Emma Allen

Jokes about spinach, laundry, politics, and “The Bear” proved popular among the scrollers and double-tappers this year.

Over high tea, the former “S.N.L.” star puzzles over whether good manners are antithetical to humor.

Do jokes express our otherwise taboo wishes? Or does everyone just need a pie in the face?

Well, it seems that many of you also enjoyed double-tapping on New Yorker cartoons this past year (for which I, as cartoon editor, join the cartoonists in thanking you). Jokes about exercising and parenting, pets and sports, socializing and personal hygiene: you liked them—a lot. So in the generous holiday spirit of not watching a kid get bucked off a pony, I instead invite you to enjoy these delicious, butyraceous cartoons, which you all dug the most on Instagram in 2023.

Josh Gad and Andrew Rannells Channel Two Pals from Junior High

Amanda Stern, whose book “You Are So Not Invited to My Bat Mitzvah” is now an Adam Sandler movie on Netflix, discusses spaghetti straps and goyim friends at Bloomingdale’s.

After five reported bites on Long Island and a recent chomp in the Rockaways, New York’s lifeguards have added predator-spotting drones to their tool kit.

On an art-fair rooftop, New York grade schoolers peddle refreshments to benefit art education in public schools.

An in-demand accompanist to comedians (Matteo Lane, Catherine Cohen, Matt Rogers), he now also performs solo, as his alter ego, Henki Skidu, with a magic rock around his neck.

His style was a tightrope walk of economy, achieving maximum hilarity with the fewest moves, and with the humblest materials.