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When I sit down to brainstorm a Sunday theme, I often try to think of a title that I can pun on and spin into a full-sized theme concept, which is how this puzzle came to be. Even though Sundays can be a beast to construct and, occasionally, a chore to solve, I love playing with a larger canvas. And it's certainly a lot easier to do this row-stretching effect in the big grid — and not have the fill be constrained.

I hope newer solvers enjoyed the a-ha moment. Even if you clocked what was going on here early, I hope it still took some guessing to determine what "order" was being made "tall." I'm proud of a lot of stuff in this puzzle: including one of my favorite artists (17-Across), introducing 111-Across to crossworld (great clue from the Times editing team here), and most especially, packing in that 109-/110-Down combo.

I'd be down to meet in a cat café and collab on a puzzle with Sia, J Lo, and AOC if any of them are listening!

– puzzle by Finn Vigeland

I was so thrilled that this puzzle was accepted. It was one of my very first puzzle ideas, and it finally came to fruition last year. I wanted the theme to remain a mystery until the end, so straightforward entries like OOPSIE-DAISY and AXL ROSE were off the table. My only regret was that I couldn't include REINCARNATION.

Constructing this was a bit trickier than it might seem. The puzzle's layout was largely forced by the 11-letter revealer (LATE BLOOMER) and grid-spanning entries. Unfortunately, this meant lots of short (three-letter) entries, which aren't generally exciting for the solver. That said, I was pleased to be able to include stacks of longer down entries in the NE/SW corners.

I want to draw your attention to 23-Down. You might find this an unusual choice of clues to highlight, but I want to discuss ALI. It's one of those generally uneventful three-letter entries referred to above, and there are just so many ways to clue the name — most revolving around fictional characters and pugilists. I'm glad that the hilarious Ali Wong gets her first Daily New York Times crossword shout-out here. I try to be mindful of broadening the cross-section of accomplished people featured in clues, and I look forward to seeing more references to newer names like Mahershala Ali, Ali Krieger, Ali Stroker, and Ali Velshi in future crosswords.

Hope you enjoyed the puzzle!

– puzzle by Evan Kalish

I'm a bit surprised to see this puzzle running on a Thursday, as it was initially clued and slated for Wednesday. I suppose the gimmick was harder for the test solvers than expected. That said, minor day-of-the-week publication queue changes are not unusual in my (admittedly limited) experience.

I enjoyed reviewing the editorial revisions to the theme answer cluing. Beyond minor adjustments like "less than a trade occupation" in place of the original "less than an occupation," there were a few more substantial modifications. For example, instead of "a jerk" cluing TWITCH, I had "a Nintendo console" cluing SWITCH. In general, the edits made the theme clues easier to decipher, which is consistent with the gimmick proving harder than anticipated for solvers.

Working with 55 theme squares spread over 11 short entries puts some strain on the grid. Every vertical word goes through at least one themer. Likewise, the puzzle doesn't contain any entries longer than nine letters and only has 15 words of length five or more, which makes for a choppy solve. If instead the 55 theme squares had been contained in entries of length 10, 10, 15, 10, 10, the grid could have been more balanced.

Another unusual feature is having across entries that are longer than any thematic material. Usually, that muddles a puzzle's theme. Here, however, with so many short themers, I had to include some longer, horizontal non-thematic material to keep the puzzle from exceeding the 78-word limit. For example, breaking GAS TANKS at the T would bring the word count up to 80. Fortunately, because the theme entries are apparent from the cluing, there's no danger of confusion.

I hope deciphering the 11 theme riddles is a fun change of pace and makes up for the puzzle's other shortcomings.

– puzzle by Alex Eaton-Salners

I started this puzzle off with RAPUNZEL, which I thought might make a good second-row entry. Of course, being me, I saw the presence of ‘UN' as an invitation to place ‘QU' above it. That got me to J.V. SQUADS, which stacked well on top of RAPUNZEL, with the exception of the JR combination. I then came up with the idea of using JR. PAC-MAN, creating two intersecting stacks of 8-letter entries, which I would say seemed just crazy enough to work, but to be honest, it just seemed crazy. I was pleasantly surprised when that corner somehow ended up coming together (and pretty nicely, to boot—go figure).

PIXY STIX was the first entry I placed in the lower-right, and I was glad to be able to incorporate NOT QUITE and SPHINXES crossing it without too much difficulty. The upper-right and lower-left, however, were different stories. It's very challenging to connect a section that large to the rest of the puzzle, especially when you have to work around a long entry like 19-Across that runs straight through it, and already has four letters locked in. Overall, though, I thought those sections turned out pretty well (after much iteration), anchored by nice long answers in PRICKLY PEAR and especially IMPROV CLASS — which might be my favorite entry here — and I'm glad my clue for it survived.

