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While driving home one day, I heard on the radio news something like "This would affect France's chances of .....", and the rhyming phrase just jumped out at me. Home to the notepad, where "chances" quickly became DANCES. Then, it turns out that there are relatively few country names that are short and have comfortable rhymes that can make the pattern work.

Initially, I sent the puzzle in with GUAM'S PALMS (which appear on the Territory's flag and official seal), but Will rightly pointed out that those two words don't rhyme in everyone's pronunciation. I should have anticipated that. After all, I am someone who is routinely teased (by my children, of course) for my pronunciation in which "fire" and "wire" aren't exact rhymes, which always makes talking about "firewires" awkward. No problem: I liked CUBA'S TUBAS even better!

Of course, it is hard not to "fall in love" with certain answers or certain clues. In this case, while I didn't mind changing the theme answers, I did love some of my original clues. For CUBAS TUBAS: "Low blows at Guantanamo?" and for CHINAS MYNAHS: "Asian producers of counterfeit audio?" and for TOGOS LOGOS: "Items only seen on two Winter Olympians ever?" Careful editing has adjusted these clues to appropriate Tuesday puzzle level, but breaking up is hard to do.

– puzzle by Ruth Bloomfield Margolin

This puzzle dates back to January 2015. If memory serves, Matt Ginsberg had just sent out the final version of a crowdsourced word list that numerous other constructors and I had been working on, so I was excited to put it to the test! After receiving the word list, I sifted through it a bit to see which entries really stood out to me. One of the tricky things about crowdsourcing anything, especially something as subjective as a word list, is that everyone has slightly different tastes. So it took me a while to find three highly scored entries for the bottom left stack that I genuinely liked.

Once I had the bottom left in place, I plunked down WOW JUST WOW and moved on to the upper right. I can't say I was quite as happy with the upper right—the "never heard of it outside of crosswords" EILAT bothered me—but I was still pleased to work in a handful of entries I thought were interesting. My next task was to find a 15-letter entry for the center slot to tie everything together. I was thrilled to discover that HOT STONE MASSAGE fit nicely, and everything else fell into place from there.

I hope you enjoy the puzzle! In the meantime, I'll be busy working on my word list. . . .

– puzzle by David Steinberg

From a constructing standpoint, I like this puzzle quite a bit. Even with its chunky corners and low word count, the puzzle (by my count) only has 3 objectively "bad" entries: ANTA (a relatively obscure org. at best), AHS (plural sounds/utterances = blech), and TIRO (second banana to Cicero = not famous enough IMO). I'm sure the more pessimistic among us might argue for COHERER's or TYNE's inclusion in that list, but those entries strike me as more neutral.

...which brings me to the aspect I dislike most about this puzzle: all of the neutral answers. As a solver, I'm not certain that I would like struggling with a Saturday NYT only to uncover swaths of ho-hum. Does the challenge of the wide-open grid make up for this? Will the few interesting long entries (as always, your mileage may vary, but I'm including STREET SMART [probably my fave clue in the whole puzzle...an-n-nd...my original clue stayed...hooray!], SHOPLIFT, SCABBARD, SHALL WE, and MEGATRON in this category) and some tough, (hopefully) entertaining clues be enough to provide a satisfying solve? I have a feeling the answer is "for some solvers, this challenge will do just fine; others (speed solvers maybe...?) will likely be bored."

At any rate, the grid pattern/filling challenges/puzzle solving experience will be new, which is something I strive for. Like Jeff, I also admire Patrick Berry's/others constructors' continued efforts to produce puzzles that do not fit the typical themeless cookie-cutter mold, and, thus, I make it a priority to attempt the same.

Hope you enjoyed the puzzle and notes. I'm anxious to gauge solvers' reactions to this one. Happy Guy Fawkes Day!

– puzzle by David Phillips

Considering my day job (ophthalmology) and the fact that "I SEE" is the tenth most common four letter entry in crosswords, it's a wonder it took me so long to come up with this theme idea. Four of these theme entries had never appeared in a NYT crossword and two had never appeared in ANY big name crossword, but fortunately the XWord Info Word List had all of them. Internet cafes are on the wane, but ten years ago when Wi-Fi was less available they were big.

