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KEVIN: This is the first puzzle that Brad and I collaborated on chronologically, even though our Seuss-themed puzzle was published last month. I first got the idea for this theme in early 2013 but I didn't do anything with it right away because I didn't have an ODIN theme answer that I liked. I considered GOOD IN MATH, but I thought it was kind of weak. I looked at other GOOD IN ???? possibilities, but never found anything that really grabbed me. I let the idea sit until one day I ran across MOOD INDIGO.

The hardest part of the grid was the SW. I wanted to use BORA at 38-Across but Brad talked me out of it and ultimately we went with the grid that you see here.

BRAD: When Kevin and I decided to work together on something, he sent me a handful of theme ideas, and I zeroed in on this one pretty quickly, as being fully formed and ready to go without any tweaking to the theme entries. We only have a small handful of Norse gods who are household names (one maybe shading into crosswordese), and Kevin had settled on some common but lively relevant phrases.

The original grid design had an excess of 3-letter words at the center, but we were able to add a pair of white squares back in and even jazz up some of the original fill in the swath from the NW to the SE. We did a bit of haggling over the NE and SE, but it was constructive and amiable, and the final result represents a nice melding of our styles.

– puzzle by Kevin Christian and Bradley Wilber

This puzzle turned out somewhat smooth, IMO, given the constraints of making a 72-word themeless into a triple pangram.

Clues I was glad to see stay:

• "Shop class cutter" for BANDSAW, along with "Class cutter, say" for SLACKER to kick things off
• "Float like a butterfly" for HOVER
• "All shook up" for RATTLED

Clues I was sad to see go:

• "Not going anywhere" for FROZEN
• "Has nothing in common" for UNLIKE
• A set of "Boobs" for SCHMOS & OAFS
• "Festivous" for JOVIAL (because it makes folks think of Seinfeld — oh, Frank!)

Nice additions to the mix:

• "Country Rockers?" for QUAKES
• "Stock Exchange?" for LOWS
• "Results of phoning it in?" for FAXES

Not-so-nice subtractions from the mix:

• "Ground-breaking events" for QUAKES
• "Weather conditions" for LOWS
• "Paper transactions" for FAXES

In the clues that I developed for the latter three, I felt neither one of them needed a question mark, as they would have taken away from the trickery, since the question mark may instantly indicate to solvers that there IS obvious trickery going on.

Anyway ... till next time, Word Nerds!

– puzzle by David C. Duncan Dekker

Thanks to my husband for using the idiom "spill the beans" in a story he was relating to me and for planting a fun theme idea into my constructor's brain. There was a bumper crop of phrases that ended with a type of bean but not all of them could make the cut including MCHALES NAVY, YO SOY, and ROYAL JELLY. I submitted the puzzle in March 2014 and, after a few minor tweaks to the fill, the puzzle was accepted in August 2014.

My original puzzle made it obvious that there was a trick going on as I purposely left out the clue numbers and clues on the downward "spilled" (bean) portion of the theme entries. The other way I had considered was to number the down boxes and clue them as "---". However, I was very pleased to see that Will and Joel's editing gave the theme entries some clever misdirection by numbering and cluing both the across and down words and cluing the bean types — not as beans, but with completely different definitions.

I hope you enjoy the puzzle!

– puzzle by Tracy Gray

0. I think it would be ironic if somebody put in GAFFE for 1-Down.
1. I actually start all my algorithms at step zero, not STEPONE. (I love a good array-indexing joke.)
2. I initially thought of CHRISTIANSINGLES for 34-Across and was very disappointed when I realized it was too long. When CHRISTIANMINGLE came to me, it felt like a miracle.
3. Jim Brown and Jim Kelly were both big BLAXPLOITATION stars, but only one of them is the Pro Football Hall of Famer.
4. This is the first time IJSSEL has appeared in an NYT puzzle — is AFSLUITDIJK next?
5. I despise Crosswordese, except, apparently, when it's in French.
6. Is one who makes nonkosher meals a TREF CHEF?
7. I tried and failed to come up with a good Vint CERF/surf the Internet pun.
8. "Vegan wrap?" for FAUXFUR is, I think, a pretty good pun.
9. I'm not BICURIOUS, but I'm bicurious-curious.

– puzzle by Damon Gulczynski

JOEL: I take the train from New York City out to Will's house in Pleasantville each day, so I'm very familiar with the "Watch the Gap" warning on every platform. This theme sprung from the realization that the "The Gap" doubled as a store. For a while, though, I couldn't get a full symmetrical set, so this sat around in my half-baked ideas notebook. When I pitched it to Finn, he came back with some great feedback about my existing examples and some new ones we might try. SUBWAY FARE was one of his, and I particularly like how both words change meaning in that one. Really elegant. Anyway, Finn was a great collaborator — hopefully this is the first of many from us!

