Bob

@Mark A trowel is used to put cement on the bricks when laying them. Same for stones and cinder blocks. The clue is fine.

@Ιασων Oi barbaroi

@Andrzej Bricklayers, and I know a few - both sides of my family and half my in-laws, call it cement when they work with it. Actually, they call it mud more than they call it cement, but almost never do they call it mortar. Colloquial usage by those who work with it every day trumps anything else, so no: I meant cement. I'm not just making stuff up.

@Andrzej There were much better, more accurate clues available. The surgical birth procedure, perhaps, but I might've gone with Julius's child worth the Egyptian queen this late in the week. The fact is that Caesar, regardless of his true ambition, had turned down a crown. Political move? Sure, but the Republic remained just intact enough. In my Classical education, nobody ever referred to a pre-Augustan Empire. Sometimes a clue is just inaccurate.

@Andrzej I don't know... Some of you seem pretty unlikeable enough right here.

@Jack Don't you just hate it when they put USA-specific stuff in the NEW YORK Times?

@Tradcarp If I wanted to write mortar, I would write mortar. See my last response to Andrzej for an explanation. Having known and grown up with scores of members of the BAC local 1 and having put down some mud, or cement, I can assure you I have not some little domain knowledge.

@SBK Not quite. Average just means a representative statistic of a population. It can be the mean and often is, but average is not always mean. Sometimes average is median or mode. It can even be something that doesn't begin with m.

@Steve L Mythos is literally translated from Ancient Greek as our word story. Even though the stories told were often sacred, they were stories nonetheless. I'm not sure why you think the word story has to have a negative connotation here. For that matter, did you know someone's stories can even be true?

@Andrzej See my reply to that Mark fellow.

@Jane Wheelaghan This is true to an extent. Not sure about your side of the ocean, but "mud" is actually the most common term for it I hear from actual masons with cement coming in second and mortar a far distant third.

@Francis Meh. Games are for fun. Why mix current affairs nonsense in? Surely there's another place at nyt.com for that.

@Andrzej It's when the g in beige follows a plosive or labial like p that tongues get twisted up.

@Andrzej Why trek arduously? There's probably a zabka within 200m.

@Jane Wheelaghan Dude, we was using "my bad" back in 1980s Bawlmerese. (Bawlmer's in Merlin.)

@SBK Well, technically, thorn used to be in the English language (along with eth et al.), so I think when we use it in English, it is a native English word and not an Icelandic import.

@Nat K Not correct. See my other reply explaining how average does not always mean mean.

@Andrzej yes, with an io, not an ea, though technically only a nickname for Ptolemy XV Caesar. Constructor would've had to do something with bird cOlls instead. Lot of bird colleges of there, though, right?

@Mike Not two steps, a step and a half, or three half steps.

@Ιασων The mode could be the average. So to, the median of the mean. Your statement only makes sense if you're making the rather un-pedantic assumption that average means mean, which is not always appropriate. tl;dr average is a word to describe a representative sample of some population and does not always have to be the arithmetic mean. It shouldn't be assumed average is mean as you have assumed.

@Bob Median OR the mean

@Nat K You claimed that in math and statistics mean and average were the same thing. That is incorrect. I only have a master's in engineering, a master's in economics, and a PhD in economics to back up my statement. That, and the statement that my colleagues and I in both engineering and econ circles use mean and average differently because precision in language is important, especially when publishing. If you were a student of mine, perhaps you'd be more willing to accept your mistake, but, alas, it is not going to be my job to teach you any further. Be willfully ignorant if you insist, though it's not my suggestion. We have enough of that going around as it is.