New York Times, Wednesday, February 1, 2023

Man, oh man. What a cool-but-flawed puzzle this one was. For a long time, I've been trying to find a way to use both gray squares and circles in the same grid. And I think this puzzle accomplishes that in a unique and compelling way. It's just a lot of fun to visually see the alien abductions take place on the page. And I'm such a sucker for puzzles that look fresh and exciting (check out my puzzles in Crucinova for some extreme examples of this!)

But oof. There were lots of constraints for this one. There just aren't a ton of vehicles that can use tractor beams. And most of them aren't symmetrical in length. And then, in order to have vertical intersections in the center of the word (because you can't have a tractor beam coming out of the side of a ship), it led to a very constrained grid. And, with such a rigid theme-set and grid, after about 30 hours of filling, I still ended up using far more ETOs and AARs than I personally would have loved.

But it's a poor builder who blames his tools. I stand by this puzzle, and I'm very proud to see it run. And I hope you enjoyed it too! Thanks for solving, and for reading this column.

Ten years ago, I was convinced there was a conspiracy. Was I the only one who didn't know that alien abductions involved cows? I'm thankful that I did my research then, because with all that legwork, today's puzzle made me beam.

(The MOTHER SHIP says that they'll serve Jeff for that last pun. Not a coincidence that the last Across entry is STEWS.)

The technical challenges in this grid design! Many tend to think, what's the big deal, having a couple of letters hanging off theme entries? COW, CAR, and MAN push everything up though, forcing FLYING SAUCER to levitate one row higher than you'd usually want. There's no way to avoid that, unless you somehow tuck COW to the left, or intersect it into another themer. Incorporating the abductees into SCOW, BARCAR, and MAGIC MAN is excellent work.

I don't mind a bit of ETO and AAR to make something this audacious work, but crossing AAR with ASANA feels unfair. Dan's already pushed the boundaries, though — extra cheaters where possible in rows 1 and 15. Given that it's a 16x15 grid, I might have tried going up to 82 words, trying to section that north off more. Tough to figure out exactly how.

[Diesel found in street racers?] … how apt a name is VIN Diesel for the "Fast & Furious" star? BALE is typically a dull entry at best, but the wordplay involved with [It's bound to be eaten by livestock]! A BALE is literally bound, by a hay baler … out of this world!

There's bound to be few SMILERS at the glue required to hold something this spacious together, but I appreciated the great bonuses like CHEAT SHEETS and CAPSICUM. Hot stuff! (That the aliens now are shaking onto my head …)