Google's Gary Illyes confirmed on Twitter last night that the Penguin update is still not at a point of being released where you cannot take the steps necessary to cleanse your links.
Gary said so on Twitter in response to @ShahMenz asking "If my disavow file were an icicle & it fell in the arctic, would it be too late for a Penguin to hear it? " Gary responded, "no, it's not too late."
Truth is, the next Penguin update should be real time and thus, it will never be too late to update your links disavow and so forth. So I am not sure if Gary's comment is an indication of Penguin being delayed or not.
Here is the tweet:
@ShahMenz aka no, it's not too late
— Gary Illyes (@methode) October 28, 2015
With this next expected release, it should never be too late - unlike pass releases which required a manual data refresh from Google. This time, Penguin should be much faster, as soon as Google indexes the new links (or removed links) you should be good.
Forum discussion at Twitter.