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This crossword was submitted 53 weeks before its publication and became my third Times themeless. The clue that I submitted for 29A was [Source of support]. As you can see, Will added a word to that. If I can count that one, then, as unchanged, then one of twelve of my clues to long answers survived the edit. The point (to new constructors, perhaps) is that three years into this new hobby, I still couldn't write clues worth a darn. Yet, it's my favorite part of the game. It is also important to note that Will's job as editor is to make puzzles better, and he does an amazing job of this!

By this time, I'd begun to realize that the keys to gaining an acceptance with a themeless puzzle were (a) having a couple of backbone ILSAs (in-the-language stand-alones) functioning pretty much the same as theme answers and (b) getting as many ILSAs as possible into the rest of the puzzle. I began with LEADER BOARD and TOURING PROS, neither of which had been in a puzzle before, according to my research. By my count, there are 15 ILSAs in this puzzle.

– puzzle by Victor Fleming

This was my first attempt at what is now known as a "vowel run," a dismissive phrase I dislike. I like to think of them as a fun tone-poem. It's really fun to say HACK, HECK, HICK, HOCK, HUCK. Plus it's nigh impossible to get them in the right order while having the A match the U, the E match the O and the I to be odd-numbered, fun and straight across the middle.

And despite the fact I had made the Gilligan's Island puzzle with five themes (Tu 9/21/2004) I felt ill-equipped to construct this, thus my first collaboration! I had met Michael Blake at a constructors lunch I had organized after having met some constructors at Martin Herbach's lovely Los Gatos home the year before. Michael came as someone else's guest and we hit it off and became friends. He is very technically coordinated and offered to help lay out the grid as a favor. I felt I could not have done it without him and wanted to share credit/money which he demurred on.

We would often help each other with feedback and even a theme answer here and there but would submit as individuals. When he helped me again on PACK PECK PICK POCK PUCK (Mon 8/25/2008) I insisted we share everything. Although he felt it was my idea, fill, etc. I could NOT at that time, Luddite that I was, have ever figured out how to lay out the five themed answers. We've had at least a half dozen since then. He forced me to learn to use a computer so I could be more independent. The iron is, I enjoyed him so much that now when we collaborate, we merge our sensibilities which are quite different, and you can not parse out who did what.

I believe out of 40 published NYT puzzles (as of my writing this in November 2013) they have been almost evenly split between solos and collaborations.

– puzzle by Andrea Carla Michaels