I submitted this puzzle by snail mail on 7/7/16, four months before publication. It was accepted on July 22, mostly because David Steinberg was doing an internship with Will and Joel and blasted thru boatloads of mail. Favorite clues that ended up on the editing room floor: "Spaceship-shaped thing from Mars" for M AND M, and "You can bet that they're wrong" for ODDSMAKERS. I suggested maybe cluing I SEE as [When doubled: "Aha! The puzzle theme!"], but I was outvoted.

– puzzle by Bruce Haight

This puzzle was accepted back in January 2013. I was pleasantly surprised last week when I got an email saying the puzzle would run today, as I'd completely forgotten about it being in the queue.

It's hard to give too much insight into the construction since I made this puzzle about four years ago. I do remember I got this theme idea while driving to work and passing a realtor's sign for an OPEN HOUSE. I spent the rest of the ride thinking of prefixes for HOUSE, and luckily for me there were lots of options to make common phrases from. I then got fortunate to include a few extra of these theme entries from my list when the stacks worked at 17/20 and 55/61-across.

Will and Joel did change a good amount of clues for this puzzle (for the better!), but I'm glad they left my opening clue at 1-across, as "She's Leaving Home" has always been one of my favorite Beatles songs.

The Election Day crossword has big shoes to fill after the famous CLINTON/BOB DOLE puzzle, so despite not being as clever as that puzzle, I hope solvers nonetheless enjoyed this one today. If nothing else, I hope it served as a nice diversion from this year's polarizing election.

– puzzle by Michael J. Doran

JON: I was stumped trying to find a good revealer answer for this J-HOOK theme. I briefly considered JAY HOOK, the pitcher who gave the New York Mets their first franchise win in 1962, but decided that would be too obscure.

Then I remembered a clever Monday NYT puzzle by William I. Johnston from 9/9/2002: the theme involved the letter L, and all of the black squares were arranged in L shapes. What if I did a similar thing for the letter J, and used the "grid art" as the revealer?

To make that concept work with my theme answers, I had to expand the grid to 16x15. But I found the resulting grid very difficult to fill, so Will and Joel suggested the possibility of my bringing in Jeff Chen as a co-constructor. As it happens, I had been looking for an opportunity to collaborate with Jeff, and I jumped at the chance. Jeff was very receptive and a pleasure to work with, and we had a fun back-and-forth deciding on the remaining fill and then brainstorming on the clues.

In case anyone is wondering, the fact that we both have "J" names is just a happy coincidence.

Enjoy!

JEFF: I had been admiring the clever ideas in Jon's previous puzzles, so it was a pleasure to hear from him, asking if I could help with a puzzle grid after several back and forths with Will. Even better, I really liked his idea of Js representing hooks — another of Jon's neat concepts that stick to "one letter per square." It's so hard to innovate while adhering to that convention, but Jon's done it so many times.

Really fun to work with a member of the J club! (I work with Jim Horne and am married to Jill Denny.)

– puzzle by Jonathan M. Kaye and Jeff Chen

About a year and a half ago, I was listening to a podcast and somebody said THAT'S A BIG IF. I was on my computer at the time, so I looked to see if that term had ever been used in a crossword puzzle before, and when the results came back negative, I decide to make it the seed answer in a themeless puzzle. Because… why not?

Looking back over this grid with fresh eyes, I'm mostly pleased with it. I think I pretty much nailed the long answers. It's got some glue I don't particularly care for (notably SRS and ELEM — if I made this puzzle today, I probably wouldn't let these two stand). But I think (hope) the trade-off is worth it.

The clues for this one are a mixed bag for me. Quite frequently when Will changes my clues, I feel they get better — and there are some examples of this in this puzzle (e.g., the clue for BOOM MICS) — but there are also some for which it is not the case. My least favorite clue is "Hook remover, perhaps" for NOSE JOB, because it evokes the term "hook-nosed," and although the dictionary informs me there is nothing inherently derogatory about this term, it feels kind of slur-y to me. Using "hook" to describe somebody's nose is just not something I like or would ever do. (My clue was "Profile alterer" if you were wondering.)

I also had a great clue for LA RAM, but I came up with it too late: "Noted NFL returner of 2016". Get it? Not bad, huh?

For more on this puzzle and other tangentially related topics, feel free to visit my blog: scrabbledamon.blogspot.com.

– puzzle by Damon Gulczynski

One thing I often tussle with when putting together a theme is the balance between consistency and playfulness. On the one hand, it's nice for the solver who has cottoned onto the theme to have some idea of what the following theme answers will look like. On the other hand, curveballs and surprising theme answers can add extra aha moments to the solve and more satisfaction.

