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The quad stack crossword that you see here is unique in my history of constructions in this genre, because of the relative speed with which it came together. The saga started with receipt of a rejection from Will of a different puzzle, due to one particular spanning 15 that he did not particularly like. Once I realized that the earlier submission was not salvageable, I set forth to create a different one with the same general architecture.

After fixing a cup of coffee and staring at a blank wall for half an hour, I suddenly remembered that the great Merl Reagle had published a triple stack 15x15 in Dell Champion Crosswords, with the creative but easier to handle DAYTON TENNESSEE (famous for the Scopes "Monkey Trial"). I e-mailed Merl that I was going to "steal" his entry if he was OK with it, and he shot back "Knock yourself out!"

Long story short. About 7 hours later, I had a half-decent grid, and after a further 8 hours, it was sufficiently polished that I felt it could be sent to Will first thing in the morning. Let me emphasize that quads typically take me several weeks to build, involving much trial and error, and there are many that go nowhere for months. Anyhow, when Will got back to me, he basically liked it but challenged me to remove one of the long down words (LISSOMENESS) and several of the short words. Several more hours of work (plus two cheater squares) later, I had the final version which I hope you'll agree raised the overall quality another notch or two.

Ending on a bittersweet note, I reminded Merl of his "stolen" entry in the last phone conversation we had, about a week before his tragic death. With his trademark chuckle, he said that he was looking forward to it, and then we moved to a more technical discussion of how to create stacks. I am so sorry that Merl never had a chance to see the final product.

– puzzle by Martin Ashwood-Smith

This one began as an abstraction in need of a theme. My original, vague notion was using [individual blocks as stand-ins for letters] in some way. From there it was a matter of working backwards towards a fitting revealer. Going off a list of BLOCK phrases, I was lucky enough to find one receptive to playful reinterpretation.

Because it was the only bit of theme material, the 15-letter revealer had to go across the middle. For the sake of lucidity, it also felt best if the four ER blocks were totally isolated in all eight directions. These two constraints imposed a rigid block pattern on the grid, which, in its own way, was strangely comforting.

Oftentimes, when there are a myriad of options, it's easy (for me, at least) to get bogged down and expend way too much effort desultorily, without a set plan or course of action. Indecision, thy name is Tim. But when you're working within an inflexible structure, with an embedded central entry crossing multiple themers, you're forced to overcome problems, rather than discarding grid/fill #2836 and starting over again, convinced that the perfect setup is just over the next hill. It's the obsessive, insomniac crossword fan's equivalent of a straitjacket and a padded cell. Restraints which, judging from the comments, some solvers wish I were permanently kept in. Someday!

– puzzle by Timothy Polin

This may be the most lightly edited puzzle I've had in the Times, so direct all complaints and recriminations to me.

The most interesting edit was for 6-Down. When I was originally cluing the puzzle (only a few months back), I checked to see how the Times styled said Angelina. She was generally just "Ms. Jolie," especially in her professional capacities. So my original clue was [Surname of six Hollywood scions]. But in the run up to her latest film, there was a long feature in the Times where she was now styled as Ms. Jolie Pitt. I shot Will and Joel an e-mail suggesting a change to the clue might be in order. Had I waited until after the film's release, I might have suggested ["By the Sea" bombmaker], but I'm guessing that wouldn't fly anyway.

The other major change was effected by the addition of a single word in the clue for 21-Across (JOHN MCENROE). That word is "American". Editorial Fairness 1, Constructor Mischief 0. (Oh well, there's always 1-A, 4-D, 17-A, 28-D, ...)

I'm guessing the most polarizing entry will be 5-Down (MY HUMPS). If it's not your dish of tea, there's always BRAHMS. The song itself is so annoying and insipid, but getting it and its deadpan clue into the Times ranks as one of my most cherished cruciverbal achievements.

– puzzle by Byron Walden

TRACY: Two years ago, Mike Black and I collaborated on this concept but received a rejection due to inconsistencies with the theme. Mike's career was really taking off so he encouraged me to give it another try with a new constructor. The puzzle lay idle until I teamed up with Andrea this past April.

