these all seem to be fairly classic (although I must admit I've never seen "WIld at Heart" — is it a classic?).

Here's a little personal fact about Elmore LEONARD (40-Down). He and my father-in-law went to the University of Detroit Jesuit High School, with Elmore being a couple of years older. About a dozen years ago, at the U of D High School auction, Elmore put up, to the highest bidder, the right to have the bidder's name as a character in Leonard's upcoming novel. My father-in-law was the high bidder, so now he and my mother-in-law's names are immortalized in "Tishomingo Blues". My father-in-law is a gangster and my mother-in-law is a high-end hooker. Nice.

– puzzle by Peter A. Collins

Personally, I love rebus puzzles, although I realize that not everyone feels the same. I also feel that a key part of the enjoyment is to be taken off guard, so in that respect the NYT does a great job of printing them sparingly. This likely also suits as much as possible the people who loathe them, so winners all around! Except maybe for constructors; it follows that it's a rather rare event to get one published. So that combined with the fact that many of the best punctuation symbols, icons and all whatnot have already been used in rebus puzzles leaves a constructor with their work cut out for them.

The most fun thing about this theme for me is that I thought of it on a camping trip. While inside a bona fide tent. With my family either scratching mosquito bites or snoring around me, I saw the tent icon on the campground map and somehow the penny dropped (seemed more realistic than the outhouse, firewood or electrical plug-in icons, at least). The next pleasant surprise was to see some fresh fill fit the theme; it was especially rewarding to get a phrase that wouldn't normally fit in a daily puzzle to squeeze on in there once it included the rebus. All the longest theme answers interlock one way or another as well, which was fun and rather miraculous to say the least. In fact there weren't too many extra fill possibilities to play with, so that interlock helped a lot to de-clutter the grid.

Anyway, hopefully this puzzle goes over well and maybe it will even encourage the odd solver to get out and enjoy the great outdoors once they're done!

– puzzle by Paul Hunsberger

Mangesh:

Frankly, I have grown up solving Doug's puzzles. So it was a privilege when he accepted to collaborate. This is my first themeless. The best learning, when working on a themeless, is the stretch it gives to your imagination. Not just in filling the longest entries of 15, but others like DEAD ON (which Will appreciated in his "Yes" mail). I wanted to improve on BALINESE to something more exciting.

Doug and I divided (or rather halved) the cluing. He went for Across and I for Down. I prefer cluing over constructing. Again, imagination and creativity get a wide canvas. The thrill is multiplied when you can come up with a cute clue and it tickles Will enough to retain it in the published version.

Doug:

This is a grid pattern that I've found is good for themeless collaborations. One constructor fills the top (or bottom) and hands it off to the other constructor to complete. Sometimes it works, and sometimes you have to go back to square one (pun intended). If I remember correctly, I filled the top half and then sent it intercontinentally to Mangesh. It was a pleasure to finally meet him at the ACPT last year!

– puzzle by Mangesh Ghogre and Doug Peterson

So how did I do it? Well, I started with some graph paper, several mechanical pencils, a LOT of erasers, and a caffeine IV...

...just kidding. I used pen.

No, honestly, I didn't set out to make a sub-60 grid. I went for an eye-catching grid pattern, and it happened to come out at 58 words. This grid started life as a 66-worder with the stair-step block pattern extended out diagonally one more. It was on a whim that I took out those four blocks to see if I could fill it.

I started with a power-fill to see if it'd work, not expecting much. I knew there'd be compromises (47/49A, 4D in the final product). Not only did it find a fill, but it came in only a couple minutes, and the center actually came out like this the first time I filled. So I had my framework (26-29-30-31-35A/14-17-20-23-27D) MUCH quicker than I expected. I don't know if this was the easiest sub-60 pattern to fill, but I've certainly not found any "easier" ones.

From there, the northeast most frustrated me. At first, I didn't like 8D because it seemed awkward. I was this close to scrapping the whole framework and restarting. But I searched Google and found it to be legit. With that, I found my fill and came upon 6D, which was, as of then, unused in the NYT (to my surprise). As a college football fan, I'm happy to see it go!

– puzzle by Tim Croce

I can't say anything. It's a contest. So I'm keeping my mouth shut.

