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Finally! After five (or six?) submissions, I got Will's blessing. After just one, relatively straightforward, set of edits, it was ready to go.

The seed of this puzzle came from "turkey trot", as I was considering participating in the annual Detroit Thanksgiving 5k race by that name. I didn't end up running, but I did get a good puzzle idea out of it! Soon I was wracking my brain for similar "animal walk" phrases. "Bear crawl" and "frog march" all came pretty quickly, plus they were a crossword-friendly 9 letters to boot!

I knew I needed at least one more, or a revealer of some sort to put the puzzle into submission realm. I resorted to my old friend Google to search for animal phrases. "Goose step", also at 9 letters worked well, but frankly "Chicken Run" was my least favorite as it did not seem as "tight" as the others since it was not something "doable" by a human — like the others.

For my debut I was excited that Will used most of my fill, though probably less than half my clues. His cluing was certainly "fresher" than mine. I mean, "Raiders of the Lost __" ? That was just plain lazy. I love his replacement! After 35+ years of solving NYT puzzles, I am positively thrilled to finally join the club of constructors. One down, hopefully many more to go!

– puzzle by Bruce Greig

NATAN: This puzzle was such a treat to make, even by the standards of the already lovely JASA process. The people, for one: we're joined by new faces, like Andy Kravis up at the lectern, who's so encyclopedic we barely need to research for clues anymore, and new constructors like Susan, Tom, Joe, and more, who're injecting even more humor and breadth into these collaborations.

For another thing, this was one of those puzzles where students became teachers — the JASA class came up with the revealer, brainstormed the best theme pairs, drew up the skeleton of the grid, and even bailed us out of a bad fill moment by dropping in OH MY LORD where we'd had OH MY WORD and were coming up empty or trivial.

We were also able to keep a wide-open construction with some nice long entries. Hope y'all like it!

ANDY: This was my first puzzle with the JASA class, and I'm looking forward to making many more with them.

– puzzle by Natan Last, Andy Kravis and the J.A.S.A. Crossword Class

I can't help but anagram and make wordplay with stop signs when I'm driving. It's annoying. Those big white letters just ask to be messed with. POTS, TOPS, SPOT, OPTS. Am I alone in this? I hope so. Anyway, "Stop Sign" sounds an awful lot like "Stop Sighin'!" ["Quit feeling sorry for yourself!"] " which is where this idea sprouted. Alas, the only other theme-type answer that I found which would work with it was "Finish Lyin'!" ["Quit speaking falsehoods!"]. Nonetheless, the idea kept eating at me.

It doesn't help that I drive a lot.

Rather than pursue the original idea, I decided to try a variation on it by thinking of other words I could elide to create homophones. I eventually found a set in which the vowel sound changed: LYIN' (for "line"), MOOIN' (for "moon"), PLAYIN' (for "plain"), and BEIN' (for "bean").

I am seriously bothered by the fact that I can't find a way to use "Stop Sighin!" as a theme answer. It's like an itch that can't be scratched. Any help?

As a side note, I couldn't care less about yield sign wordplay.

Delighted to have a second puzzle in the New York Times.

– puzzle by Jim Quinlan

By pure coincidence, this puzzle happens to run on my fiancé's birthday, so I'll take that as an opportunity to talk about him a bit. Quinton and I met as students at Princeton, both singing in the Princeton Nassoons (a cappella group) and the Chamber Choir. After graduation he spent a year in Tajikistan on a fellowship before joining me in the DC area, where we now both work on federal contracts. Although I usually enjoy doing the New York Times themeless puzzles solo, I love him enough to save some Fridays and Saturdays to solve together every few weeks. He especially helps with foreign language, geography, and vocabulary clues. We'll see if he can finish this one solo!

This puzzle is a bit un-millennial of me in that much of the grid is skewed toward older references, which may trip up some younger solvers. I've always been a fan of wide open grids with heavy intersection, even at the sacrifice to some overall zippiness and trendiness in the grid entries. It often makes it more of a challenge to both construct and solve, which I appreciate. This puzzle is an example of this constructing style: it doesn't quite have the youthful verve throughout, but I think the overall fill quality and intersection in the middle makes up for it. The side sections were a bit more flexible — only the unfortunate plural BEERYS which I didn't like, but liked better than the inelegance of adding a black square in the corner.

Hope you like this (unexpected) birthday present Quinton!

