Friday

It appears that Manny Nosowsky has popped the WHISKBROOM's cruciverbal cherry by topping the Friday NYT with that entry, which must have been a little hard with so few vowels in the word. He's got some other new(ish) long entries in TOM COLLINS (does anyone actually drink those?), CLEAN HOUSE, and ONESTEPPED (what the heck is the milonga?). HENNY PENNY and APPLESAUCE have been used before but are still tasty. Plenty of vague and short clues, too, all good.

Updated:

I loved Brendan Emmett Quigley's WSJ puzzle. One kudo to Brendan for finding an oddball quip that broke down into chunks of symmetrical lengths, and multiple kudos for creating a fun and practically perfect puzzle. (That's not really an invitation to point out any troublesome flaws you may have spotted, but do so if you must.) It's a nice touch to include PEPE LEPEW instead of just his first or last name, and then to toss in FANFARONADE like it's just any ol' word? Elegant.

I also enjoyed Jack McInturff's LAT with its inserted-STR theme entries. The clues just seemed uniformly good and entertaining. My favorite was "special case" for ETUI, making it okay that the word ETUI was in there at all.

tht wckd NYS 16:46
NYT 5:27
LAT 4:58
CS 3:08

WSJ 8:41
Reagle 8:10