Though the tough grid layout meant I had to make a few compromises, this puzzle still looks pretty good to me, with some interesting entries, fun, unique letter combinations, and more than a few rare letters (although it's NOT QUITE a pangram, despite a bit of eFFort …) Hope you enjoyed it!

– puzzle by Trenton Charlson

Looking at the finished version of this puzzle, I think what I'm most impressed by is the mix of difficult (actually, evil) clues with easy clues. Maybe just as a Wednesday should be: a blend of tough and tender. Thanks Will (and Sam and Joel) for this.

I loved making this puzzle, taking familiar "____ in the ____" phrases and looking for synonyms or descriptors that enclosed a synonym for the first word in some way. It's one of my favorites — appropriate as my 25th for the NYT. Hope you enjoy(ed) it.

You may have read I'm principally a writer of novels and scripts, with crosswords as a second line of defense. I'm pleased to announce the recent publication of my sixth novel, BILLY BUCK, available on Amazon.com and my website, nedwhitebooks.com, print or ebook. It's a story of a nearly broken man driving his teenage kids cross-country and their strange encounters along the way. Here's the blurb:

Maybe it started with his trip to Devils Tower ten years earlier, or maybe it was connected to his life-threatening surgery a few years later. But for Billy Buck, something is seriously askew, seeming to distort the very fabric of reality around him.

Now he's on a cross-country road trip with his two teenage kids to deliver them to their mother in Southern California as part of their custody agreement. In a decrepit old van, one can expect misadventures over three thousand miles. But what happens en route lurches sharply off the highway into the realm of the nearly impossible, challenging their view of themselves and the world they inhabit.

Something out there - powerful and invasive - has its sights trained on them.

– puzzle by Ned White

When I first submitted this blurb, I did it for the wrong puzzle. I completely forgot this puzzle had been accepted, so it was a very pleasant surprise to see it on the docket. It has several clues I'm proud of, such as the fun back-and-forth pairing at 32-Across and 33-Across, the simple wordplay of 53-Across, and the enigmatic misdirect at 52-Down.

I also just finished a six-week run acting in a production of "Matilda," which was a fabulous production full of talented and hilarious people, so it was funny that my past self somehow had the foresight to make a nod to that wonderful story in the clue to 57-Across, when I wrote that clue months ago. Or maybe Will Shortz tweaked the clue to mention the story, I don't remember. Either way is nice.

Finally, the blurb I wrote for the other puzzle talked about a connection to a Disney song lyric, just like 46-Across here. I'd say that's a funny coincidence, but anyone who knows me well enough, and has heard me belt out the entirety of the Little Mermaid's "Under the Sea" probably wouldn't be surprised.

As you may imagine, I had to remake this grid a few times until I got something remotely satisfying, as it's a bit difficult to fit five different Q's into a puzzle seamlessly. I also considered adding something along the lines of "IF IT AIN'T BAROQUE," or "GO FOR BAROQUE," but that felt too played out already. I also hoped I could fit the word "BISQUE" in somewhere because it's such a fun word, but there's no real homophonic counterpart that I could find, alas.

– puzzle by Grant Thackray

DANIEL: For years, I have been trying to figure out how to construct acceptable themeless puzzles. After all, good, original themes are hard to come by. My first attempts were awful, but as my program and word list improved, so did my puzzles. Eventually, I got better at finding the delicate balance between including fresh words and minimizing bad fill.

This was the 4th puzzle I wrote with Anne, and it was the break-through. Our seeds were FRAPPUCCINO (UNICORN FRAPPUCCINO didn't fit) and YELLOW VESTS. At the time we wrote it, YELLOW VESTS was highly topical, and Will kindly expedited the publication so that it would still be relevant. I was doing a project about the Yellow Vest movement in school, and when I came home, I found out that this puzzle had been accepted. Perfect timing!

ANNE: I've been peripherally involved with Daniel's crossword activities for a while, but this is the first time one of our joint puzzles has been accepted. We wrote this when I was home from college over winter break, and I was looking forward to a French class about revolutions, which is what made me think of YELLOW VESTS. Despite the stereotype of the over-caffeinated college student, FRAPPUCCINO was not from personal experience.

Our basic model for constructing was that Daniel operated his program while I suggested words and provided "constructive" criticism. I'm just glad it worked!