– puzzle by Ryan McCarty

My suggested title for this puzzle was "Gone Grr." I'd guess that anybody who reads the NYT constructor comments knows that the puzzles are a team effort, and that editorial changes are made in hopes of hitting the right tone and balance for the audience. I'm grateful for all the ways that process improves the final product — in this puzzle, for example, the clue for 80-Across is a great and fun addition to what I submitted (which is to say I wish I'd thought of that).

At the same time, the editorially-added clue for 73-Down gives me pause. I don't object to entries or clues that might touch on sex (3/3/18's NUDE SCENE with the ingenious clue "Hot take?" doesn't bother me), but I think PLAYMATES in the Playboy sense evokes an infantilizing attitude toward women that is not ok. I realize that others may respond to the clue differently.

I asked if Will would consider changing it, and he replied with a gracious note to the effect that it was too late to revise, and anyway that Playboy Playmates are part of the world, and thus fair game for the puzzle. I understand that point. But insofar as the clues constitute a series of choices about what are interesting, clever, and/or suitable ways to lead to the correct entry, I think there's some importance to *which* way the puzzle chooses. In this case, it's not the path I would've taken. Wherever solvers might come down on these issues, though, I hope they enjoyed the puzzle and had fun finding those missing four-legged friends.

– puzzle by Matthew Sewell

I've been constructing logic puzzles for a while (see gmpuzzles.com and recent US Puzzle Championships for examples), but crosswords are entirely new to me. Thanks for your patience while I'm learning, and I hope you enjoyed this puzzle as much as I did.

I started with ESCAPE ROOM---a fun entry that was still unpublished at the time, (but has appeared twice since my puzzle was accepted in August). As a computer programmer, it was natural for me to take the theme the direction I did. Once I struck on the KEY WEST revealer, I was sure this could work.

Little did I know how much effort there is between settling on theme entries and completing a puzzle. I could never have succeeded without the help of an expert mentor. Huge thanks to Craig Kasper for his patience with countless revisions. Craig also deserves credit for suggesting ENTER SANDMAN and teaching me a lot about grid design and evaluating fill.

My first revision of the puzzle was rejected for poor fill, but Will and Joel kindly encouraged me to try again. My second submission still had some unacceptable entries, but primarily concentrated in a single corner. Will had a colleague take a crack at fixing that corner and sent me the result. It was an improvement in every way, so thanks, unnamed colleague!

It's interesting to see the changes the editors made to my clues, (39 of 80 clues were changed). Many of the changes were minor, but every change improved one or more of clarity, specificity, smoothness, appropriate difficulty, or liveliness. Any clunkiness that remains is entirely mine.

One thing I will say about the clues is that if you find a turtle snapping at your finger, don't blame me!

– puzzle by Carl Worth

Jeff, I think you will be pleased to see that we have finally arrived at my post-divided-thru-the-middle themeless puzzle design. I give you 100% of the credit for pointing out that crutch, which I didn't realize I was using. Though there may be exceptions in the future, I certainly won't revisit that design without having an imaginary debate with you about it first.

In my puzzles, I always look to incorporate at least one exclamation, question or "conversational" phrase, as I think they add a different dimension to mix. Over the years I've included: DO ME A FAVOR, ARE YOU DONE, IT FIGURES, DO I HAVE TO, KEEP TALKING and IMPRESS ME. In this particular puzzle, there are three — and it turns out that together they comprise a little story, the gripping (yet brief) tale of one character consoling another after a distressing and suspicious incident: THERE THERE, IN ANY EVENT, I SMELL A RAT.

Also, I don't usually go looking for interesting word intersections, but I find it incredibly amusing that VEGETARIAN runs through LIVING DEAD. I keep seeing images of zombies feasting on quinoa bowls and avocado toast.

– puzzle by Robyn Weintraub

The original version of this grid was constructed in September 2016. A revision to the SE quadrant was requested, a revision was submitted, and the puzzle was accepted for publication in January 2017.

The requested revision was the removal from the SE of the exclamation AM I BEAT, which was deemed too contrived. I have said this myself while plopping down on a chair — maybe it's a Canadian thing.

The block layout for this puzzle is one of my favorites. I've had success with versions in which there are two blocks in the middle breaking up the 15s, and in which there is a single block dead center. This version has no central blocks. These puzzles are among my first attempts at wide open grids.

With open grids it's often difficult to achieve a Scrabble average above 1.50, which is typical for a NYT crossword. That certainly was the case here, with this puzzle coming in at 1.40, as did the original version. The open areas are conducive to low Scrabble score letters, namely, the vowels, L, N, R, S, and T. In a higher word count grid it's possible to find spots for higher value letters in the peripheral short fill — not so here. I decided to leave well enough alone.