Our first version received a "we're interested" from Will and Joel but they wanted us to rework the puzzle and change our theme entries to include either two or three band names, not a mix of both, for consistency and elegance. Since most of our three band name entries were too long (THE CARS RUSH ONE DIRECTION (23)), we concentrated on crunching together two band names, striving for theme entries with the best "surface sense." I was sorry to have to drop THE POLICE QUIET RIOT from our approved theme set since we couldn't find another (18) for symmetry, and my own personal favorite, STRAY CATS CROWDED HOUSE, didn't make the cut.

One of the memorable moments during the construction process was writing to and getting a response from "The Pretenders" band asking for a definitive answer on whether or not their name included "the" or not. Their response: "The answer is there is no definitive answer! It is both and either!"

Also, working with Andrea was a hoot! Her quick wit and sense of humor, combined with her "naming" talent, came through loud and clear from San Fran to Baltimore in the multitude of emails we exchanged. Thanks, Andrea — so glad we BANDED TOGETHER!

ACME: When Tracy approached me to see if I would collaborate on her fun and bouncy Sunday idea, I couldn't have been more delighted, because I love thinking about themes and am less fond of creating the actual grid! Although we'd never met in person, we seemed to be on the same page as to what needed doing. My favorite discarded entry was a bit darker, i.e. "STRAY CATS POISON TOTO."

I mostly create Mondays, though I have had three or four Sundays with new papa Patrick Blindauer. This is my first (accepted) Sunday-sized collaboration with a woman — I asked Will if that was a first. (It's not, there have been five or six in the past, all involving the quiet, often-unsung heroine Nancy Salomon … though it's been almost ten years since it's been two gals on a Sunday).

There must have been 500 emails back and forth on this puzzle and I'm thrilled it's seeing the light of day! And as Dick Clark might say, I hope you find that it has a nice beat that you can dance to!

– puzzle by Tracy Gray and Andrea Carla Michaels

I'm proud of the trick in this one, but I think I'm even prouder of the fill. I tried very hard to have very little crosswordese — did I succeed? You be the judge =) I originally submitted this puzzle with no partial phrases. Will since changed the clue to ASA from "Botanist Gray" to "__ whole ..." Totally understandable.

I'm always fascinated by the unwritten rules of crossword making: not too many 3-letter words, nice looking patterns of black squares etc. In this case, I learned that even though 78-words is the limit for a daily puzzle, Shortz prefers not to run 78-ers on Thursdays.

So I got the word count down to 76, which was not an easy task! And I'm pleased how it turned out. I think the long themers are fun, and I'm glad LONGISLANDICEDTEA breaks up the letters between two words. RUSHDIE was a must-have for me, and I am so glad I was able to get that word to span two of the long themers.

Hope you enjoy it!

– puzzle by David Kwong

I always want to include vocabulary that allows solvers to reflect on the contexts in which these words arose, and hence on what they say about society at large (or just about my current interests). Today, we have the conceptual PANOPTICON watching over the rest of the puzzle at 1A. UNLADYLIKE is such a loaded and interesting word to me: I mean, what does it mean nowadays to act like a "well-bred woman?"

When I constructed the final version of this in Sep. 2014, there had been a downtown beautification project going on outside my apartment whose completion date was delayed by over a year. Consider the inclusion of NOISE LEVEL as my personal vendetta against the awful din of a Caterpillar struggling to re-park every morning at 6:50 am! No such feelings toward SETH MEYERS, whose Weekend Update with Amy Poehler I thought was the highlight of SNL for several seasons.

Other bits: 1D breaks my personal rule of not including dictators or generally horrible individuals, but the stories of what Haiti has had to endure are really unknown here despite our geographic proximity, and worth investigating. 2D might be clued anew re the Chinese e-commerce company. And I like how the vertical spanner at 3D (which I conceived of as the Alice Cooper song) somehow anticipates the feeling of 12D and 33A. The clue for 49D comes from memories of my childhood in Canada, where in social science every event we studied was interrupted by a portage or the making of the scrumptious-sounding* pemmican.

And with that, I turn to WONDERBRAS, whose brilliantly straightforward clue is not mine (it originally echoed IRAS, both being sources of "support"). Reading up on it, the campaign in question enraged many, and a billboard that came out of it caused its share of traffic mishaps. Meanwhile, it launched the Czech model Eva Herzigová, who claims the campaign to have been more "empower[ing]" than offensive, into stardom.

