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CARYN: My original idea for this puzzle was to put a spin on iconic lines spoken by fairytale princesses. For example, [Wistful words from Snow White as she awaited her Shutterfly photos]: SOMEDAY MY PRINTS WILL COME. While this plan quickly hit a roadblock, it led me to the idea of homophones which featured the NCE/NTS ending pattern.

While my first puzzle submission was rejected by the Times, the editor's feedback was very encouraging. It was at this point that I reached out to Matthew Stock who had been such a supportive mentor to me on my past puzzle endeavors. Matthew loved the theme idea and I was thrilled to tag team with him on today's puzzle. I hope you enjoy!

MATTHEW: It was a pleasure to work with Caryn on this puzzle! If you're a new constructor and want to talk shop and/or collaborate, feel free to contact me via Twitter (@1MatthewStock) or my website, happylittlepuzzles.com.

Happy Sunday! We're so excited to be sharing our first co-byline in the NYT Magazine. The initial idea for this theme came to Matthew almost three years ago, and we enjoyed taking our time getting the puzzle into its final form.

A good chunk of the work came during a long Zoom session last summer, where we decided at the last minute to stretch the first and last theme entries to 21 letters each. This upped our idea to a whopping 128 theme squares — every down entry in the puzzle except for two (45-Down and 79-Down) crosses at least one themer! — but we think these entries were worth the extra constraint. We found that opening up those northwest and southeast corners and allowing for longer down entries actually made the fill process easier.

We hope you enjoy the puzzle and find the hidden meta answer! If this inspires you to watch a movie this week, Matthew recommends Taika Waititi's Hunt for the Wilderpeople (2016) and Finn recommends, in the spirit of Pride, And Then We Danced (2019).

This was the second themeless I ever made, and it was a bit of a lightning-in-a-bottle moment for me as a constructor who was still very new to the puzzle scene at the time. Compared to other themelesses I made in early 2020, this one has much more solid short fill (probably wouldn't jump to use RFK or EBOLA today, but they're both very real things), and the cluing is noticeably more interesting, with a surprising number of my clues making it through the editing progress. 5-Across, 52-Across, and 1-Down are some of my favorites!

It's also the only one of my early themelesses that I made with a center stair stack layout — the NYT team said they enjoyed the SETTERS / STREETS anagram "mini theme" in the middle, which was fun and also completely unintentional. Nowadays, I'd probably aim for a grid design with more than 11 entries of 8+ letters. In the spirit of the central seed, though, I think this one just has a lot of good vibes — hope it made for a happy solve! I'm always so excited to share puzzles that I make, and I'm really thankful that the Times chose to run this one, especially given how many phenomenal themelesses are being constructed and submitted these days (including tomorrow's gem by two of my favorite constructors!).

If you enjoyed solving this one and want to find more of my stuff, or if you're new to themeless constructing/puzzle making in general and want to connect, hop over to Twitter or my blog and say hi!

SID: This puzzle owes its existence to a grid design technique I associate most strongly with Robyn Weintraub. Robyn often places her double and triple stacks just inward from the edge of the grid, using small "fingers" of black squares to partition the outermost rows and columns into three segments each instead of two. Short entries at the border of a grid are usually easier to wrangle than long ones, so this strategy offers more flexibility to the constructor, and consequently, more interesting fill to the solver. Here, Matthew and I extended the technique by creating domino-shaped "fingers" all around the perimeter and placing triple stacks in each quadrant. We hope the result makes for a pleasant and smooth solving experience.

It was fun to get GENERATION ALPHA into this grid. I enjoy including entries that represent the youngest segment of our solving audience, like Matthew's students. It's also exciting to debut 3-Down, a not-so-subtle homage to the brilliant crossword podcast Fill Me In, hosted by puzzle luminaries Brian Cimmet and Ryan Hecht. (Sorry it took so long, guys! I'd been trying to get you in at 3-Across all this time.)

Lastly: I recently started editing the new crossword feature for The Juggernaut, a digital publication focused on stories relevant to the worldwide South Asian diaspora. Our goal is to publish puzzles with themes, entries, and clues that highlight South Asian culture, emphasizing cultural elements rarely seen in other crossword venues. If you liked seeing MAHARISHI in this Times crossword and want to see more brown representation, the Juggernaut puzzles are for you! And if you're interested in constructing a puzzle for The Juggernaut, please get in touch — we're committed to publishing newer constructors, especially folks with South Asian cultural backgrounds.

MATTHEW: Thrilled to share this funky puzzle with y'all! I haven't worked much with lower-word-count themeless grids (almost all the themeless constructors whose work I admire most live in 70-to-72-Wordville, and I spend a lot of time emulating them), but working on this inventive 64-worder with Sid was a treat. I'd like to think we've each improved our cluing chops since dropping this one in the mail last year, so I'm extra thankful to the Times team for coming through with some great edits, including 23-Across, 48-Across, and 40-Down. Happy solving!

So excited to bring you all a banger-filled 21x21 on 2/21/21! I made this puzzle this past August, and it was accepted in mid-December. The idea for the theme started with the clue-answer pair at 24-Across. From there, I wanted to make sure that I really stuck the landing on each themer — options like [Sand bars?] for MARGARITAVILLE or [Biker bars?] for THE CHAIN didn't feel like they worked quite well enough — and I ended up putting the idea on the back burner a few times before eventually rounding out the set with WE ARE THE CHAMPIONS. Once I realized that I could lay out the grid with the 17s and 15s interlocking, I was off to the races. My favorite clues of mine that made the cut are 74-Across and 110-Across, and the editing team delivered across the board — my favorites additions of theirs are 36-Across and 12-Down.

As is the case with almost every puzzle I'm proud of, I'm so thankful here for my friends Brooke Husic and Sid Sivakumar, whose feedback on early versions of this theme and grid were truly invaluable. I wholeheartedly recommend solving every puzzle that either of them ever makes, starting here and here. (If you're not all puzzled out by now, my stuff's over here.)

Lastly, I've learned a lot since making this puzzle in August, and if I were remaking it today, I would only consider theme sets with a wider variety of diversity among the ‘featured' artists. Our community has important work to do in diversity in inclusion, not only in puzzle content but also in terms of constructors (and editors). If you're a constructor from an underrepresented background in crosswords and want any pointers/feedback/other help as you make your way into puzzles (21x or otherwise), please don't hesitate to reach out.

Very surprised and excited to be back in the Times so soon! This puzzle was my first NYTXW acceptance, which came in March 2020. I love basketball and movies, so it was really fun for me to hit on a theme that combined the two. I'm happy to see the finished product out in the world!

When narrowing down a consistent set of themers, I decided to rule out any nonplural team name (Magic, Thunder, etc.) so that the clues could all be smoothly worded with a singular-player-focused play on words. I also enjoyed the added constraint of the "The ___ ___" pattern, which ruled out some options I had seen before, like "Raging Bull." If I were making this puzzle today, I'd definitely have wanted to feature at least one W.N.B.A. team in the mix as well, though I'm still pleased with how this early constructing effort turned out.

Many, many thanks go to Sid Sivakumar, who helped me lay out the lower word count grid with the two schnazzy 13s running through all three themers, and to the editing team for their thoughtful clue changes throughout (16-Across, 42-Across and 46-Down are my favorite additions of theirs). Hope you enjoyed!

If you're interested in making puzzles and want help getting started (or you're a crossword veteran who wants help getting connected with mentees), please get in touch! You can find me on Twitter (@1Matthew Stock) or on my blog.