As I look over the clues, 26-A PORE and 13-D ANDIRON make me chuckle, and I have Will and Joel/Sam to thank for that. I note that a fair number of changes were made to the clues I submitted, which have made the puzzle tougher, I think.

– puzzle by Roland Huget

I'm super excited for everyone to see my first ever Sunday puzzle! It's been over ten years since I got my first crossword published, but the first time I tried to make a Sunday was last year. I wasn't sure I wanted to put in all the extra time and effort without even knowing how the puzzle would be received, but I finally figured I might as well try. And this is the result. Lesson learned!

I think this theme (changing the "K" sound at the starts of words to the "Q" sound) is great because the idea is very simple and the resulting phrases are... quite quirky! As Will noted regarding a previous puzzle of mine, puns with Qs are a lot of fun. I'm very surprised that this theme hadn't been done before.

I'm pleased that most of my clues were kept, and as always I appreciate the vast majority of the changes from Will and crew. A few clues I liked that didn't make it:

46-Down: Are BEINGS by definition [Sentient ones]? Would that make the expression "sentient beings" redundant? Anyway, I thought my clue was cute: [Livers?].

91-Down: I guess [Graphic opening?] doesn't pass the breakfast test, so it was replaced by [Prefix with -graphic]. Oh well.

96-Down: I think my clue was more colorful than [Bagel variety]: [Source of the headline "Area Man's Life Comes to Tragic Middle," with "The"].

Have a fun solve!

– puzzle by Daniel Raymon

MICHAEL:

The idea for the puzzle first came to me in 2007. I tried unsuccessfully to fit seven entries that had all the colors of the rainbow, plus RAINBOW as the reveal. I looked at the puzzle from time to time, but couldn't manage to get eight entries into one puzzle. I concluded it couldn't be done, but then I was trying to fit all entries horizontally. I revisited the idea and came up with something I could make work by making two of the entries vertical.

I had had four unthemed puzzles published in the NYT by this time, but, although I've had many themed puzzles published, none in the NYT. My efforts were an inconsistent mix of easy and difficult entries and clues.

I contacted Andrea Carla Michaels because I felt I needed help with devising an early-week puzzle from someone who has a lot of experience with them. In a lengthy exchange (70) of emails, we honed the puzzle till we got something we felt worth submitting. We considered ROYGBIV as the reveal ("Mnemonic for remembering a list of seven of which the starred entries all contain elements") but went back to RAINBOW. For ?APPY, we went back and forth with HAPPY, NAPPY, SAPPY, YAPPY, and settled on HAPPY as the best word for early week.

FWIW, we think the final version contains a minimum of difficult entries.

ACME:

Was in awe that Michael could get eight theme entries into a Monday! (I warned him that regardless of the difficulty WE thought this was, it would be slotted for a Monday!) That necessitated many iterations, to get the fill "simple." How nice at the end of all this to see a rainbow!

– puzzle by Michael Wiesenberg and Andrea Carla Michaels

This puzzle's theme was inspired by a text. I was chatting with a friend, and he texted, in response to something I said, "Bears repeating!" So I sent back a row of the "bear face" emoji:

🐻🐻🐻🐻🐻

— bears, repeating. I realized I had a 14-letter phrase, and started looking around for others that began with the criteria "plural animal name that is also a verb."The original grid had BEARS REPEATING (with the clue [Grizzly, panda, grizzly, panda, grizzly, panda?]), along with SEALS WITH A KISS [Pinniped passion?], YAKS ON THE PHONE [Himalayan cattle call?], and the revealer ANIMAL BEHAVIOR.

This was one of the very first puzzles I submitted to the New York Times, almost a year ago. Will and Joel were very encouraging in their feedback and suggested a second draft in which each entry had a prepositional phrase (bye bye BEARS!) and no revealer. I put together a new version (with much help from Erik Agard and John Lieb, both of whom have been fantastic as mentors and collaborators) which was finally accepted. This is my solo debut in the Times; much has happened since I first started constructing, and I feel very fortunate to be part of the crossword community.

– puzzle by Laura Braunstein

For three or so years, I've been the second most published Saturday constructor in the Times. With great fanfare, I can now say I have one half — that's a big 50% — as many Saturdays as the all-time king and all-time great Rich Norris. And it was possible to get halfway there only because he's taken a ten-year breather. Maybe it's like competing with Milton Berle — if I ever get close, he can just crank out a few more Saturdays for us. (Oh, that reminds me, in case there's any confusion, the second half of 6-Down is just the proper name, not an epithet.)