OK, so let me tell you about me. There are a lot of crossword fans out there who haven't seen my name in the Times much, so they may not know I've been writing puzzles for a long time. I started by writing puzzles for Games and Dragon and other magazines in the 1980s, then started to develop the concept of multi-puzzle hunts in the 1990s, alongside a lot of brilliant people.

I started a puzzle construction series in Games called Puzzlecraft, which this year produced a book that a lot of constructors seem to like. And as many of you know, my latest big puzzle project is the puzzle novel The Maze of Games, to which Jeff and Will Shortz and many other crossword luminaries have contributed.

I run a company called Lone Shark Games, which makes games and events for lots of big companies, including Microsoft, Disney, Sony, and others. Our latest game is called the Pathfinder Adventure Card Game, which seems to have gotten a very positive reaction from gamers.

It's been a fun year. And one of the highlights is "Letterboxes," which I hope folks like. When I can talk about it, I will.

– puzzle by Mike Selinker

I had a lot of theme entries I wanted to use for this puzzle, so intersecting and stacking them seemed like a good way to fit as many of them into the puzzle as possible. I lucked out in getting the intersecting letters to match up, and in getting the pairs of letters in the stacked entries to all yield possible perps.

The WP combo was tough, but I figured out that I could put either WPA or WPM there. I'm not that crazy about "TOGAE" at 6-Down because in real life most people would say "TOGAS," but I needed a word with an AE there so that's what I used there. I desperately wanted to fit another 5-letter theme entry at 37-Across to go with the ones I had at 23-Down and 35-Down, but I just couldn't come up with anything that would fit, so I ended up with no theme material in the center of the puzzle.

I spent a lot of time on this puzzle. I'm not sure how much. Probably over 40 hours. I built several versions of the grid that I rejected, and kept going back and moving black squares and changing fill, until I finally came up with something that I felt had clean enough fill to submit. Most experienced constructors will tell you that trying to cram too much theme material into a puzzle is a mistake, and I agree with that, but every once in a while it can work out.

– puzzle by Kevin Christian

Vic: "Do you remember this puzzle?" I asked Bonnie.

Bonnie: Not so much.

Vic: So Jeff sent us a copy. I solved it in under an hour. Bonnie and I concluded that some time back one of us said to the other, "We need to collaborate on another Times crossword." That's a statement each of us has made many times over the years. Since my name is listed first, we think it was I who then said, "I'm thinking of a theme with 2-unit ILSAs*, in which the first and last unit can be the first unit in 2-unit ILSAs with a common second unit." Or words to that effect.

*(An ILSA is an "in-the-language stand-alone." I hope no one coined this acronym before I did, about five years ago. Here's to its being admitted to the dictionary someday! But I digress.)

LINE being the second unit in many a two-unit ILSA, we made a list of those, then worked with the first units to find our theme answers. We wanted at least six, and we wanted two pairs to be crossing in the northwest and southeast corners. The puzzle was submitted in October 2010 and accepted in December that year. Perhaps not wanting to risk comments like "That's so 2010!," Will rewrote most of our clues, though a couple of dozen survived unscathed. As always, he made the puzzle better.

Bonnie: I approve this message.

– puzzle by Victor Fleming and Bonnie L. Gentry

Tom:

In the original version, six of the eight black bars coming in from the edge of the puzzle were four deep, and the other two were three deep. Just looking at the puzzle would make you start choking. It was like nine little 4x4 puzzles. I tried to rewrite it to give it some air, but just couldn't get it to work. Those pesky edge-themers are so uncooperative! So I did what any reasonable constructor would do: I called a friend. Victor fixed the grid and offered some new theme answers that opened up better fill possibilities. The end result was a much, much better grid.

You can thank Victor for NINE WEST — I had no clue. In our final iterations, adding a black square to change TWO-FACED to TWO-FACE (and EIGHT HOURS to EIGHT DAYS) got us over the hump with only AMAD and APIE to really grumble about. At one point we had DIRTY POOL crossing SMARTASS in the SW, and I was sad to give that up, but I love DEATH STAR.

Victor:

This was a great project — Tom did most of the work, and I got half the credit! For those interested in the process, I think that 66-A is a marvelous illustration of how things evolve. Before the black-square change, it had NUDIST CAMP, and then in the revised version (final grid structure), it was SANTA CLARA, COMIC OPERA, and END OF AN ERA before settling on I AM A CAMERA. I hope that people enjoyed the puzzle — life is a cabaret!

– puzzle by Tom Pepper and Victor Barocas