– puzzle by Andrew Zhou

This is not the first themeless puzzle I've had accepted, but it is the first one I began working on that was accepted. It started out as a completely different puzzle, but when I got to the final section (the southwest) I couldn't quite get it to work, and I got frustrated and set it aside. When I came back to it several months (and puzzles) later, I liked the part that didn't quite work — the EXWIFE/GAYICON/OZZFEST stack — better than anything else in the puzzle, so I started there, tore everything else down, and essentially made an entirely new puzzle.

My favorite answer in the grid is WIFFLEBALL, because I've never before seen it in a crossword puzzle and because I spent much of my adolescence playing Wiffle Ball Home Run Derby. (I always called I was Ken Griffey Jr., if you were wondering.)

My second favorite answer is BELLYLAUGH, because for years I've stared at Jenny McCarthy's book "Belly Laughs" on my bookshelf. I've never read it (I think it's my wife's … or it could be one of those random books that just ends up on your bookshelf somehow), so at least I got some use out of it in some way.

If I was making this puzzle today I probably wouldn't settle for INSTR, REPOT, OREN, MERLINS, and ARBORED all in the same puzzle (and all lumped so closely together). But I'm not making it today, so there's nothing I can do but have some General Tso's chicken, watch a CFL game, and call it night.

– puzzle by Damon Gulczynski

Several months ago, Will sent out an email of the NYT crossword inventory to Cruciverb-L, noting that there was a demand for non-rebus Thursday and Sunday puzzles. Coupled with having a few themed puzzles recently accepted at the newly launched BuzzFeed and Wall Street Journal crosswords, I figured it'd be worthwhile to broaden my submissions to The Times. Can't remember exactly where the germ of this idea started, but I recall the moment that I discovered EVERYBODYLIKESSARALEE had twenty-one letters was when I knew this one had a serious chance.

Having not attempted it in quite a long time, I found that cleanly filling a Sunday-sized grid can rival creating a traditional themeless. As XWord Info shows, the average word length is much higher than the early week puzzles and can be surprisingly close to the weekend's unthemed offerings. Plus, the risk of dupes increases with the number of entries.

Oh, and here's hoping this theme will be seen as silly and lighthearted, rather than grammatical pedantry! Happy solving everyone!

– puzzle by Peter Wentz

I was not very optimistic about this puzzle when I was constructing it, because I could not find a way to work DOOHICKEY or GIZMO into it. However, Will and Joel liked the seven theme entries and said they liked the way the words are "fun to say." I had this mental image of the two of them saying these theme entries back and forth to each other as part of the decision process, and that pretty much made my day!

I had options to get rid of some of the crosswordese (ALOE, EMU, IDA, etc.) but I wanted to stick to solid Monday vocab. It was not long ago that I was a Monday solver myself, and I was not at ALL irritated to run across the occasional overused entry or clue. My first grandson (Nolan) was born as I'm writing this — December 9 — the first thing they did when he popped out is clip a thingamajig on his whatchamacallit!

If you are a constructor and you feel like you are not getting enough of your clues accepted I have a suggestion for you: list more than one clue for the entries you really care about! The editors I have discussed that with like the idea, and I can't see any downside to it. Just put a slash/mark between them and try to pick options of varying difficulty. In this puzzle, I listed more than one clue for about half of the entries, and my "success" rate was higher on those than on the ones I only submitted one clue for. I listed two clues for MONA LISA — "Da Vinci masterpiece" and "Art subject with a famous smile" — the actual clue used was an "intriguing" blend of both those options!

By the way, those two odd clumps of blocks in the middle of the puzzle might look like cheater squares but they are actually subtle (Easter egg) grid art! The top one is a standard DOOHICKEY, and the bottom one is, of course, your classic GIZMO..... ;)

Hope you liked the puzzle!

– puzzle by Bruce Haight

This puzzle started more traditionally with theme entries GODSEND, BLESS THIS MESS, US AND THEM, EVERY TIME, and ONE LIFE TO LIVE with the revealer TINY TIM (no rebus). But I wanted to rebusize (is that a word?) the TIM in TINY TIM, 'cuz he's such a cute li'l guy! So that meant aiming this puzzle at a Wednesday or Thursday.

