Paul

For five (or more?) months I've been intentionally breaking my streak every month, to avoid the lure of extrinsic motivation

@Alan no true Scotsman enjoys Thursdays.

Yes, I did; it was only correct on @Barry Ancona 's puzzle.

@Robert I went through the trouble of installing an Ελληνικά keyboard to have the satisfaction of seeing a Φ, and was pleased to see that it worked.

The plurals of "lacuna" are "lacunae," and "lacunas".

@H.E. Puerto Vallarta está en México.

Whew, and after that reveal the rest of it fell into place. Really liked this one! An impressive flex. Good mix of SAT words and trivia.

@Stephen The τ Manifesto is only 15 years old, which explains why you haven't seen it. Your other objections are foreseen and answered by the manifesto. Perhaps to your satisfaction, perhaps not.

@Ggb Citation needed! I've eaten 粥 since I was a child. Whether cooked for me, purchased, or prepared by me, it has always been "savory" [sic]. Although, I suspect I have had it unadulterated, before I was old enough to form memories. I'm sure an old timer will eventually comment that clues are clues rather than necessary or sufficient properties of the answer.

@Anonymous Solomon would have removed the stars altogether

@Jane Wheelaghan cell is the indivisible unit; a battery is a group of 1 or more cells; AA is a cell and also (casually) a "single cell battery"

@Solar Ron have you heard about those people who intentionally let milk go bad and even moldy? The sickly smell is considered virtuous. Some say it's just their version of 臭豆腐 or 腐乳 but I don't buy it

@Eli Edwards the column has a link to instructions. Search for "has a rebus"

@Bruce I got the pun, but only after filling in the answer. It's not a great pun because, while all fields are trivial algebras, not all algebras are fields. But, it's entirely likely that the word triggered an association which made ALGEBRA pop into my head. So while I intended to come here and whine about it, I decided not to.

@Graphic I believe "fuel source" is a good-enough clue for gasoline because it's the kind of thing people might say as a fancied-up synonym for fuel. That said, S's prescriptivist point is: Gasoline is a fuel, and the source of that fuel is petroleum. ICE is not a fuel, so it doesn't have (that kind of) a fuel source. An ICE uses fuel and the source of that fuel is the gas tank. (Or line, but that's stretching it)

@Francis calling puns and metaphors "lies" is an unexpected judgement to find on a forum dedicated to wordplay. Good luck getting mathematicians to stop punning. And besides, all numbers are unreal, even ℝ. "ℕ symbolizes things and ℝ quantity, but ℕ and ℝ are better than things and quantity. Otherwise they would degrade the things they symbolize."

@B Pumas are a species of cat. That's the misdirect.

@Ιασων The clue did not say "in its new meaning in data science". J-Cote is correct; its original meaning is to remove one in ten.

@Edward Rice You shouldn't conflate "reduce by N%" with "reduce by a factor of N". They are separate phrases with very different meanings. "Factor" implies multiplication; therefore "Reduce/Increase by a factor of N", expanded, means "make closer to/farther from zero, using a multiplication, involving N". It'll be obvious from context whether you multiply by N or 1/N. No trained communicator would write "reduce by a factor of 1" except as a joke.

@Fred logically speaking, that's the fallacy of denying the antecedent. "I guess if you like Star Trek, you lived during the era of television. I don't, so I didn't." (Also the initial syllogism is unfounded, but why worry about epistemics)

@Sam Lyons and wggwg , for academic interest: a digraph is two graphemes, which is only important when (as you pointed out) the relationship between letters and graphemes is unusual, or in flux, or both. This doesn't invalidate anyone's arguments that the clue is correct. It's correct because "head" is intentionally ambiguous and could refer to one (or more) letters, graphemes, syllables, phonemes, ... . "letter" arises from Sam, who in fact took Patrick's position that ll was still a single letter: "the “head,” i.e., first letter, [...] is a pair of ELS."

For more academic interest, taking a computer rather than linguistic approach: Unicode sometimes has codepoints for ligatures (e.g. IJ ), for compatibility reasons. But to my knowledge there is not one for LL. And even if there were, in "NFKD"* ("Decomposed" Normal Form) that hypothetical compatibility codepoint would decompose into 2 codepoints, which you would describe as ELS. * For the Unicode pedants: but not in NFD, I checked

@Xword Junkie obi are used for men's clothing as well

@Mu I agree that WATER HORSE doesn't make no sense. It makes at least two: kelpie and hippopotamus.

@Logan Whalen it literally means garlic and oil.

@Jairus No; that's a truck. A pan is a rotation.

@The X-Phile you are correct that their dismay is dismaying; in the same way would I be dismayed if someone felt they had to eat a disliked cherry in order to "finish" their sundae. I blame it on the parent who gives out gold stars to those who finish their meals. But at least said parent does it for the benefit of their child, as opposed to the grey lady who does it to drive engagement and revenue.

On the easier side. Pretty fun.

@Mike a bit of Latin, Greek, Spanish, Italian, Portuguese, Turkish, Hindi, Urdu, Hawaiian, Inuit, Cree, and mathematics wouldn't hurt either.

@10034 it's not so much judgement, as a cynical way to increase engagement by supplying a source of extrinsic motivation while simultaneously reducing people's enjoyment

@Tim "Cake" donuts are so-named because they're leavened like a cake, as opposed to cooked like a cake!