– puzzle by Anne and Daniel Larsen

AMANDA: What an absolute thrill to be making my NYT crossword debut! I'll let the entries of PRIDE MONTH, GAYER, AIDA, and MORENO serve as a formal introduction. That pretty much tells you most of what you need to know about me. (Ok, ok: I'm a concert pianist turned therapist turned musical theater pianist/composer. As one is.)

It's been such a fun experience to discover and break into the crossworld where my puns are embraced rather than identified as the formal cause of me swiftly seeing myself out of a room. Getting to make these puzzles, especially with Ross, has been such a huge source of joy for me and I hope you find some joy yourself in the solve! If you want to say hi and nerd out, you can find me on all the usual platforms where my handle is just my name because I've used up all of my creativity in other outlets.

ROSS: Amanda writes all the best clues in this and every puzzle we make together. Bow down.

Also, if you identify as non-male and/or LGBTQ+ and/or POC and you want to get into crossword constructing, I'd be thrilled to offer whatever assistance I can to help you get your puzzles published. Contact me via Instagram (@rosstrudeau) or Twitter (@trudeauross).

– puzzle by Amanda Rafkin and Ross Trudeau

I started this puzzle with the "pipe" part. I had originally hoped it would connect words like DRAIN and SEWER, but that proved to be too difficult. Next, I added the revealer. DOWN THE PIPE was my third choice, but I think it works well. This gave me room to add three more theme words. My first choices were SLIP ON CLOGS, MEDIA LEAKS, and PAINT DRIPS. Eventually, I discovered that OIL PLATFORM fit nicely with WATER TOWER and GAS STATION.

Let the debate begin: Is the correct phrase "down the pike" or is it "down the pipe"? According to Merriam-Webster, "down the pike" entered the dictionary first. The "pike" in this case referred to a turnpike. Conflation with the similar-meaning phrase "in the pipeline" lead to the rise of "down the pipe." Both hrases are in use today. I chose a baseball-related definition in my clue in hopes of avoiding confusion, but I have found examples of both phrases used interchangeably.

On my soapbox: Millions of homes get their water through pipes made of toxic lead that can leach out and poison our families. Isn't it time to require the removal of all lead pipes from our water system?

– puzzle by John Wrenholt

The inspiration for this puzzle came from my title "On the Up and Up" which my crossword brain parsed into two parts: "On the Up" ("___ UP" phrases literally going upward in the grid) and "and Up" (+ the inferred UP).

Phrases with the pattern *UP were more than plentiful on XWord Info (over 2,000!), so I knew I needed to tighten (up) my concept big time. Coincidentally, my bank was advertising STEP UP CDs at the time, and that's when I saw the semordnilap STEP/PETS, and I was off to the races, looking for UP phrases that spelled a legitimate word going down in the grid. I then further constrained my theme by getting rid of phrases with articles, prepositions, and conjunctions such as LIVE UP TO THE HYPE and KEEP UP WITH THE JONESES, although I did make an exception with the colorful KISS AND MADE UP theme entry.

With only 88 theme squares, I was concerned that my theme wasn't dense enough and tried to fit in MOP UP OPERATION and PIN-UP CALENDARS at 41 and 91-across, respectively, but my aesthetic brain said no - due to the ugly build (up) of black squares in certain areas.

Hope you enjoy the solve!

– puzzle by Tracy Gray

I love playing with the onomatopoeia-ness of words like BLABBERMOUTH, TATTLETALE, etc. As a matter of fact, TATTLETALE was in the first version, Will and Company loved the idea of the puzzle theme but felt it didn't have the same ring as the other three. The dictionary lists it as a synonym, but who am I to argue?!

SO, all I had to do was come up with another ten-letter word that was fun and an exact match to the others and rewrite the whole puzzle from scratch!

LOQUACIOUS is indeed ten letters, but, alas, an adjective not a noun like the others. Complete credit to Sam Ezersky for suggesting not-on-my-radar TALKAHOLIC!!!

And for those who don't know BLATHERSKITE, well, neither did I. Learn something new every day ... even on a Monday!

They also pushed back on the word CALOR for a Monday. Spanish 1, everybody! Reminds me of course of the old joke: What do you call someone who speaks three languages? TRILINGUAL. What do you call someone who speaks two languages? BILINGUAL. What do you call someone who only speaks one language? AMERICAN.

