Heading out for the weekend

Tough NYT by Elizabeth Gorski. I don't recall seeing SCHMOOZEFEST, GOOIER, IMAMAZED, NEWSHOLE, LARGEEGG, or COCOONED in puzzles before. Excellent puzzle and a worthy challenge. It's nice to see HALFMOON referring to the actual moon rather than having the same clue I've seen twice recently (something along the lines of "Henry Hudson's ship"). Instead of filling in a recently developed gimme, I actually had to think for this one. I look forward to more late-week Gorski themelesses.

Merl Reagle's weekly PI puzzle was tougher than usual for me—often hard to guess where Merl's mind was going with his theme entries. They all made sense once they were filled in, but I had to fight for most of them through the crossings.

Mike Shenk's WSJ was also good. But when, oh when will Shenk grace us with some late-week themelesses? The ones I've done in the past weren't that hard, but they sure were fun. Update: It's actually a puzzle by Jim Page, edited by Shenk. My plea for more puzzles by Shenk stands.

I'm off for a three-day offline weekend (when the temperature might reach 100 degrees, what could be finer than letting children run rampant at an indoor water park?). I'm hoping the hotel sells the NYT.

LAT 4:18
CS 3:17
NYS 5:11
total 12:46, way ahead of my 14:30 target