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Hello to all the lovely people of Crossworld from Singapore! It's been a dream of mine to have one of my puzzles published in The New York Times, and I'm overjoyed that, after countless rejections, it's finally become a reality!

I've been a fan of crosswords for about three years now, having first been exposed to them from the Minis all my friends were playing in class. From there, I started cutting my teeth on the full-size puzzles from the archives released every week, and eventually decided to get a subscription to access the daily crosswords. Before long, I began creating puzzles myself, a process I found strangely therapeutic and (not so strangely) time-consuming.

While I knew the direction I wanted to take this puzzle's theme fairly early on, getting a workable grid with acceptable fill was one of the most tedious things I've ever done. I'm relatively happy with the final result, having been able to include some decent bonus long entries, but at the cost of a glut of tired, short fill. I'm glad that some of my clues that I liked were kept mostly intact (specifically 16A and 29D). I was also sad to see some go: [Tot lot?] at 28A and [Many a bathroom production] at 14D.

I'm forever indebted to the kind souls on the Crosscord server who tolerated my queries regarding the legitimacy of more "peculiar" words that appeared as fill options, and for kindly agreeing to provide test solves with amazing feedback. I'd also like to thank the Times puzzle editing team for their patient guidance throughout all the submission and editing back-and-forth.

– puzzle by Jiahe Men

Simeon: On more than one occasion, I've had a puzzle all set to submit to The Times, only to have an eerily similar puzzle show up in print just as I was about to hit send. I was still licking my wounds from having been scooped yet again by this Adam Wagner fellow when Adam contacted me out of the blue.

Adam has produced and collaborated on so many of my top wish-I'd-thought-of-that puzzles, so I was thrilled to meet him and work with him. We used the computer to narrow the list of themers to a mere 40,000 candidates (!), but here are some cool human-powered finds that didn't make it into the grid:

• FUR + THERMOSTATS + UNSET = [To the greatest distance / Around dusk]
• THEBES + TOFU SKIN + SHIP = [Our finest members / Family ties]
• DO IN + GROUNDSWELLS + AID = [Seeing patients / Finely delivered]

Adam: I had a lot of fun working with Sim to figure out clever ways of manipulating our data set to get the good examples to rise to the top. One strategy was to score each hit by how different it was from other hits. That way, trivial examples like NON / ELECTRIC MOTOR / ING => NONELECTRIC / MOTORING would be down-scored, because NON and ING appear in thousands of other hits.

True to form, we had a number of tricky ideas for cluing the themers. My favorite: cluing SOLI / STENCHES / STABLES = SO LISTEN / CHESS TABLES with [Lead-in to bad] [News Pieces] [Covered in pieces]. So you'd have to reparse the clues (Lead-in to bad news / Pieces covered in pieces), in addition to the answers — AND the central clue would be natural-sounding (i.e. News Pieces)! Despite the precedent, the editors didn't bite — alas!

One last Sim find I have to mention:

• GOO / SEWING NEEDLES / SLY → GOOSE WING / NEEDLESSLY!

As I've said about many Sim stunners before: what a find!

– puzzle by Adam Wagner and Simeon Seigel

As we mention in our Wordplay notes, this puzzle is dedicated to our beloved neighbor, Isa. Isa was a member of many communities in the Seattle area, and one organization close to their heart was the Camano Animal Shelter Association. Please check it out if you have time.

Separately, because XWI is the go-to website for crossword stats, here are some of ours:

• We brainstormed the seed of this idea on April 20, 2025 while sitting at lunch. Kevin told Zhou he was kicking around this theme, and Zhou was hooked immediately. Usually Zhou comes up with the ideas, so this is the rare occasion you can direct your ire toward Kevin.

• We submitted the completed puzzle to the Times a month later, on May 18th. It was the 65th puzzle anyone in our family has submitted to some major outlet. (We are now about to submit our 100th.) 36 of these first 65 puzzles have been published. Approximately half of the remainder are objectively bad; the other half got unlucky or morphed into different ideas.

• It was accepted a mere 33 days later, well under our average acceptance time of 68 days for NYT puzzles.

• Are we getting better at understanding what editors want? Up to and including this puzzle, we had a 22% acceptance rate from the Times. Since this puzzle was accepted, we are batting 19%.

• The best puzzle we think we've ever created is currently awaiting review from the NYT team. Because it is so good, we give it a whopping 25% chance of acceptance😊.

– puzzle by Kevin Curry and Zhou Zhang

Hey everyone!

This is my fourth daily crossword for the Times, but first on a palindromic date! Funnily enough, I constructed this puzzle before starting my freshman year at San Diego State University, and now it's appearing while I'm back home in Seattle during my summer break. I'm looking forward to seeing where my pre-med journey takes me over the next few years, to med school and beyond. This puzzle is dedicated to the rise of Polymarket and degenerate gambling - I would not think of the revealer otherwise.

I've been on the grind with 15x grids for a while. Outside of constructing daily crosswords, I've also been making Midi puzzles for NYT since March 2026. So far, I have five Midis published, with at least ten more getting published throughout 2026. I am incredibly grateful to Ian Livengood for approaching me for the opportunity and platform to contribute regularly. I think I am the youngest constructor in the Midi roster, for which I am very blessed!

A few weeks ago, I was fortunate enough to visit The Times building in person and tour the Games department and the Times museum. It was an unforgettable experience to see where so many of the puzzles I grew up solving come to life. A huge thank-you to Ian Livengood for helping arrange the visit and to Wordplay writer Isaac Aronow for taking the time to show me around and share his unique insights about the Times and the crossworld!

Crosswords have opened doors that I never imagined. My first puzzle came out on December 8 2023 in Andrews McMeel Universal. And now, one of the most exciting developments is that I'll be joining Universal this July as an Associate Crossword Editor. I'm thrilled to become more involved in the editorial side of puzzles and to work with constructors and submissions. It's a role I certainly never envisioned for myself when I was making my first grids just a few years ago, and I'm incredibly thankful to editor David Steinberg and everyone else who has supported me along the way.

If you're interested in collaborating on a puzzle, feel free to reach out to me via discord @quackerdeezles or by email tarunlive@live.com. Glhf!

– puzzle by Tarun Krishnamurthy