With this theme, I originally had thrown some extraneous words on like SWEATER AND LOUD PANTS for a marathoner, TWO SOCKS AND A BELT for the boxer, and so on. My thinking was the ___ AND ___ format would get too repetitive. But in the end, it felt like it was going to be inconsistent for the solver to encounter some theme answers with extraneous words and others without. My compromise was to put a trio (TURTLENECK, BOA AND CROCS) across the middle, which does break the pattern but in a more constrained way. That was my way of adding an extra "aha".

I'm not sure solvers care about any of this that much, but these are the things constructors agonize over!

Hope everyone enjoys the puzzle.

– puzzle by Joel Fagliano

I had a plan when I built this puzzle in March 2015. The 50th anniversary of the old TV show would be in January 2016, on a Tuesday, which I thought perfect for this theme. Hoping to avoid a multi-year wait to get published, I suggested it run on the anniversary.

But Will Shortz saw through my plan and … didn't run it. Oh well. It was worth a shot.

I am extremely proud of this grid. I think I had to work harder on this than any other I've made. No corner is safe from constraints so it took quite a while to get everything just so. Further, I made sure there were no NAs in the Down direction, adding to my difficulties.

My original grid only had 13 NAs (if you listen to the actual theme song, you'll only hear 13 of them at the end…and they sound more like DAs, not NAs). But Will rejected it since people are more familiar with the main part of the theme song and the Internet meme usually has 16. I had my doubts that I could pull off 16, but I had a go and am pleased with the result.

I had trouble cluing the revealer. I was trying to cross reference the starts of the long theme answers as well as the NAs, and the clue was so unwieldy. Will's solution is much cleaner: refer only to the NAs in the revealer and simply highlight the action sounds in the theme answer. Very nice.

For better or worse, I can't take credit for the NAE clue. It's cool that it's the first time it's being clued that way in the NYT, but crossing foreign word TABLAS, I wish the typical "Scottish no" clue was kept.

Until next (bat) time!

– puzzle by Jim Peredo

JOE: Tim bounced a preliminary idea off of me for a pyramid puzzle, and I responded with suggestions on how he might cut down the black squares and incorporate additional theme. Later, I was delighted when he came back to me and asked to make this a collaboration. I have thoroughly enjoyed the collaborations I've had with Tim ... and all the other constructors I've made puzzles with over the years (Peter, Martin, Victor).

TIM: Thanks very much to Joe for working with me on this.

I'd built a mirror grid with a smaller pyramid/entombed mummy and the four theme answers, but it felt like the puzzle was in this weird area between the theme's not being rich enough and the grid's not being visually distinctive enough. There was too much noise for the pyramid to stand out; too little theme to compensate.

Assistance was required. On went the Bat-Signal.

Joe liked the idea but agreed that the grid needed revamping. He expanded it vertically while adding in the larger pyramid at the bottom and the three others around the sides.

Incidentally, King Tut's tomb was discovered in the Valley of the Kings, not in a pyramid. We weren't sure whether to include him anyway, but decided to after seeing that he could be tucked in under the barrow-like central block formation.

Thank you also to Will and to the enfant terrible of crosswords, David Steinberg, for their help in revising the theme. Specifically: how to link MUMMY with the outside fill. The notepad/numbers idea was all theirs.

– puzzle by Timothy Polin and Joe Krozel

ML: I remember thinking about MADAME PRESIDENT as I worked on my first solo themeless that included MISTER PRESIDENT back in January 2014 (published in April 2015).

I consulted Jeff after two solo attempts in 2014 were rejected. Will and Joel liked all the 15s I had come up with but not the shorter fill holding it together. My first attempt with Jeff was also rejected, but the second accepted in February 2015. We kept the original 15s but Jeff reworked the entire grid structure. He kept the 15s locked but flipped the grid so that the SW corner became the NE. He also changed the position of the black squares.

I was pleased to add another female name, actress KERRY WASHINGTON, to the data base. The new entries to the database would also have included THE NEW YORK TIMES had Peter Gordon not beaten us with its debut earlier this year in a very clever puzzle. I liked Jeff's additions of NO GO AREAS and END IN A TIE. I was pleased to see my clue for NBA ALL STAR GAMES, "Where East meets West?" retained.

Thanks once again to Jeff for co-constructing and Will and Joel for accepting and editing this puzzle. I hope you enjoyed your solving experience.

