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I am so excited to be making my New York Times debut! I'm currently a postdoc at Stanford studying ways to improve cancer immunotherapy. I got into solving crossword puzzles during college inspired by my dad, who has been a daily solver of the Times crossword since well before I was born. I took up construction during the pandemic as a new hobby to pass the time between long spells of Animal Crossing.

I was tickled by the idea of a "BIG IF" revealer based around grid art that literally spelled out a huge IF. In laying out the grid, I knew I wanted to keep all other black squares away from the central IF, which led to a lot of open space and long down answers. I went through many grid iterations to make the long downs pop while minimizing the crosswordese in the three letter answers (especially the central slot between the I and F). I hope solvers get a kick out of thinking 19-Down when they first open the puzzle!

Thanks to the editing team for their feedback! I had originally submitted the puzzle to run as a themeless, but the editing team thought it could work better as an "introductory themeless" run on a Wednesday. I liked the idea, and hope the puzzle helps newer solvers take the plunge into Friday and Saturday puzzles!

P.S. I'm starting up a crossword blog where I'll be uploading new puzzles weekly!

– puzzle by Sean Yamada-Hunter

Hi all! I'm a fourth-year linguistics major at UC Santa Cruz, my hobbies are photography, Garageband, and trying my best at piano, and I've been making crosswords for about a year and a half now.

This puzzle is my Times debut, and I'm really excited to contribute to this community. I made this puzzle last August, around the time I decided to use wordplay as a motive for learning to code again. I still can't make a website or a video game, but I can find all the words in a list that don't have the letter E in them in under a minute, so I would say I achieved my goal there.

I really enjoy constructing themes like this one because it's a really good excuse to spend a few hours at a time looking through lists of words with special properties. And while few of them translate into anything worthy of a theme, sometimes things work out.

While the concept of removing letters can be a bit basic for a Thursday, I hope that the vivid fill and the fact that solvers have to figure out the end letters from the crossings should make up for it. I'll also be interested to see how well solvers know TABLE MAT, which my British-born parents knew well, but which the dictionaries felt a bit more skittish about.

– puzzle by David W. Tuffs

This puzzle has had the longest gestation period of any I've published so far. I came up with the idea while (as Will's blurb mentions) preparing a campfire at the summer camp I worked at on Catalina Island in the summer of 2018. I submitted several different grids to the puzzle team, completely starting from scratch each time, until they finally found one they liked. One earlier version I submitted had MONSTER MANUAL as a theme answer (a book any "Dungeons and Dragons" nerd would be familiar with), but Will thought it a bit too obscure for a keystone answer, which is fair. See if you can figure out how it would have worked with this theme, though!

This puzzle also ended up with a handful of interesting answer pairings completely by chance, such as 34-Down and 58-Down almost making a famous book title, 25-Down and 36-Down being right next to each other, and 125-Down and 3-Down mirroring each other, creating my favorite fashion accessory. I'm glad they kept the clues I wrote for 5-Down, 43-Down, and 44-Down, but those smarty pants at the NYT came up with some pretty good ones of their own, such as at 55-Down. I also was very interested to learn a new fact that I could clue for the oft-seen answer at 120-Across. Take a look next time you're having one — who knew!

– puzzle by Grant Thackray

I'm happy to have my first crossword in the Times today! About me: I'm 18, from the Chicago suburbs, and a first year student at Carleton College. I got into crosswords in early 2020, just before the pandemic, when I would try to co-solve a few puzzles with friends (shoutout Arjun and David). Later on, solving over Zoom seemed like a decent way to occupy our time, and it didn't take long until I had the idea to try constructing as well. I eventually had some puzzles published on SPYSCAPE and since then I've had a few sales to other outlets.

I don't know exactly how the idea for this puzzle came to me, but sometime last summer I jotted down KILOMETERS DAVIS (15) on a post-it note since I found it kinda funny. That turned into the theme you now feast your eyes upon. Hopefully, you either like the theme or are able to ignore it and solve the puzzle like a themeless. Some favorite clues of mine that made the cut were 50A and 40D. I'm also happy that I was able to reference the best Miles Davis album in my 16A clue.

In terms of the editing team's clues, I really like 7A as well as 13A/48A. I'll close by imploring you to get vaccinated. Also, join Crosscord, it's pretty cool (I'm on there as pnbeef). And be on the lookout for more puzzles from me in the NYT and elsewhere!

