Margaret Seikel and Sophia Maymudes team up for a Friday themeless that sparkles.

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FRIDAY PUZZLE — Happy Friday, solvers! Today we have a collaboration from Margaret Seikel and Sophia Maymudes. This is their second collaboration and second Friday together, after their excellent puzzle from June.

I loved feeling the personality of this puzzle while I was solving it. I could tell from the choice of clues and entries what the constructors cared about and chose to emphasize.

This puzzle is a perfect example of why the Friday crossword is my favorite of the week (shh … don’t tell the Monday-to-Wednesday puzzles that I usually write about). Fridays have all the flexibility inherent in a themeless grid, giving constructors the space to include entries that they love, while not requiring overly challenging clues to pump up the difficulty, as you’ll sometimes see on Saturdays. This puzzle is a lively, voicey, freewheeling journey through the eyes of the constructors, and I loved every minute of it.

11A. There are a lot of things that “Kings and queens, e.g.” could be. Royals? Rulers? Mattresses? OK, that last one has too many letters. Today the answer is PIECES, as in chess PIECES.

13A. The wordplay clue “Discreet look?” refers to the “NO-MAKEUP” MAKEUP cosmetics trend of applying minimalist makeup that is intended to look natural. As of 2021, this trend, according to The New York Times’s Styles section, was on its way out.

20A. I had never heard of an mbira before encountering the clue “What musicians pluck on an mbira,” but I was familiar with the concept of a “thumb piano,” of which the mbira is one example. The mbira, the national instrument of Zimbabwe, is played by plucking keys or TINEs attached to a wooden block. In researching this clue, I came across a lovely Google doodle celebrating the mbira; I highly recommend checking it out.

22A. “One who collects just for kicks?” is a SNEAKERHEAD. “Kicks” is slang for shoes, and a SNEAKERHEAD is a person who, as you might have guessed, collects sneakers.

30A. A Shell filling station might be a place to pump gas, but a “Shell filling station?” with a question mark is a TACO BAR, where you might fill a TACO shell with any of a wide variety of TACO fillings. I love when constructors disguise words as proper nouns, and vice versa, by putting them at the start of a clue, where the capital letter could mean “this is a proper noun” or “this is just how clues start.” It’s tricky!

45A. “One end of Suez?” is ZEE, which is the letter on the end of the word Suez. I waited until I had the crossing to fill in that second E because I wasn’t sure if the answer was ZEE or zed, as the letter is spelled in Egypt, where Suez is found.

49A. I’ve always thought CONTENT CREATOR (“One who makes videos, e.g.”) is such a funny euphemism for “person trying to become famous as an online influencer.” It sounds so legitimate! And for some people, it is quite a lucrative occupation.

55A. “One side of a ’90s boy band rivalry” is ’NSYNC. The other side of this rivalry, of course, is the Backstreet Boys.

2D. I was so excited when sport climbing was introduced as an Olympic sport in 2020. It’s an incredible sport, and the climbers who compete at the international level are mind-blowingly talented. The clue “___ climbing (discipline that debuted at the 2020 Olympics)” might have tripped up solvers who wanted “rock” to go in that blank, but the answer is LEAD climbing, which is one part of the combined Olympic event (along with speed climbing and bouldering).

9D. I had no idea that an IGUANA was a “Lizard with a third eye.” Apparently, such an eye, found on the top of the head, is called a parietal eye and is used for thermoregulation and for regulation of the circadian rhythm. It seems that this is a feature of most lizards, not just IGUANAs.

29D. I like a good ellipsis clue, where either side of the ellipsis could be a clue on its own. Here, “Choose … or choice” is the clue for SELECT because both words mean SELECT (if you interpret “choice” as an adjective meaning “of excellent quality”).

44D. Finally, a “Creepy story?” is an ATTIC, as in the story (floor) of a house where all of the creaky noises and spiders live.

Margaret Seikel: Most themeless puzzles have a dozen or more answers with at least eight letters. This one may have only four, but I think they really pack a punch. Three of the four seeds were in the original grid skeleton. However, Sophia’s addition of CONTENT CREATOR dramatically opened up the fill possibilities for the bottom half. As always, it was so fun to send edits back and forth, focusing on making the midlength fill shine.

Sophia Maymudes: I’m proud of how many of our submitted clues made it into this puzzle, although my favorite — “You shall not pass!” for BALLHOG — was tragically cut. It’s always a blast to work with Margaret, and I’m looking forward to more collabs in the future.

The New York Times Crossword has an open submission system, and you can submit your puzzles online. For tips on how to get started, read our series, “How to Make a Crossword Puzzle.”

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