Grid: 20 minutes; meta: 15 extra 

Mike Shenk’s Wall Street Journal contest crossword, “In Formation, Please” — Conrad’s writeup.

WSJ Contest – 12.09.22 – answer

This week we’re searching for sure locations for landings. No apparent theme entries jumped out, so I checked the final horizontal entry (the place Mike typically stashes an additional clue): THREE, clued as “Number of formations to look for.” Then I noticed Mike’s further clue at 33d (VEE, clued as “Formation of geese”). I initially seemed for V-shaped phrase patterns within the grid (having missed Mike’s nudge “…of geese”). I didn’t spot something, so I scanned for G’s within the grid and I had the rabbit: the grid had THREE geese in VEE-shaped formation.

The VEE-shaped GEESE cradled the phrase FLIGHT STRIPS, our contest answer.