FINN: It was a ton of fun to collaborate with Joel on this puzzle. Once we placed the theme answers and decided on a grid design that looked like it would work, it was surprisingly easy to split the grid in two. We only had to pre-determine two squares (the B at the end of CASHCAB and the E at the start of ENGRAVE) in order to be able to fill each half without the other one being there, since every other connecting entry between the two sides was a themer. I filled the left half and Joel took the right, and then I clued the acrosses and he clued the downs. Editing each other's work was a great exercise in understanding the other's style. To constructors looking to change things up: I highly recommend collaborating with a friend!

– puzzle by Joel Fagliano and Finn Vigeland

I can't think of too much to say about this one. The concept grew out of a vague idea of using my initials and the word TEPEE to make a sort of self-referential theme, as others have done.

David Steinberg got there first, however, so I tried to come up with a new way to exploit words that could be spelled phonetically with letters.

One word I regret not being able to include is XQQQ (EXCUSE). XQQQ YOU and WELL XQQQ ME would have been fun entries. The first wouldn't work in this layout though, because it would've had to go at 36A, and it takes a stouter heart than I've got to try to fill an open, double-themed area around three adjacent Qs.

My original grid actually had WELL XQQQ ME at the top. As you can imagine, the patch around those Qs was a little compromised, but it wouldn't have been anything to make solvers gnash their teeth over. Maybe just some light grinding. But after realizing I could, and probably should, set up the themers symmetrically so that there'd be a discernible pattern to the replaced words, I backed down and went for EXCISE instead.

I hope you enjoyed the puzzle. It's always nice when you're not nauseated and altogether strung out in the days before publication. As this one left me just slightly queasy, and only so on Tuesday night, it feels like progress. I await the torches and pitchforks!

– puzzle by Timothy Polin

GARETH: I can't remember how Brad and I started putting together some themeless grids. I know we made a ton of stacks, and from those made several different themeless puzzles, of which this one has made the cut.

I don't remember that many specifics about this puzzle. I remember CABOTCOVE was something I included in a stack in a different grid, that Brad built his own stack around. I think most stacks were fairly collaborative in the end, but it's probably about 70% Brad that you're looking at in the final product.

Why? That's what I really came to say: It was an amazing and educating experience working with one of the masters of themeless construction! What really blew me away was the perfectionism — never leaving a bit of grid as "good enough". Brad is a tireless polisher! And a wonderful clue writer! It was a great privilege to be able to work with you, Brad! If this sounds fawning then so be it!

BRAD: When you're constructing a puzzle with a partner, "perfectionist" can come across as "control freak," so I'm exceedingly glad if Gareth had fun. Rather than be content partnering Doug Peterson, Byron Walden, and Kevin Christian and coping with a three-hour time difference, I went big: the time difference between Gareth and me is SIX hours.

I recall 1A and 15A being Gareth's starter stack (yes, possibly recycled from something we abandoned), and I was able to slip 17A in there. We actually added a white square to our original design to get the two 10-letter entries, and my favorite part of the finished product was Gareth's eventual crossing of 33D and 50A. His cluing aesthetic is mischievous but well-refined — it's on display in entries like 1D and 30D, not verbatim from the manuscript, but close.

Themeless construction DOES mean polishing to me; sometimes just one entry can sink you, and I don't like to put myself in the position of hoping something will skate through. Gareth brought lots of savvy and open-mindedness to the discussions we had on that score. I think you probably will be hearing from us again!

– puzzle by Gareth Bain and Brad Wilber

Jason Mueller: Hi, solvers, I'm proud to make my New York Times debut! About myself: I'm a University of Missouri alum (BS Physics and Mathematics; MA Economics) and former captain of the Mizzou quiz bowl team. I started constructing about three years ago and have previously had a Sunday puzzle in the LA Times.

I got the idea to make a puzzle with people who wear hats with the hats appearing on top of the people around the time of this year's Oscar ceremony. I knew it was a good idea but a difficult one to pull off (what with the hats stacked directly on the main theme entries), so I asked Jeff to help and he came through, helping with choosing the theme entries, doing much of the heavy work with the fill, and polishing my draft of the clues.

We originally tried to fit a pillbox on Jackie Kennedy in the middle of the grid, but when that wouldn't fill cleanly, went for a kepi on Charles de Gaulle. Our original submission had LNG in the fill, so we came up with a revised version (but had to go to 142 words to make the fill clean). I noticed that Will and Joel changed MAA and SAT to MAO and SOT, which is a fine change.

– puzzle by Jason Mueller and Jeff Chen

I can't think of much to say about this interlocking SS puzzle, so I'll relate a Short Story. When I started constructing puzzles in early 2012 I was quite inspired by Will Shortz and the crossword community and I went a bit overboard. Every spare minute of my day was spent working on puzzles and I cut back from sleeping eight hours a night to only six. I was submitting two puzzles a week, most of them horrible, and often I forgot to eat !