– puzzle by Billy Bratton

Super excited to make my debut on my favorite day of the week! Though I'm a bit foggy now on the exact details of how this puzzle came about, I do remember that I created this puzzle during my first months constructing. I had strictly been practicing with themed puzzles until one day I thought to myself "It can't be that much harder to fill a 70-word puzzle". Needless to say I was VERY wrong. Once I came up with a grid design that I liked visually, the process of filling the grid led to many, many hours of wordlist curation, learning moments from trial and error, and eventually a deeper appreciation of how much work goes into creating a puzzle. I look forward to learning and constructing more in the future!

A bit about myself: I am a database/GIS specialist for a small government agency that does mosquito surveillance and control. I also moonlight as a bassist with my band Mandancing. Being a long-time solver, I decided to try constructing in late 2019, mostly as a curiosity, but then I stumbled upon one of the best communities on the internet that has kept me involved since. Fellow constructors and solvers have been some of the most welcoming and friendly people I've come across! If anyone has had any thoughts about trying out crossword construction, please reach out to the Crossword Puzzle Collaboration Directory and the Cruciverb Facebook groups!

– puzzle by Adrian Kabigting

My sincere thanks to crossword constructors Jenna LaFleur and Lisa Bunker for guiding me on how to approach the entry DEADNAME. Though it's a sensitive answer, I believe it's noteworthy and deserves a place in the Times crossword; Jenna and Lisa agreed. But if I were making this puzzle today, I'd probably pass on it out of deference to trans constructors whose voices would give the entry more value than I could, since I am a cis person without personal experiences of being misgendered or deadnamed. Jenna and Lisa directed me to a clue that hopefully frames the entry in a positive light for trans solvers and makes them feel seen, while reminding all solvers to respect the names and pronouns of others.

Unfortunately, I don't know of many trans constructors actively working today, and although mainstream crosswords have trended toward more diverse representation in some domains, references to trans people, communities, and ideas are yet to be seen in mainstream puzzles with enough regularity to suggest that trans representation is a conscious priority. (If, as national data indicates, at least 0.6% of the U.S. population identifies as transgender, then at least 0.6% of crossword clues with cultural anchoring, or 1 in 167 clues, should feature trans people/concepts. A week's worth of Times puzzles includes, on average, 583 clues.)

Trans constructors like Jenna and Lisa are certainly leading the way in independent venues such as The Indie 500, Crucinova, and Queer Qrosswords; I hope their work inspires other trans, nonbinary, and queer folks to give constructing a try. And for what it's worth, my DMs are open on Twitter @sid_sivakumar as a crossword friend and ally.

– puzzle by Sid Sivakumar

Indie crossword constructor with a recently-released pack of freestyle crosswords here, with a puzzle that dates back to about 2018 or so, which is when it was previously accepted by the Chronicle of Higher Education. Unfortunately, it never made its way into print before they ceased running their crossword, but I'm glad it still found a home.

That said, if I was making this puzzle today, I probably wouldn't make it like this (which is not to say that I don't like it). With a theme like this, getting intersecting theme answers isn't too hard (since they all have shared letters), so I decided to do just that. But the theme density and interlock puts a lot of pressure on the grid; as a result, the layout is rather defensive, and there's a lot of shorter fill (some of it kinda meh) with minimal opportunities for bonus fill.

The middle, especially, was tough, with four theme entries poking in and very little flexibility w/r/t black squares. Plus (and I can't believe that I only noticed this now) two of the theme entries use the same permutation of BOOTS, despite me explicitly trying not to do that — I don't know how I didn't notice that, but I blame the extra S in SOB STORY.

Anyway, again, I still like this puzzle, and am glad to see it in print, but I hope the above at least shows why considering grid decisions such as these and how they impact the puzzle is something worth doing in making your own puzzles.

– puzzle by Christopher Adams

SOPHIE: I'm excited to be making my NYT debut, especially with a collaboration between me and my very first and only Internet friend, Ross Trudeau.

I connected with Ross through the Crossword Puzzle Collaboration Directory on Facebook during the stay-at-home part of the pandemic. Learning from his expertise and working together on puzzles (plus meeting his cute cat, Ruby) over Zoom has been a highlight of the past year and a half. For this puzzle, Ross suggested the idea/revealer and then we came up with the theme answers together — at this point I can't remember who thought up what. We were expecting the editors to nix our theme clues, but I'm glad they survived!