JEFF: NBA ALL STAR GAMES are some of my favorite spectacles in all of sports. That entire weekend is filled with such athleticism, skill, and talent — it's mind-boggling. I particularly like the Slam Dunk contest. Just when I think everything new under the sun has been done, Spud Webb wins it (he's 5'9"). Then came the Jordan-Dominique battles. And last year, seeing Aaron Gordon leap over a mascot 1.) going up in the sitting position 2.) grabbing the ball with his left hand 3.) passing it underneath his horizontal legs and then 4.) slamming it home … I was so excited, I might have peed a little.

So when ML asked me to help her redo this grid after an initial rejection, how could I refuse? Now, who wants to watch the between the legs tomahawk jam I'm working on? (So what if it's on an 8-foot high rim.)

I also enjoyed helping get the incredibly talented KERRY WASHINGTON in the NYT crossword.

But things didn't go quite as planned with MADAME PRESIDENT.

Someday.

Hey, my daughter was born in the United States ...

– puzzle by Mary Lou Guizzo and Jeff Chen

My favorite part of this puzzle is the doubling of the clue numbers, and I'm excited to get something unusual into a Monday puzzle. I hope the high number values gave some solvers a minor jolt on first glance, perhaps like the one I had after coming back to watching Jeopardy! after a many-year hiatus and discovering the increased dollar values on the board.

I originally was just playing with a basic 0, 2, 4, 6, 8 progression and then the "Against All Odds" revealer came out of desperation, as having five theme answers was a pain to work with (the "four" entry having to be in the middle of the grid). It turned out having six theme answers gave me more flexibility. Then carrying the revealer to its logical conclusion led to the clue inflation. (It was unintentional, but fortuitous, that the grid is 16 rows by 14 columns — thank you 14-letter revealer!)

As a middle/high school math teacher, I'm on pretty friendly terms with the odd numbers, so I hope they don't take the puzzle personally…

– puzzle by John Lieb

This puzzle went through an interesting transformation in the editing process. While the similarities between Halal and Kashrut are plentiful, there are notable differences that preclude strict "synonymity" (and thus strict opposition between "halal" and "nonkosher.") Two examples: camel is halal, but also not kosher (kashrut requires animals to chew cud and have cloven hooves). Halal foods cannot contain alcohol of any kind; kashrut allows for alcohol, provided it be, of course, made under kosher laws.

The original conception of the theme plays on the fact these answers "contain" ham, pork, lard, and bacon, rather than the circled things being nonkosher themselves, which I thought gave the puzzle its raison d'être. This idea of ham/pork, etc. sneaking their way into things reflects the concern many kosher/halal-keeping folks have in determining whether they can have certain prepared meals, say. In that conception, the answers (AHAMOMENT, NBACONFERENCE, etc.) are both, with this wordplay, nonkosher and not halal. I had wanted to avoid the opposition of nonkosher and halal in and of themselves b/c of the specificities listed above. But Will felt that this was somewhat confusing since the long answers were not foods.

In further discussion with Will regarding the clue for 65A, he notes that while "opposite" might not be the "perfect word," brainstorming sessions with others made him feel it was the best option, and as he noted, they apply equally to the pork products I hid in the grid. So I've happily complied with his well-reasoned judgment on this.

In this way, the theme ended up quite different from the initial idea. (CHOPS in the opening corner, clued not as food, by the way, prefigures the theme.) But it preserves the original spirit of multiculturalism, and appropriately ushers us into the Thanksgiving holiday, whatever we choose to eat.

– puzzle by Andrew Zhou

This puzzle is a relatively recent construction. I'd been making only themeless puzzles for the preceding few months, which was a blast, but I found myself craving the satisfaction of getting a theme to work. My original theme set for this one was HIPSTERS DON'T LIE, WHAT A DUMPSTER, DRAGSTER QUEEN, and SWITCH TEAMSTERS. Will and Joel liked the idea but justifiably felt it was a bit inconsistent. Two of the theme entries added STER before an S, and DUMP-->DUMPSTER wasn't much of a change in meaning. After numerous back-and-forths, we settled on the current theme set. I still have a soft spot for HIPSTERS DON'T LIE, but the new theme entries are definitely better!

