Mary Lou Guizzo’s puzzle celebrates brilliance.

TUESDAY PUZZLE — Well, this puzzle certainly makes a good impression! This is Mary Lou Guizzo’s 29th New York Times Crossword puzzle, and her veteran constructing chops are definitely on display. As the theme clues indicate, it honors a series of Nobelists who share a certain trait that should become clear as the puzzle comes together.

Let’s take a peek at some of the tougher clues in this puzzle and then dive into the theme!

1A. I’m no classic film buff, so the opening clue “Bacall’s partner in a classic Hollywood romance, informally” didn’t do much for me in terms of helping me arrive at BOGIE, which I have learned is a nickname for Humphrey Bogart. I’m sure there are many solvers for whom this was an absolute gimme.

6A. A question mark in the clue indicates a pun, and in this case the pun is on the word “apple” in the clue “Apple pick?” It refers not to an apple you might pick in an orchard, but to an Apple you might pick for your desktop computer: an IMAC.

16A. I like the clue “Fathom or foot” because both words can be used as verbs (as in “fathom that!” or “foot the bill”), but in this case both are nouns. Specifically, fathom and foot are UNITs of distance.

28A. This is a bit of crossword glue that new solvers may not have encountered before: “Old atlas inits.” is a typical clue for SSR, which stands for soviet socialist republic. Cold War-era atlases used this initialism to indicate that a country was part of the Soviet Union.

68A. Another crossword standby is the “Bygone G.M. car” OLDS, as in the OLDSmobile, created by Ransom E. OLDS.

26D. I enjoyed the clue “A hot one makes a good impression,” which points to so many things! A hot take? A hot date? But no, the thing that makes a good impression is a hot IRON, which could certainly make a good impression on your clothes (or a bad one, if you leave it in one place for too long, as I learned the first time I tried to IRON a shirt).

47D. I was unfamiliar with the “Military aviation wing” AIR ARM, but some internet searching indicates that the Fleet AIR ARM is the aviation division of Britain’s Royal Navy. This, I assume, is essentially the British equivalent of whatever it was Maverick and Goose did in “Top Gun.”

In celebration of International Women’s Day, Ms. Guizzo has created a grid honoring women who have won Nobel Prizes, each from a different country and prize category.

Ms. Guizzo’s Constructor Notes (below) do a far better job of discussing this theme than I ever could, so I will use this space just to admire the ambitious construction of this puzzle. That’s a lot of names to squeeze in to a 15-by-15 grid, and Ms. Guizzo pulls it off admirably, with only a sprinkling of crossword glue holding it together.

Given that some of these women may be unfamiliar to solvers, Ms. Guizzo had the added challenge of ensuring that every cross through their names was unambiguous (which is particularly important in an early-week puzzle like a Tuesday). This can be a significant challenge for constructors, but Ms. Guizzo absolutely nails it — there wasn’t a single point in the solve where I doubted a letter in one of the names.

It was a pleasure to honor the following female Nobelists in this puzzle on International Women’s Day: the poet and playwright NELLY SACHS, the biochemist and pharmacologist GERTRUDE ELION, the physicist DONNA STRICKLAND, the peace activist BETTY WILLIAMS and the physicist and chemist MARIE CURIE.

I would like to have packed more diversity into this puzzle with entires such as the novelist Toni Morrison; the Liberian peace activist Leymah Gbowee; the Guatemalan human rights activist and feminist Rigoberta Menchú; the Yemeni journalist, politician and human rights activist Tawakkol Karman; and the Australian American biological researcher Elizabeth Blackburn.

However, it was difficult to work five different female Nobelists of five different countries from each of the five original Nobel categories into a Tuesday-level grid.

Unfortunately, part of the difficulty has to do with the small number of female laureates. Since the prize’s inception in 1901, just 58 women have been awarded Nobel Prizes, 6.2 percent of the 943 total unique individuals bestowed with the honor. (Diversity is a problem as well, with only 17 male or female Black Nobelists, 1.8 percent of the total.)

The dearth of female Nobelists is due in part to the fact that the work of deserving women has so often been overlooked. Rachel Carson, an American marine biologist and environmentalist, is one example. Other women, such as the physicists Lise Meitner and Chien-Shiung Wu, the chemist Rosalind Franklin, the microbiologist Esther Lederberg and the astrophysicist Jocelyn Bell Burnel, have seen their work contribute to their male colleagues’ Nobel Prizes. Additional reasons for the scarcity of female laureates include specious stereotypes and the STEM ceiling, with its structural and institutional barriers (gender pay gap, work-life balance issues, harassment, lack of networking opportunities and implicit biases such as the “Matilda effect”).

Who better to work with on this puzzle than someone who has fit five female names into a 15x grid before: Sally Hoelscher. Sally and I started this endeavor together, creating a 21x grid featuring female firsts. Tracy Bennett, a puzzle editor at The Times, responded by saying that the editorial team liked our idea but wanted a 15x grid to run on International Women’s Day. We initially declined, having put a lot of thought and work into our 21x grid, and having other projects in the works. (That 21x grid is in the Crosswords Club March packet.) However, I hated to pass up this opportunity and asked Sally if she’d reconsider. She didn’t have time in her busy schedule but said she looked forward to working on my New York Times puzzle on March 8. Thanks for that vote of confidence, Sally!

I tried to avoid additional names in the fill but wasn’t sorry to see ADELE and IDA B. Wells make appearances in the puzzle. I provided alternate clues for INA (Food Network’s “Barefoot Contessa” Garten) and IMA (American philanthropist Hogg, a.k.a. the first lady of Texas).

May this global holiday motivate us to work toward “gender equality today for a sustainable tomorrow.”

For a deeper dive into the stories of Nobel Prize-winning women, check out this piece by Gameplay staff writer Alexis Benveniste.

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.”

Almost finished solving but need a bit more help? We’ve got you covered.

Warning: There be spoilers ahead, but subscribers can take a peek at the answer key.

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