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Mary Lou Guizzo and Jeff Chen win the "first to include KETANJI BROWN JACKSON's full name" race. The new Justice was sworn in on September 30. The Andy Borowitz headline in The New Yorker was Ketanji Brown Jackson Bravely Infiltrates Shadowy Alt-Right Group.

We have yet another crossword co-constructed by Mr. Chen. I presumed he made so many with partners because he was too lazy to fill the whole grid himself, but it turns out Jeff genuinely loves team-constructing, both with established constructors like Mary Lou and with newbies.

In the NYT alone, Jeff has puzzles with a record 51 collaborators. His 92 crosswords trails only the great Nancy Salomon, who paved the way for so many new constructors, including Wordplay queen Deb Amlen. Other familiar top collaborators include Andrea Carla Michaels, Erik Agard, Brad Wilber, and Doug Peterson — all respected practitioners of the art. Some constructors like Erik, Brad, and David Steinberg are also editors. You could argue that every puzzle they publish on their respective venues is a collaboration too.

Building puzzles with friends is fun, but so is solving with friends. If you're a competitive solver, you might barely remember struggling through a mid-week puzzle, bouncing ideas off someone you love, and cheering together when a tough answer breaks through, but it's a joyful activity. I don't have real data, but I suspect most solvers work with others. Try it yourself if you're used to struggling on your own. Or even if not.

– puzzle by Mary Lou Guizzo and Jeff Chen

Jim here, sitting in for Jeff Chen, who is trying to figure out whether NENE and ISIS are reduplicative or just duplicative.

The jokes in this puzzle, in case you've led a sheltered life, are called Tom Swifties. You don't need to know that, but if you find them amusing, you can now search for lots more. "I can't remember what I was supposed to buy here at the store," said Tom listlessly. And so on. A Tom Swifty crossword relies on the cleverness of the answers, and these are all good. I appreciate that two of the four end, not with simple adverbs, but with phrases. IN VERY POOR TASTE is tasty. FRANKLY INCENSED is hilarious.

LMFAO is clued delicately as "Electronic dance music duo," but we all know it stands for Laughing My Ass Off. Or something similar. Crosswords, at least at the NYT, has always danced close to the edge between titillation and offense, and that edge changes over time as culture changes. Innovative words creep in, sex references are more common, but it's not just an expansion of acceptability. As sensibilities adapt, we become squeamish about certain words that used to feel fine. (Anyone who watches the news knows that describing this as "woke" can praise or insult.) Why is it ok to see IDI AMIN in a crossword but not HITLER? It's complicated. Words like CANCER are avoided even though there's an anodyne astronomy meaning. Let's not talk about the baseball term BEANER.

Who gets to decide if an answer word is amusing or offensive? That would be the editor, and this is a game no editor can win. Will Shortz knows he can't please everyone, so he and his team try to thread the needle as best they can.

Indie puzzles can be instructive counterexamples, often finding humor by pushing traditional taste boundaries while striving to be more culturally expansive. From the perspective of mainstream publications, they provide a helpful laboratory for how their own puzzles might evolve.

There sure have been a lot of IAMB-related clues recently, I think. (Therefore, iamb?)

– puzzle by Ryan Patrick Smith

Jim here, sitting in for Jeff Chen, who is taking swimming lessons at THE Y.

There are so many ways Thursday constructors can twist the standard rules. Here are some popular violations:

1. Rebus entries (more than one letter in a box)
2. Answers entered backward*
3. Writing outside the grid
4. Writing inside blocks* (black squares)

1 and 2 are well supported whether you solve electronically or on paper. No. 3 doesn't work well in an app, but paper solvers have no problem. No. 4 is unique in that, no matter how you solve, there's no good way to scribble inside already black squares. This makes people cranky. (We get mail.)

To overcome this solver reticence, you at least need a solid justification. Today's BLACK SHEEP works. Liz Gorski turned all her consecutive black squares into BARs. We've had a Solar ECLIPSE, BACK in Black, black JACK, black ICE, etc. Jeff Chen did one with black CATS.

Do you love these puzzles or consider this nonsense an unforgivable sin? Perhaps it's a case of MORAL AMBIGUITY.

Disclaimer: I was curious how often these various gimmicks occurred. The two starred links above are newly created for this post, and it's likely neither is complete. Let me know if one of your favorites is missing.

PS: What are the answers that hide LAMB, assuming you don't want it at either the beginning or end of the word? Here are the ones we know of. No RegEx required.

– puzzle by Rebecca Goldstein

Jim here, sitting in for Jeff Chen, who is still telling his often-repeated golf story.

I know, I know, you're disappointed Jeff's not available, and you're afraid I might bring up the dreaded RegEx. Fear not! Today, we talk Python. If you know a little bit about programming, I have a recipe for how you can find words that fit today's theme yourself at the end of this post. If not, we can still discuss technology in crosswords.

Everyone suspects that computers are somehow involved in construction. That might feel like cheating. There were undoubtedly some master craftsmen and women who created impressive grids before personal computers were available, but trust me, the overall quality of fill now is way better than it was 20 years ago. Still, we don't want our puzzles to feel computer-generated.

They don't because computers, at least today, can only take construction so far. Machines can quickly find many alternatives for your fill or, just as important, quickly determine if a corner is likely unfillable, but many iterations informed by a human's artistic sense are needed to create a puzzle worthy of publication. It's common for constructors to spend months working on an idea that might never work out.

Computers help in other ways too. If you're the thousandth person to include EMU or OREO in a grid, you can search the web for an interesting tidbit to include in a clue. If your theme is words that include some peculiar property, maybe all the letters are in reverse alphabetical order, you can find lists of such words. And if you want to find words with no vowels other than E or E is the only vowel, you can have your neighbor's kid write a Python script or a RegEx query after he mows your lawn.

Someday there will be a successful Crossword Turing Test where it will be impossible to tell if a new puzzle had any human intervention. Computers can already solve puzzles as quickly as all but the fastest humans. I hope they feel the same joy I do when I complete a grid.

Here are the promised programming steps:

1. Crank up your Python environment. (Here's a good free one.)
2. Copy and paste script #3 from our Python Samples page.
3. Download the latest XWord Info word list (requires an Angel account) and copy it into the same folder as your Python program.

Running that program returns many results, including all of today's themers, but most are boring: ONLY TIME WILL TELL and CAST YOUR MIND BACK are just phrases. LETT HERE CORD SHOW is better, but "show" is a full word. TWOD RINK MINI MUMS is better. There isn't a lot, and Mr. Seigel found an impressive set.

– puzzle by Simeon Seigel