The only problem was that I now had to build a grid around two 12-letter theme entries and two 13-letter theme entries, a cruciverbal nightmare! I knew that no matter what I did, I'd be stuck with more crosswordese than would be ideal. So I decided to focus on making the long and midlength entries shine as much as possible. My original grid had blocks dividing up CHASE SCENE and OPEN SEASON, but I chose to remove them after noticing that they didn't really improve the fill quality. And besides, having more long entries is always nice.

I hope you all enjoy the puzzle and have a happy Thanksgiving! I turn 20 tomorrow, which is super exciting . . . though I'm not sure I'll have stomach space for both pumpkin pie and birthday cake :).

– puzzle by David Steinberg

Happy Thanksgiving! I am honored and thrilled to have my first puzzle published in the New York Times. I want to thank Will Shortz, Joel Fagliano and David Steinberg for their feedback and patience, and especially for the great work they did editing this puzzle.

The idea for this puzzle came from my recollection of a 1980's Mad Magazine parody that referred to MTV as "Empty-V." I don't remember why I was thinking about that, but I made the connection between the "empty" rebus and Montana's two-letter postal abbreviation, and thought there could be a theme there. I've seen other crosswords that feature state abbreviations in various ways, but couldn't recall one that involved reading the letters as a rebus.

It's a pretty short list of states whose abbreviations can be used in this way, but it was not too hard to come up with possible theme entries. The challenge was coming up with entries that were consistent, made sense in English and did not repeat a letter in the abbreviation. The three entries that ended up the puzzle were none of my first choices, but they met these requirements. I like that each phrase ends with a four-letter word, even though that was not intentional.

The very first version had three grid-spanning entries and no revealer. As the theme entries were simplified, the space for a revealer was created. The first revealer was just POSTAL CODES, but I worried that could be confused with ZIP codes. Luckily, I had a five-letter central space that I could fit STATE into without too much trouble, and I felt that clarified it sufficiently.

I really love the way Will and his team re-wrote the clues to the theme entries. The ones I submitted were quite contrived and basically made the revealer unnecessary (I think I was still subconsciously resting the idea of a revealer). The re-written clues tie everything together and really make it a puzzle, so thanks again to that whole team!

I hope you all have a happy and safe Thanksgiving filled with ALL SMILES!

– puzzle by Brian J. MacDonald

MATT: This puzzle has been a long time in the making, going through a variety of revisions since I first submitted it (and Will rejected it) in February. He seemed to think it had promise, but didn't like my selection of theme entries. So I found a new set of theme entries and, before rebuilding the whole puzzle, asked if they were better. They were.

So I built a couple of very different versions of the puzzle and didn't clue them, instead asking Will which he preferred. As I clued the one he preferred, I discovered that while the fill was reasonably clean, it had so many Spanish entries that it might as well be a Spanish puzzle! So even though Will had accepted it, I changed it around quite a bit (there is still quite a bit of Spanish in it, I fear), and Will took the modified version.

There are a lot of ways that we could have dealt with the mixed up entries. Will chose what I suspect is the most benign, cluing PLEA BARGAINS = LAG + PEABRAINS as [Some compromises = Delay + dodos]. The nastiest mechanism (which I preferred, of course), would clue it simply as [Drop knuckleheads behind] where the clues for LAG [Drop behind] and PEABRAINS [knuckleheads] are interleaved, just like the answer is. You can uninterleave them by realizing that one clue is italicized and the other is not. (I guess it would have been even nastier to not even have the varying font, but that struck me as *too* nasty.)

My favorite clues that didn't make the grade: [Unsur] for NORTE and [Shortest sentence in English although, on sad occasion, also the longest] for IDO, [Grass opposite] for TURF, and especially [Like Doyle Lonnegon] for STUNG.

On the Dr. Fill side, bottom line is that it found the puzzle very easy, since all the words were in its dictionary. But it made a mistake! At 57-D, GOTAB has seen a reasonable number of appearances in high-quality puzzles, but GETAB has only appeared in less popular places. (You can check this out via my free clue database). So even though DEER is significantly better then DEOR at 62-A, it's so freaked out by the fact that no one "famous" has used GETAB that it decides to stick an O in the intersection square instead of an E. As always, it has no real idea what's going on and doesn't realize (for example) that GETAB and GOTAB are the same except for tense.

I hope everyone enjoyed the puzzle!

DR. FILL: I know I've made some very poor decisions recently, but I can give you my complete assurance that my work will be back to normal.

– puzzle by Matt Ginsberg