ROSS: After this puzzle was accepted, Sophie and I shared a virtual happy hour with a crossword-inspired black and white dress code, but for which we had trouble deciding what the most apt "crossword cocktail" might be. We remain open to suggestions, which you can share via my personal crossword site, Rossword Puzzles, or by @-ing me and Sophie on Twitter.

– puzzle by Sophie Buchmueller and Ross Trudeau

Psyched to be back in the NYT!

As the theme might suggest, this puzzle was born in the early days of quarantine, when I was looking for a source of optimism. It had been a while since I'd come up with a theme I liked, and spending more time than ever in my living room, staring at my laptop, I really felt the rut. But hark! — metaphorically and literally, a SILVER LINING appeared! The theme required a lot of iteration. It would've been nice to fit DOLLAR or MEDAL in, but them's the breaks.

The theme also required some concessions in terms of sparkling fill, but I hope you find something in here that speaks to you. Shout-out to my favorite furry friends, KOALAS, who finally found a way into one of my grids — they've had a tough go-around Down Under, and I'm pulling for them. I especially like a couple of the vertical stacks here — GO TO JAIL / EARWORMS and BRONCO / FIASCO. It was a tough grid to fill cleanly, but I'm proud of how it turned out.

To the people who were my SILVER LININGs through a tough year — my girlfriend Liz, my parents and uncle, my roommates and friends — thanks for being there for me.

As always, my e-door is always open to aspiring constructors in need of a grid review, a second opinion, or general crossword chitchat. Find me on Twitter at @KPat95 and shoot me a DM, and I'll be happy to help :)

– puzzle by Kevin Patterson

To be honest, I was surprised that the New York Times picked up this grid with the explicit marquee entry GAY PORN. Though I often try to push the envelope a bit with my themeless puzzles, I kind of WENT OUT ON A LIMB with this one and was happy with the result. The final clue for GAY PORN is fairly mild, though I encourage the indie scene to think of some alternative cluing angles as a fun exercise. It's hard not to come up with puns now myself…

I enjoy making puzzles such as this one that capture a wide variety of the color and character in our world. As a result, I often include entries that are unfamiliar, topical, or a bit strange which make for a chewier solve. It's always been a personal construction philosophy to not oversanitize my grids with things everyone knows, especially for Saturday puzzles. So you'll get rarities like MECHA and MEATBAGS and AMAZON PAY (which also makes a painfully apt imperative…) It is worth noting that I've since retired NRA from my word list, so apologies if that entry caused any offense.

Excited that this is my 20th New York Times puzzle (and 10th straight Saturday!) I still have a lot to improve, but I'm really enjoying the journey so far. Hope you enjoy!

– puzzle by Ryan McCarty

I'm a Queens-born counselor/social worker living in New Orleans, and this is my debut puzzle in the New York Times. Fifteen years ago in 2006, I began making crossword puzzles, eventually landing a job constructing them weekly for my college newspaper, The Daily Reveille, at LSU. My puzzles had themes that ran the gamut from campus landmarks to LSU football rivalries to Baton Rouge's Mardi Gras.

After graduating, I moved to New Orleans, and continued making locally themed puzzles for the now-defunct alternative paper, The NOLA Defender. I broke convention from the national puzzles I was used to seeing by allowing two-letter words in the grid and packing in as much South Louisiana-related trivia as I could. As far as I know, these are the first and only puzzles that were made in Louisiana, for Louisianians. I look back on these puzzles with sweetness and reverence, as they were earnest expressions of the most important crossword value of mine: making people feel seen. The puzzles were odes to my community in South Louisiana, vehicles for me to validate the cultural perspectives of a region that is so profoundly unique and special to me. Alas, in 2012, I stopped making puzzles entirely after a few rejections from the Times. The learning curve from amateur local puzzles to the Times crossword seemed too steep for me to grasp.

