Thumbnails

I know solvers are often turned off by an abundance of names in the grid, but I assure you the names in this crossword are quite purposeful and personal to me. In fact, this puzzle is filled with dozens, if not baker's dozens, of names that have real meaning in my life. To highlight just a few:

SHELBY (1D) is my sister's name.

DANNY (7D) is the name of one of my oldest friends. It's also the name I'm called by people who've met me once and only vaguely remember my real name.

RYAN (45A) is my college best friend's name.

SEXILED (2D) was sadly a frequent nickname of mine in college.

So was SNOTTY (41D), less so because of any hoity-toity attitude and more because of my severe allergies to dander and pollen.

ELI (39A) is the name I'm called by people who've met me once and don't have the vaguest idea what my real name is.

SIRI (24A) is the name of the virtual assistant in my iPhone 13.

SUZANNE (18A) is the name of the virtual assistant in my gray-blue Nokia flip phone. Still waiting for her to answer my questions.

MANI PEDI (16A) is my rap name.

RAP STAR (14A) is the name I use when I check into nail salons.

And ZOOM MEETING (19D) is the name I'm called by people who've both never met me and apparently don't know what a name is.

Again, I assure you these are all 100% real, or my name isn't Eli Snotty Distenfeld.

– puzzle by David Distenfeld

It's no secret that I like to construct puzzles with turns and movement. In the past (spoiler alert, if you haven't solved my puzzles), I've had solvers watching their steps, turning right on red, and doing the downward dog, crossword-style. So, after a few rides on an escalator last Christmas at my local mall, I decided to take my next crossword "to a whole new level" (my original submitted title).

My general idea was to find common methods of getting from one level to another. Phrases would start on one row, climb or descend, and then end on another row with a legitimate word that could be clued. This concept avoided the use of nonsense words at the end of the theme entries with a clue number and "---", but nixed fun phrases such as PARACHUTE PANTS and CANNONBALL ADDERLEY.

The crossword Gods were also unhelpful with phrases that included embedded conveyances such as ESCALATOR or ELEVATOR, so my choices of theme entries were as limited as ever for moving up and down.

My first submission included CD LADDERING, a term considered too niche by the Times' team, so I substituted PARACHUTE IN, which required an entire grid rewrite. UPS and DOWNS, indeed!

– puzzle by Tracy Gray

One day, for reasons which escape me now, I tried a Thursday puzzle. Previously, I had stuck to early-week puzzles and minis, autocheck on, and was very much content with life. I was shocked to learn afterwards that the Thursday puzzle's words included black squares. Surely, that was illegal?? Well, over time, I accumulated many colorful expressions for Thursdays. Perhaps my Ghanaian day-of-the-week first name subconsciously led me towards creating a day-of-the-week puzzle.

Constructing was hard, however, like Sudoku with words. You put one entry down only to realize it couldn't work with another. Then there were special puzzle rules, like symmetry. It led me to feel 75% intrigued about the whole thing with a 25% slice of who was I kidding. But as previous constructors' notes assured me that plebeians could create puzzles, I pressed onward.

My Scrabble wordlist betrayed me, and my puzzle was returned for workshopping. Looking at you, ZAS. So, I wised up and got mentored. Many thanks to Erik @ The Crossword Puzzle Collaboration Directory for nixing several dubious entries and helping me reframe my construction approach. Shout-out to family, friends, colleagues, and students who supported my efforts.

Hope you have a laugh with this one. We were all beginners once, no?

– puzzle by Ekua Ewool

This must set a record for most black squares in a weekday puzzle, right?

I was worried it might be a nonstarter with those four extra rows and unchecked squares. And if accepted, I had no clue what day of week it could run. The theme didn't feel tricky or dense enough for Wed/Thu, but the word count put it firmly in themeless territory. Yet here we are with my first Friday — hopefully people aren't too bummed about missing out on their traditional breezy themeless.

This was an interesting construction challenge, with no symmetry but a unique set of new constraints:

1. I decided the black squares should use each piece exactly twice with none of them touching.
2. I wanted one of the lines to be placed directly above the TETRIS slot at the bottom.
3. I felt all theme entries needed to be Downs

From there it was just a lot of grid tinkering until I settled on a promising skeleton. As a bonus, this layout lends itself to a nice post-solve animation (fingers crossed the NYT wizards were able to make that happen). Hope you enjoy!