My wife Liz noticed I had lost a few pounds and thought I had cancer. She made me get an MRI in July 2012 which indeed showed a tiny cancer on my kidney. It was a bad cell type that would have killed me in a few years, but way too small to cause weight loss — the doctors said eating and sleeping less must have been the reason I lost the weight.

The tumor was removed easily and there is no sign of it three years later, so I don't think it's too much of a stretch to credit Will Shortz and the entire crossword community (and my wife of course!) with helping to save my life. Thank you!

– puzzle by Bruce Haight

This is my 23^rd NYT puzzle dating back to May of 1992. Eugene Maleska preferred quips and so did I. Will Shortz liked them better in his early years — now not so much. Today he prefers word play. I have tried to adapt.

I call this puzzle "Fantasy Football." I had a lot of fun with the theme. Here are some ideas I didn't use:

• Chaperone? — Pass protection
• Spicy pekoe? — Kicking tea
• Like some crusts? — Offsides
• Play cuer? — Lineman
• Raise, as a skirt? — Hike
• Deodorant product? — Right Guard

When I submitted this puzzle last year I was doubtful of its acceptance. I had tried a similar concept a couple of years ago regarding baseball:

• Kamikaze mission? — Sacrifice fly
• Pre-dinner phenomena — Plate appearance
• Genesis? — Fall classic
• Flashlight bulb? — Battery mate
• Janus — Double header
• Purposeful stroll — Intentional walk

For my trouble I received a polite rejection. Shortz is so nice about that. How can you possibly be upset?

Shortz accepted this puzzle but was not pleased with the construction in the lower left corner because it included: The ____ closed (BAR IS). He improved on that, changed a few clues as he is wont to do and the final result is what you see. The release date was timed for the opening of the 2015 NFL football season; a nice touch. Hope you liked it.

– puzzle by Michael S. Maurer

The original version of this one had BALTO TO TOTO TOME at 17-Across. That would've led to the tighter clue "One volume of the Encyclopedia of Movie Dogs?". Unfortunately, Will thought Balto was too obscure in his own right (as the hero of the original Iditarod), let alone as the star of the 1995 animated film "Balto".

That film was getting heavy rotation in the Collins VCR back in the day, as in the late ‘90s our four preteen girls were deep into a) dogs, and b) animated movies. About that time our family was passing through Cleveland on our way home from a family reunion. We stopped at the Natural History Museum. Imagine our surprise when we turned a corner and stumbled upon the real Balto, stuffed and standing in a plexiglass box. Our youngest daughter flipped out. Why a famous sled dog from Alaska ended up in Cleveland is a mystery to me. There's also a Balto statue in Central Park in New York. Another mystery to me.

If you were really to make one volume of an encyclopedia of Movie Pets and Sidekicks from Tonto to Toto, I think you'd have a hard time filling an index card let alone a tome. Therein lies the humor, I guess.

This puzzle was finally accepted last February. After a second and third revision (both involving TONTO for BALTO), it was decided to revert back to the second version. The third version had fewer three-letter entries, but overall the fill wasn't as good.

– puzzle by Peter A. Collins

I put this puzzle together during the height of the triple-stack center craze of the early 2010's, when some of my favorite constructors were producing gorgeous examples of this type of grid. Basically, I wanted a challenge and a slick way to accomodate a double-Q, 12-letter seed entry.

Other than some less-than-perfect short stuff I'd like back (sigh), one entry I fell out of love with in this grid is INTERNET ECONOMY. I'd been trying to push more "business stuff" in the grid for a while, feeling that it was a major section of the newspaper that's too often ignored in puzzles. I didn't properly account for the fact that it's often the most boring section, too. This phrase feels a little shaky and doesn't sparkle enough for the amount of real estate it occupies. A bit of a miscalculation in my opinion.

That being said, it's not a terrible entry, and I think there's some fun stuff in here. I particularly like the musical vibe throughout — I was a classical pianist in a prior life. Hope you all enjoy. Happy Friday!

– puzzle by James Mulhern

Like most Sundays I've made, this puzzle started as two ideas that merged together. I really liked the idea of having the same squares serve as quotation marks and ditto marks, but I thought it needed something else to tie it together. The "something else" came along when my professor Ryan Bennett mentioned the adjacent pairs of double letters in "bookkeeper" as an aside in an intro linguistics class.

At first I considered having the theme entries be types of titles that require quotation marks rather than underlining — e.g., the set of themers could include a poem, a song, a speech, a book chapter, an episode of a TV show, and a short story. I ended up picking the quotation approach instead because quotations seemed more fun than titles.

I've been experimenting lately with getting the word count down on Sundays. I still can't decide if I prefer low-word-count grids with more fill that is interesting but also more fill that is questionable, or if I prefer very clean but not as interesting 140-worders. I'll probably settle somewhere between the two extremes.

– puzzle by Tom McCoy