– puzzle by Andrea Carla Michaels

While working on this idea in April 2018, I tried to make the Greek letters break across a two-word phrase, and I tried to use as many four- and five-letter Greek letters (THETA, ALPHA, OMEGA, ZETA, IOTA) and as few three-letter Greek letters (RHO) as possible. But to make it work, I had to break the rule about not sectioning off the grid with a single pair of blocks, and I had to let in some bits of fill I wish I could have avoided (ESSO, YEO, ANSE, ARTE, ANIS, and SECY) some of which pile up in the middle bottom in an ugly way.

The interlock dictated much of the grid design, so a 72-word count was a necessity, not something I was shooting for! I hope I included enough good stuff in the long answers to make up for the short fill. I also wish I could have made them all look like perfect plus-signs, but I hope just the general notion of "Greek letters crossing" will work in solvers' minds.

Oh, one more thing: I hope solvers won't be thrown by the word PITA hiding in PIT AGAINST directly beneath GREEK CROSS. I worked for a long time to remove that, but in the end, couldn't eliminate it.

– puzzle by John Guzzetta

Brendan approached me about this project months ago, and I loved the idea! But the trick was to make a puzzle that would work for Brendan and also work as a normal New York Times crossword that would be solved by millions of people who weren't proposing to a woman named Amanda.

We went back and forth, brainstorming ideas. Song titles? Top places to propose? Adding IDO to phrases to make wacky entries? Then Brendan's best friend Mark (also a crossword enthusiast) suggested the rebus angle. We hit on "rings in little boxes," and it all clicked.

One of the funniest moments occurred when Brendan and I saw each other at the Lollapuzzoola crossword tournament last month. We'd been exchanging emails for months and had bonded over crosswords and our shared love of Marvel movies. But of course, Amanda, who named the tournament, was there too, so Brendan and I had to pretend that we barely knew each other. I think we pulled it off OK. Thank goodness Brendan's an accomplished actor.

And to add a touch of poignancy, Amanda's love of puzzles was passed down to her from her father Gilbert, which she wrote about when our puzzle was published in 2012. He passed away in July but not before Brendan thought to share his proposal secret, to which Gil, knowing he had days to live, tearfully responded: "Thank you for giving me something to look forward to."

Many thanks to Will and his team for helping to put this all together. And congratulations to the happy couple!

– puzzle by Doug Peterson

I am thrilled to be making my New York Times debut and to be making the list of teenage constructors (just barely)! I've loved solving for a long time, so when I came across the NYT article series on "How to Build a Crossword Puzzle" last year, I decided to give it a shot. Though it was my goal, I didn't imagine that I would be seeing my name above a puzzle in The Times, especially not with my first themeless submission. I have to thank Jeff Chen, who has been mentoring me over the past year. I doubt I'd be here without his help!

This puzzle started with the grid. I appreciate nice looking Friday/Saturday grids, so I messed around with it until I had this nice wheel looking one. Being a denizen of the midwest and tornado alley, I seeded the puzzle with TORNADO TRACKERS. Once I found another 15 letter entry to cross it, the nature of the grid made it so that I only had a couple of routes to choose to fill the rest of it out. I started with the NW and SE quadrants. I particularly like what I turned out there. 29- and 30-Down paired nicely, and 3-Down is just such a lovely and quirky entry.

I hope everyone finds this to be an enjoyable Friday solve!

– puzzle by Jack Mowat

In the aggregate, I spent more time creating this puzzle than any other I have ever made — by a significant margin. Since I first started working on it in January of 2017, I estimate I spent well over 100 hours (and probably more than 200 hours) working and re-working this idea.

As originally submitted, the puzzle had SWISS ROLL at 1-Across and DESSERT CASES in the last row. It also had a much more aggressive grid pattern, with only three blocks in the lower right corner and only nine 3-letter words along the width of the outermost spiral (as opposed to 12 such words in the final version).

The major breakthroughs that finally enabled the fill to pass muster with Will were (1) scaling back the lower-right corner (turning that corner with 6 blocks is much easier than with only 3); (2) replacing DESSERT CASES with the shorter PATISSERIE (or PATISSERIES in some incarnations); and (3) moving the thematic content to places that were easier to work with than the top and bottom. I also spent a lot of time minutely adjusting the shape of the spiral in different ways. Even moving a single block by one space often greatly changed the fill possibilities. And due to the extremely high level of interlock, replacing even a few objectionable words typically required reworking the entire puzzle.

The caliber of fill cleanliness that the NYT requires for a Friday or Saturday puzzle is extremely high, and it was quite difficult to pull off this grid shape and mini-theme to that exacting standard. During the revision process, I would sometimes put the puzzle away in frustration for months at a time before crawling back to it again. I'm not sure why, but I really wanted to get this one over the finish line.

– puzzle by Alex Eaton-Salners