Will has run a one-square rebus on a Wednesday before, so I thought this might be a good candidate for that type of treatment. But that meant hiding the words better. It wasn't possible to span them across multiple words (thanks to BLESS) so it was a matter of finding interesting ways to hide my words within other words. I came up with a pretty good grid, but I wanted to add one more layer — the novella's title as the central grid-spanning themer. The result is what you see today.

A lot of theme material means some compromising fill. I built this puzzle two years ago when my threshold for gunk was lower. I wish I had taken the time to come up with something better, even after it was accepted.

– puzzle by Jim Peredo

For this puzzle, the seed was solving the straightforward entry SOCRATES in another puzzle and seeing it as SO/CRATES and wondering if other ancient Greek names had the same property. Then I came across HIPPO/CRATES and ARI/STOP/HANES. It took me a while to find DEMOS/THE/NES, and the two bonus entries were SAP/PHO and PIN/DAR, if solvers view them that way. GREEK and PLAYS also fit in nicely to include a tie-in to the theme.

This led to the NW and SE corners being wide open, with a lot of grunt work and different submitted versions going into finding the right fill for those areas. The only NW option I saw included MOPTOPS / MOSHED / TARPED / DEE DEE. I could not find TARPED in any dictionary, so I changed it to TOP COPS / TOSHES / CARPET / SEETHE. TOSHES is a plural name, but there are at least two famous TOSHES out there, so I figured I was good with that corner. The SE corner had SO many versions until the final one.

I hope that people enjoy the result. Happy puzzling!

– puzzle by Derek Bowman

MARY LOU:

When Jeff and I started kicking around ideas for a Christmas puzzle, we were shooting for a Friday, Dec. 25 date — themeless with a mini-theme. One of the first steps I took was to research previous holiday puzzles. You really should try this lovely one by Paula Gamache if you've not worked it already. Her puzzle inspired me to give a visual aspect to the puzzle, using the black squares to make candy cane shapes.

I ran the idea by Jeff and he quickly whipped out a grid skeleton. I noticed that both ST NICHOLAS and CANDY CANES could be worked into his grid and he noticed that X, M, A and S would fit into the candy canes' crooks. We went back and forth on the fill — took some time to get a clean grid! I do believe Jeff came up with the six entries unique to the NYT database — IT'S A KEEPER, KGB SPIES, MISEDUCATE, NO LOOK PASS, OPERA CAPE and TELENOVELA. I enjoyed fitting LA SCALA in with that OPERA CAPE!

We had several options for cluing CANDY CANES including the fact that Spangler makes 2.7 million a day! Jeff came up with "Small time crooks?" which I thought was clever. It is always a pleasure to work with him. And always a pleasure to get that "Yes!" email from Will and Joel — thanks for accepting and editing!

I hope you enjoyed this Christmas puzzle and that you and your family have a wonderful holiday.

– puzzle by Mary Lou Guizzo and Jeff Chen

DON:

What started me on this theme was ONION RINGS — I just happened to notice that the O's were described by RINGS. I thought if we simply write OO, one could literally say they are ONION RINGS. I started to think of other possibilities. DD came easily, DEAD ENDS. Enlisting the help of a co-constructor is very profitable in this situation. Zhouqin came up with some great ones, like AA: NCAA FINALS, NN: MINNESOTA TWINS.

We got too ambitious with the grid design. With nine theme answers, one needs to be very careful. We had too many short answers that were unacceptable. The puzzle was accepted for the theme, but we needed to clean it up. We decided the best route was to start over completely. It paid off well because in a reasonably short time we were able to construct a grid that was acceptable. This is another case where having a co-constructor is ideal, because starting over completely may seem overwhelming by oneself, but much easier with some assistance.

C.C.:

I love when Don's theme proposal clicks with me immediately! I had fun finding LEADOFF DOUBLE, NCAA FINALS, JAZZ DUET & WINDOW FRAME. The other few (MARRIED COUPLE, SHOPPING CENTER & MINNESOTA TWINS) are just there waiting for us.

Don designed both our grids. I still have difficulty making 140-worder (maximum word count) happen.

Thanks for the new title, Will and Joel!

– puzzle by Don Gagliardo and Zhouqin Burnikel