"In Formation, Please" - December 9, 2022

[Joe Ross]

I picked a bad day to not retire as an air traffic controller...

[MatthewL]

It's interesting to see all the responses regarding the caret/wedge/vee rabbit hole versus others who found the meta intended by Mike. Personally, I saw nothing the first day I stared at this -- just the clue at 64A, but no idea what to do with it. Didn't even really find any bunny hole that looked worth pursuing. The next day, I decided to redo the puzzle, and that's when the clue at 23D jumped out at me -- don't know how I missed that the first time around. Once I found that, I just started looking for words in vee form, and pretty soon found the first geese, and from there it was off to the races. Literally went from 0 to 100. I guess that's how it goes sometimes.

[vandono]

Count me among the caret/wedge/vee crowd. I really wanted that to work, but in a way I also felt like it wasn't as clean as his puzzles are.

Edited to add: This is another one that just boggles my mind at how a constructor goes from interesting idea to successful execution in getting those pieces to fit neatly within the constraints of a crossword.

[Dplass]

Here's the mess I made of my grid. Not sure how I would have done all this without paper (thinking about what @woozy said; I think it was woozy...)

[RichA2]

After finding the first flock of geese, I looked for other formations. I took the WEDGE quest so far that I found Door starting with the D at 21D, and it was shaped sort of like a wedge doorstop as well. But that rabbit hole ended there and I put the puzzle aside.

A couple of hours later, it dawned on me that maybe all three of the formations we were directed to find were VEEs of geese, and it was easy from there.

Another nice construction.

[MikeMillerwsj]

The contest answer is FLIGHT STRIPS. As suggested by 33-Down (“Formation of geese,” VEE), there are three spots in the grid where the letters of GEESE form a V. The letters contained within the V’s (“in formation”) spell the contest answer.

A very clever visual twist this week, with a few nice clues (like 33D and 64A) to help light the way. We had 1181 entries this week, with 77% correct, right around our usual level. Incorrect guesses included MOON (9), RUNWAY (11), STAIRCASES (7), and END ZONE (5).

Congrats to this week's winner: Coreen Steinbach of Pompey, NY!

[Efox999]

I'm not a particular fan of the puzzles that are so visually oriented on the answer letters - probably a result of my own handwriting! I had a strong sense of how the meta was constructed but needed a nudge from the Sunday zoomers. Maybe I need some 3D glasses too...

[HunterX]

Yeah, that's my quibble. These are flight strips:
flight strips.jpg

I did see some dictionaries show the other meaning for flight strip, so I guess someone some time must have used it that way.

But not in the real world. Airplanes land at airports, airstrips, airfields, aerodromes. I've never heard flight strip as anything other than the little strips of paper used by air traffic controllers.

Still a fun and clever puzzle.

Wikipedia calls those "Flight Progress Strips."

And Wordnik defines Flight Strip as "An airfield without normal airport facilities."

I'd never heard of Flight Strips before. But when I found the 3 GEESE and saw that they were the words spelled by the letters, in order, inside the V's, I didn't bother to check what definition was most widely accepted.

[Annabelle]

I saw the answer vee in the grid, but the geese flew right over my head. Hope to see the gang on shore next week!

[Deb F]

Saw the Vee in 33D and never looked back. Didn't even catch 64A. Very clever construction. Funny thing, I am running out of toner so when I printed it, about 1/3 of the clues were really hard to read. Had to go back and forth between the online version and my very poor copy.

Have a great week, Muggles. See you at Office Depot!!!

[The XWord Rabbit]

After a couple of mostly breezy weeks Mr. Shenk provided a somewhat bigger challenge. “In Formation, Please” offered up a couple of hints, most notably 64A “Number of formations to look for” (three) and 33D “Formation of Geese” (vee). That was meant to lead Muggles to three places in the grid where the letters G-E-E-S-E occupied 5 squares in a V-formation. The four letters inside each of those V’s, taken in order spelled out the meta: FLIGHT STRIPS.

There was much talk of wedges and carets -- especially carets. The X-Word Rabbit always gets excited when talking about carets, although his spelling is a bit different. (Bird Lives already found that joke, but it’s not beneath your Rabbit to "appropriate" worthy ideas.)

We have a legitimate Rabbit Hole nomination this week, notable for its eloquence and humor. Remember a few weeks back when your Rabbit reminded everyone that those things were important? Well, Colin took that to heart with this response:

“Didn’t think of looking for GEESE-type VEEs. Spent too long on the three small VEEs formed by three Is, Es and As and the letters (T, D and L) contained within. Tried to force fit but could only come up with Touchdown Locations which also took me down footballing terms, but it all seemed too far-fetched. Then I noticed two more 3-letter vees (Ss and Ts) pointing horizontally, so that broke the guidance of 64A. After a short but fruitless search for other formation shapes, I carefully folded the crossword into a combo of THREE VEES and gracefully glided my beautiful, yet incomplete, flying crossword into its final landing place. If it had landed with a noisy and somewhat inelegant splash on water, the link to GEESE might have ignited my dulled brain. But alas, it just fell gracefully, narrowly missing my Sunday nightcap glass by an inch, indicating it was time to throw in the towel.”