After a decade-long hiatus, I came across a resource that renewed my sense of puzzlemaking purpose: the Crossword Constructor Collaboration Directory, a Facebook group offering mentorship to constructors who identify as women, people of color, queer, and other groups that have long lacked representation in the puzzle world. The group connected me to a larger movement of constructors who likewise saw the sphere of crossword puzzles as a platform to reimagine whose voices are being heard. Through the group, I met constructors whose encouragement and feedback empowered me to continue making puzzles, so that I could finally fulfill a dream I've had since 2006 — to publish a puzzle in the New York Times. It was a much longer journey to a debut than most. For all the moments of self-doubt I've fought through, I feel proud of myself today for making it here.

Quick notes on the puzzle:

• It feels poetic to debut on a Monday.
• I regret not being attentive enough to the representation of proper nouns within the puzzle. The number of White folks and Eurocentric locations significantly outweighs the number of people of color and any other geographical locations.
• After watching "Shang-Chi" last week, I requested to change the clue for LIU to reference the "Shang-Chi" star Simu LIU. Unfortunately, it was too late to make the change. As an Asian-American, it would have felt personally meaningful to draw attention to either the actor or the film. I selfishly hope to debut Simu Liu or "Shang-Chi" in a future puzzle.
• As a gluten-sensitive person whose favorite food is unfortunately pizza, I'm happy to draw attention to 17-Across for those with similar food sensitivities or allergies (and similar loves of pizza).
• It means a lot to me that my pronouns THEY/THEM are debuting in the NYT crossword. I remember how nice it felt to complete this puzzle. Even if the fleeting sense of validation during a crossword puzzle is such a small consolation in the grand scheme of life, if my puzzle can make anyone feel a little bit more seen, that's what I'm here for.

– puzzle by Pao Roy

Prior to lockdown, I can honestly say I had never completed a NYT puzzle in my life. I have to thank my partner, Lara, for sparking my interest in solving, which has become an integral part of our morning routine together. As an opera singer, 2020 yielded a great deal of free time as the entire industry closed down, and I needed a new obsession. Without knowing what a word list was, or that autofill existed, I tried my hand at constructing into the wee hours. Fortunately, the esteemed Brad Wilber reached out via Facebook and rescued me. He is an incredibly patient and generous mentor (and passionate opera fan!). Achieving my goal of having a puzzle accepted by the end of the year was a thrill, and I'm deeply grateful for his guidance and friendship.

This theme was born from, I recall, an offhand joke I read on the goldmine of ideas that is Reddit, which made my eyes roll (as most puns do, thanks to my father) ... but sent me down the rabbit hole of common legal terms that might be punnily clued. A few darlings had to be killed, but I'm tickled at the result and hope the solvers are as well.

Thanks to the team for all their improvements and help — it's a privilege to learn from them. Happy Tuesday, everyone, and I hope you enjoy my upcoming puzzles.

– puzzle by Daniel Okulitch

Hello fellow puzzlers, I'm excited to make my NYT debut! I'm glad Will Shortz and company didn't blacklist me after my first dozen or so failed submissions. They provided feedback and encouragement that helped me along my slow climb to acceptability. I also want to thank my mother Metah for being my test solver!

CARPENTER ANTICS was the lone survivor from a very short-lived attempt at a woodworking-themed puzzle. After imagining the Sunday funny pages illustrated by pointillists gave me DOT COMICS, I pivoted to the "add ICS" theme. I had some vague notion of "Icees for dessert" to justify the otherwise seemingly random letters added at the ends of phrases, but I didn't see a good way to work it into the grid and I didn't think it was ultimately necessary. On the fill side, I was happy that AMERICAN and EUROPEAN fit in symmetrical positions.

Outside of cruciverbalism, some of my favorite hobbies are fly-fishing and music. I dabble in recording, and I have an indie folk-rock album called "Under the Farthest Skies" on Spotify and a few other platforms. I've also recently started putting some live takes of new songs on my YouTube page. I hope you enjoy the puzzle and/or the music!

– puzzle by Grant Boroughs

Looking at a friend's paper solution to some dastardly puzz with blots of inky cross-outs made me think:

1. there's so much ink that it looks like they've added blockers, and
2. there's gotta be a way to use that in a theme!

Filling in a row of black squares could be like "redacting," perhaps? The rest flowed from there: things that get "blacked out" could be private information... of the options, SSN, PIN, and DOB worked best. I was lucky to find a strong set of spanning themers with these three initialisms buried symmetrically inside.