– puzzle by Brandon Koppy

Although crossword solvers only see the finished product, most puzzles leave behind a cutting-room floor, sometimes one of substantial proportions. In this case, my search for opposites led me to places from which I would have to recede as gracefully as possible — so the cutting-room floor included such entries as WESTERN BOW TIES ("Neckwear for Wyatt Earp"), CLOSE WINDOWS ("End a PC session") and PAJAMA PANTS ("Bottoms at bedtime"). I guess the first two were considered a bit forced, while PAJAMA PANTS led to the philosophical question of whether MA and PA are opposites or merely counterparts. (Having just visited my parents this past week, I would say "both.")

But I was thrilled that KARLA BONOFF was not relegated to the discard pile . . . although I wonder whether I'll hear from solvers who think she should have been! (Note to those solvers: You're wrong. Just have a seat in your family room and listen to Linda Ronstadt's Someone to Lay Down Beside Me.)

Getting deeper into the weeds, the elimination of WESTERN BOW TIES left me with a 14-letter entry (HEART OF ROMAINE) that had no counterpart, leaving me temporarily flummoxed until the editors suggested that I make the puzzle 21 x 22. Wow — my first non-square puzzle ever! (Here's the part where I confess that I would never have thought of that. I was too busy lamenting that the 15-letter entry HEARTS OF ROMAINE wouldn't work!)

But I don't think I'll take the non-square route very often. I was stunned by just how out of balance I was for the remainder of the construction. Amazing. I already knew that crossword construction was finely calibrated, with 138 words for a 21x21 puzzle wildly different from 140 words, etc. But adding an extra column left me dazed, confused, and without any confidence that the construction would have a happy ending. At least, I think it did, and I hope that solvers agree.

– puzzle by Derrick Niederman

Wait a second... No rebuses, no grid art, no tricksy theme shenanigans, no circled or shaded squares, no rule breaking... Did I even make this puzzle?

Well, yes. While this is my tenth (!!!) puzzle to run, it's actually only the second one I made chronologically, before I got into my Thursday groove. Now, I could use that as an excuse for some fill dodginess but I'm gonna stand up for myself and say I'm proud of 2019 Adam's work here.

And don't worry, I'll be back to my regular tricksiness soon.

In the meantime though, if you are looking for a twisty word challenge, I recently launched a new daily word game! It's called Anigrams, and it's all about unscrambling words of increasing lengths. I hope you'll give it a play, and feel free to hit me up with feedback on the bird app.

Can you make it all the way to the ?

– puzzle by Adam Wagner

Ever had a song get stuck in your head? Yeah, me too….

The final iteration of this grid results from a gradual evolution from quaint earworm to NYT publication. The Happy Trails puzzle started as the reveal for a Monday puzzle containing expressions with different kinds of trails. However, as Roy Rogers and Dale Evans attest to in the song, "Some trails are happy ones, others are blue." While ski and hiking trails may indeed make people happy, paper and vapor trails may not.

That left me singing a different song, "Road to Nowhere," for a while during the construction of this one. So, I put the concept on ice for the winter and then revisited it with some freshness in the spring. Once I thought of creating winding trails out of the circles, it only became a matter of filling them with workable synonyms for "happy."

Adding the two singers' convenient nine-letter names into the grid rounded out the puzzle and gave it a stronger identity more fitting for a Wednesday publication.

– puzzle by Michael Dewey

I enjoy puzzles that play with idioms — often by making them literal and thereby skewing their meaning entirely — so I look for idioms that give me such opportunities. I particularly enjoy finding idioms or phrases that can be depicted graphically in a puzzle. So I have made theme answers aptly cross each other, I arranged theme answers that create images, and I presented other idioms visually in their own lines. This can make it difficult to fit together a solid grid, but that's my fun, challenging part of the puzzle.

Initially, I thought I would include the complete raised/lowered words in an atypical grid with squares protruding above and below, but that would have made 1-, 2-, 3-, and 4-Down all theme answers, and the grid itself would have revealed the theme pretty immediately. So instead, I left it to the solver to discover the need to write the extra letters above or below the grid. (I do, however, have friends who aren't crossword solvers but who enjoy hearing that I've had another puzzle published. Special for them, I made the easier version with the more obvious grid. It helps to have connections!)

Playing with up and down idioms and phrases, there were lots of options to work with. I could have "put down roots," "dropped anchor," "lifted weights," or "pulled up stakes." I hope that this puzzle "lifted your spirits" without "raising your hackles," even if you needed to ask a friend to "drop a hint."