This puzzle started with CHINA SHOP. My clue was [Bull market?], so this is probably the first time the edited clue was the exact opposite of mine. I get the change, in that the norm is that the bull wouldn't be there. But norms that proscribe wanton wreckage are not quite in vogue these days, so my version might be a bit more zeitgeisty.

– puzzle by Byron Walden

The seed for this puzzle (and its original title) was "Sunrise, Sunset"—with the eastern theme entires featuring a rising S-U-N, and the western ones featuring a setting S-U-N. It was important to me that none of these entires—whether the across ones or the down answers containing SUN—use that letter string to mean the word "sun." This was a bit harder than expected! You may notice that I broke a fairly rigid crossword rule in that the theme entries are not symmetrically placed, but it would have been near impossible to do so, given that they each span several rows. I did try to put them in approximately symmetrical locations, for consistency's sake.

Because the themers take up a lot of real estate in both across and down directions, filling this grid was a beast. This is the third draft I submitted, and while I wish there were a bit more room for the grid to breathe, I think it's free of dreck (REE being the only real gross entry, IMO). Phrases like SUNK COST, PROM DATES, REAL TALK, NERF WAR, and MIC DROP are fun bonus fill. I tried for way too long to get YASQUEEN at 11D (it really almost worked for a long time) but finally let it go when it came at the expense of too much bad fill).

I'm quite happy that my original clue on I SEE IT made it through; it feels much more in-the-language than previous methods of cluing that entry (variations of [Response to "Look over there!"]). In general, I like to make my puzzles contemporary and conversational, which I think I've accomplished here.

Lastly, I'm honored to have a puzzle run on the Sunday of ACPT for the second time! It's a pretty cool thing to see 600+ of the most avid crossword solvers in the world digging into your puzzle. See you in Stamford!

– puzzle by Finn Vigeland

HEAD DOVER HEELS? BOISE GONNA BE MAD? ANNAPOLIS TASTY? HELENA HANDBASKET? A LINCOLN THE CHAIN? RALEIGH FINGERS? RICHMOND POORMAN?

All rejected ideas for my "capital punishment" puzzle. Yes, that would have been the title. Maybe it's best there are no titles in a weekday puzzle as there are enough groaners here already. I do like HELENA HANDBASKET, but it has too many letters, sadly.

Only my second time in the New York Times, and I am already resorting to puns. Sad but true. As for state capitals, Mrs. Wickersham, my fifth-grade teacher, would be pleased. I can still remember studying with Emily Williams who, every time the word "Harrisburg" was uttered would cry out "Harrisburg to you too!" It made no sense at all, but somehow I still remember the capital of Pennsylvania that way. Nonsensical word associations of that ilk, when puns were unavailable, got me through all the memorization I had to do to survive medical school. Thank you, Emily, and Harrisburg to you too!

– puzzle by Peter Koetters

The idea for this puzzle came while testing a hangman book for Puzzlewright. The answer to one puzzle was LAST BUT NOT LEAST, and when I noticed that each of the four words ended with a T, I thought I could maybe make a theme out of that. I tried to find other letters that ended all the words in a four-word phrase but got nowhere fast. So then I went back to T and tried to come up with three-word phrases with the same trait. Having three three-word phrases followed by LAST BUT NOT LEAST, which describes itself, felt quite apt.

Having no other T's anywhere in the grid was, I felt, important. Will Shortz wasn't particular about that, but asked if I could make every clue end in a T. Having made a puzzle where every clue was a double dactyl, I figured (correctly) that making one where all the clues ended in a T would be no sweat. Using no other T's in the grid was a much tougher constraint. But for the clues ending in T, I had the additional self-imposed rule that all of the T-ending words had to be different. With that rule, it was no easy feat.

I had KEGEL (Exercise-developing gynecologist) at 32-Across, making 21-Down ASOK (Intern in "Dilbert") and 33-Down LAT (Muscle next to a delt). I prefer the ASOK/KEGEL crossing to the partial at 21-Down, but "chacun à son goût," right?

Here's a little puzzle to think about. When a puzzle gets collected into a book, a title often gets added, so I like to suggest a title when I submit it. Can you guess the title I have in mind for this puzzle from this hint? Take the last name of a U.S. president. Add a space so that the last four letters are separate from the first. Still don't have it at this point? He's a president who likes to tweet.

– puzzle by Peter Gordon