The grid I originally submitted had white squares where the "personal info" would go, only 28 blockers, very un-Thursday like. But there was a huge catch: solvers on apps can't use a pen to "black out" anything! So, I was pleasantly surprised when the editing team accepted it... although I had no idea how they'd publish it.

Part of me hoped they'd come up with some coding trick, and use it to demonstrate a new feature of their app. Alas, it was not to be. The very patient Joel Fagliano pointed out that aside from the app problem, in my version the numbering scheme would give away the gimmick: a few numbered squares without black squares immediately above them would call attention to themselves. I think the [---] clues in the published version also call attention to themselves, but I agree it's the best way to publish this theme for app-solvers. Many thanks to the editors for making it work!

– puzzle by Simeon Seigel

It's a real thrill and a huge honor to be publishing my first NYT crossword!

I come from a long line of crossword fans and have been solving puzzles since I was a teenager. (My grandfather once sent me a letter at summer camp in the form of an acrostic.) I started constructing a few years ago. My first published puzzle was a prime-number themed puzzle in The Mathematical Intelligencer, and I had the honor of being a guest constructor for Matt Gaffney's Weekly Crossword Contest right around the same time. I post occasional puzzles on my own page; the title refers to the field of math that I study, knot theory and low-dimensional topology. (By day, I'm a math professor at Duke University.) A lot of my puzzles have been metas and themed puzzles that touch on my various nerdy interests; this puzzle is actually the first themeless I've written.

The seed entry for this puzzle was 33-Across, the site of arguably the most important event in the history of the planet Earth and a pretty great combination of letters to boot. Getting it to intersect 5-Down (a slightly dated reference, I guess!) was an added bonus. I was also really pleased with how the northeast corner turned out. My original clue for 27-Down was "ABBA, for one," which turned out to be a bit too much of an inside joke with myself. I'm very grateful to Wyna, Joel, and Sam for their edits throughout the process, which have really improved the quality of the puzzle.

– puzzle by Adam Simon Levine

A few months ago, the Times ran a Mario Brothers themed crossword, and it was pretty clear that the impetus for the puzzle was Muriel BOWSER. Here the credit goes to Ray TELLER, with POLE VAULT running a close second.

In the interest of preempting criticism, DAYLIGHT SAVINGS and BOTTLE DEPOSIT don't quite change the meaning of the last word to the same extent, though they're colorful enough and were necessary to make the symmetry work. Another nit to pick would be that the more idiomatic phrase is "money in the bank", though that obviously wouldn't land as a revealer.

I'd love to take the credit for premiering PENN AND TELLER, but both Byron Walden and Frank Longo beat me to it with "X and Y" themed puzzles in the past — though I'll say that this is officially the first time that Teller is the main event. As an aside, Teller wrote and narrated an off-Broadway horror-themed magic show titled "Play Dead", which happened to be one of the first dates for me and my (then future) wife back in 2010. Things took a turn when she was pulled on stage by Todd Robbins and briefly disappeared, but we got her back in one piece at the end of the night.

Speaking of Broadway, it's back! So go get vaccinated and show the theater crowd some love.

– puzzle by Zachary David Levy

I am so excited to be making my crossword constructing debut! I have loved doing puzzles of various kinds for as long as I can remember, and I submitted my first crossword to the New York Times in 2016. It was rejected, and not long afterward I got pregnant with twins, so that derailed my crossword-constructing career for a while.

During the pandemic, I decided to take another crack at it. I got two great mentors, Caitlin Reid and Sid Sivakumar, through the Crossword Puzzle Collaboration Directory on Facebook, and they have helped me immensely. The learning curve is big! I am an appellate public defender, so I write quite a bit, but it turns out that putting words together in an appellate brief and putting words together in a crossword are very different skills. I submitted several puzzles last year that were rejected, always with thoughtful feedback, before this one was accepted.

This puzzle started out without the visual aspect. I just had three 15-letter theme answers containing ACUTE, OBTUSE, and RIGHT, and then a 15-letter revealer: WHAT IS YOUR ANGLE. But after going through a couple of iterations of the puzzle in that form, I decided to try adding in the visual aspect to make it more interesting. That really limited the theme entries I could use — it turns out there are only a couple of common 15-letter phrases with RIGHT in the center. So, I would like to give a shout-out to Spike Lee for making this puzzle possible.

– puzzle by Meghan Morris