– puzzle by Ruth Bloomfield Margolin

This is my first themeless puzzle in the New York Times, and it took some time to get here! While some constructors surely create impressive themeless puzzles with expert efficiency, I am not one of them. I tend to meander slowly through options, falling in love with various words and taking too long to realize they'll never work. Luckily, I enjoy the process enough that I don't mind all the time it takes me, and maybe I'll even have honed my process when the next one gets accepted.

If you'd like to see some of my other work, check out my 9x9 puzzles every Tuesday at Vox.com. I'd also like to point people to Do the Work! An Antiracist Activity Book by W. Kamau Bell and Kate Schatz. I played a small part in this project as an editor, but Adesina O. Koiki made some really excellent crossword puzzles that everyone should try. Plus there are many other puzzles and activities to enjoy in this fun, engaging, inspiring book.

– puzzle by Juliana Tringali Golden

LESLIE: This may be your first time seeing my byline, but it's not my first puzzle; I've previously published under my maiden name, Leslie Rogers.

It was a delight, as always, to collaborate with Andrea — she has such an eye for picking out which themes will be successful, and she brings so much joy to the discussion of theme entries. Self-indulgently, I would have liked to represent my household's professions with OK COMPUTER and HIS DARK MATERIALS, but hopefully, the set we landed on is more cohesive and accessible.

To my fellow constructors: I certainly do not recommend using a 4x14 set of theme answers. If you want to stick to 38 or 40 blocks and include long bonus entries, those bonuses will likely either have to (1) go in the same direction as the theme (in this case, down) and possibly cause confusion about whether they are theme answers, or (2) go in the opposite direction and cross at least three theme answers apiece, which is very constraining. Given the constraints, I'm glad to have at least squeezed two longer bonuses in. Enjoy the puzzle!

ACME: Meeting Leslie right here in San Francisco was one of the many things I love so much about the puzzle community! We had such fun working on our first CAP AND GOWN puzzle, despite our different ages and backgrounds (I didn't know DATASET, she didn't know BILLY IDOL ... OK Zoomer!), now Leslie has pointed out we are two for two! ;)

This one was all her idea, I just coached from the sidelines when I thought four 14s would be tough to tackle. I was pushing for LET'S GET PHYSICAL which was a 15 ... This puzzle was created so long ago, Ms. Olivia Newton-John was still alive and well, but that would've made for a super tribute!

We had a dozen back and forths about some of the fill (and a little clean-up in one corner at the editor's request), but overall, a surprisingly smooth ride. I'm down for science, down for a third collaboration, and just down for Ms. Rogers in general!

– puzzle by Leslie Young and Andrea Carla Michaels

Last winter, I bought a deck of cards at a puzzle show, and while flipping through them one day, I realized there's an ACE in FACE CARDS. I love hidden word themes, and from this seed, BLACKJACK was an easy follow up, but I initially dropped it since JACK isn't really hidden. TRICK TAKING GAME was another early candidate, but it wasn't until I found BREAKS EVEN that I thought to have the hidden values add to 21 with BLACKJACK as the revealer. From there, I pored through casino related words and eventually hit the jackpot with PLACES A BET and AMOUNT WON — a symmetric theme set with both one and eleven as values for the ACEs!

In a different universe, this puzzle would have had "24" as the theme, a game where you make four cards equal 24 with any order of operations. In fact, my final set of hidden values still does this (7+1)*(2+1) = 24, but that's probably too much math for a crossword.

This debut puzzle is a full circle moment — Wyna Liu wrote me feedback for the first puzzle I ever submitted, and I am so grateful for her mentorship throughout the Diverse Crossword Constructor Fellowship. Excited to keep constructing!

– puzzle by Helen Chen

This puzzle theme depended on finding four individuals with H-E-R-E initials in their name, but aside from titans of industry, presidents, and the occasional entertainer, they were in short supply, especially when trying for grid symmetry. William H. Bonney, Robert E. Lee, Gerald R. Ford, and Wile E. Coyote all had their time in the sun.

Richard E. Grant was the final E in my original submission, but the NYT team didn't think he was recognizable enough (sorry, Richard). They suggested Chuck E. Cheese, but they acknowledged that this would mess with symmetry. I put the puzzle away for five months and waited for inspiration to strike. That came in the form of Finn Vigeland's 6/1/21 puzzle that stacked names in the 3/4 and 12/13 rows and used a middle revealer. After moving my revealer to the middle and stacking the names, I finally had a layout using all the individuals that the NYT team wanted. Fill was challenging given the stacked names, but we worked through it.

I dedicate this puzzle to my boys Lucas J. and Jack P., to whom I hope I gave cool initials if they choose to use them.

– puzzle by Jeff Stillman