The weeks fly by, don’t they? 22 nominations since we began with the August 5th puzzle.
How can so many go so wrong so quickly? Until next week, then.

[mydogsam]

Chased Wedge and Caret too, never saw those damn geese right on the front lawn.

Got to say though, even if I had spotted the birds, "flight strips" is kind of obscure. Air strip, yes, but the only use of flight strip Google could find was an obscure air traffic controller term.

You are quite correct.

Flight strips were printed slips of paper that air traffic controllers used to keep track of their assigned aircraft. Paper flight strips are being converted to electronic versions (see https://www.faa.gov/air_traffic/technology/tfdm/efs ). Either way, I don't think I'd want to land an airplane there.

My husband (retired USN pilot) happened to be sitting beside me when I found the metanism and asked him if he had ever heard of a flight strip. He referred to the air traffic control meaning and then went on to talk about how emergency air strips can be found alongside highways in Europe. By that time I had found this as the first definition for flight strip in the Merriam-Webster dictionary: "an auxiliary or emergency landing field alongside a highway".

Interesting.. I've actually heard the term "flight strips" when describing Alien Visitors attempts to land their vehicles in a farmers field. Of course the "flight" has to do with the "flight landing" itself, while the "strips" has to do with the stripping of crops during the landing, which leads to the phenomenon more commonly referred to as "crop circles"..

[LadyBird]

Went to the movie theater tonight to see "I Heard the Bells". Saw one of the new words that I learned from the puzzle this week.

[Inca]

Here's the mess I made of my grid. Not sure how I would have done all this without paper (thinking about what @woozy said; I think it was woozy...)

20221210_092751.jpg

I never use paper. Can I use that as an excuse for not solving this week. Probably not

[JJD]

I'm not a particular fan of the puzzles that are so visually oriented on the answer letters - probably a result of my own handwriting! I had a strong sense of how the meta was constructed but needed a nudge from the Sunday zoomers. Maybe I need some 3D glasses too...

Yeah… I get that. I usually print 2+ copies of the puzzle so that my first one can be messy and then I will intentionally fill in another very neatly so that my handwriting/scribbles/corrections aren’t visually obscuring parts of the mechanism I need to see.

[Dplass]

Diagonals...why'd it have to be diagonals..

See also viewtopic.php?p=78618&hilit=Diagonals#p78618

[pjc]

I was kind of hoping that FLIGHT STRIPS were those things on wooden staircases that you glue on to prevent people slipping and that 'landings' referred to the landing at the top of a staircase - a classic case of misdirection! But - there's nothing out there in Google-land that indicates that's a name for those things.

[DrTom]

Well I almost managed to solve (or at least get a suitable word) via a completely incorrect mechanism.

Caret, Vee and Wedge are all V shapes ^, V, > so I just had to find where they pointed. Well that is easy I was given a reference; Cartesian plane divider. So count across 8 and draw a line down the grid, then down 8 and do the same. BINGO the E of appease is right there (it appeased my search). So go left > and right< and up ^ and down V and you get PAVE, after which you spend hours looking for the MENTS until finally you weepingly ask a friend if you are on the right track and they simply respond FORMATIONS OF GEESE and then everything falls into place, you begin to smack your head with the flat of your palm and you curse your "gotta find a really odd mechanism for this one" when the REAL mechanism has almost been handed to you....sigh!

[MajordomoTom]

I was also on the caret/wedge/vee "train" and was looking for patterns in the grid which fit those shapes (of the same letters) and wanting the letter(s) that were "inside" those shapes.

So correct concept, not correctly applied. Failed to take the "Formation of GEESE" clue literally.

[The XWord Rabbit]

It has just been brought to your Rabbit's attention Dr. Tom's response. And yes, it is, indeed, worthy of a nomination.
Please don't take this as a sign of "submit your remarks, whenever..." Your Rabbit does get busy, but this one was too good
to let go unnoticed. Congrats to the good doctor!

Well I almost managed to solve (or at least get a suitable word) via a completely incorrect mechanism.

Caret, Vee and Wedge are all V shapes ^, V, > so I just had to find where they pointed. Well that is easy I was given a reference; Cartesian plane divider. So count across 8 and draw a line down the grid, then down 8 and do the same. BINGO the E of appease is right there (it appeased my search). So go left > and right< and up ^ and down V and you get PAVE, after which you spend hours looking for the MENTS until finally you weepingly ask a friend if you are on the right track and they simply respond FORMATIONS OF GEESE and then everything falls into place, you begin to smack your head with the flat of your palm and you curse your "gotta find a really odd mechanism for this one" when the REAL mechanism has almost been handed to you....sigh!