Constructor: John Ewbank
Relative difficulty: Easyish
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THEME:"If the Clue Fits ..."— [deep sigh] OK, so, themers are first halves of sayings that are so familiar you only need to say the first half of the saying because, well, YOU KNOW THE REST (121A: "Etc. etc." ... or a statement about answers to this puzzle's starred clues):
Theme answers:
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If the Clue Fits ... Grin and Bear It, I guess. Look, I don't know what is happening with the Sunday puzzle, but it's not good, and it's been not good for a long time, and it appears to not be getting any better. This is a non-theme. It is true that these are all proverbs that don't need completing because (being exceedingly proverbial) they are universally familiar. But where is the joy in this? Where is the cleverness, the challenge to the solver, the humor, the Literally Anything that makes puzzles worth doing. You can just fill these in, for the most part, and who cares? What's it all for? The revealer? LOL, what? What is that? "YOU KNOW THE REST"? Ironically, that's not proverbial at all. I don't know what it is. "YOU KNOW THE DRILL," that's an idiomatic expression of some note. "YOU KNOW THE REST" is just a phrase. It just sits there. It has no ... no ... it has nothing. It is a literal description of the solver's alleged state of knowledge. That's it. What's worse, I do not, in fact, know the rest. Well, mostly I do, but What The Hell Comes After "SPEAK OF THE DEVIL"!? I certainly do not "know the rest." I know "tell the truth and shame the devil," but that is the only devil proverb I know. "SPEAK OF THE DEVIL ... spoil the child"!? "SPEAK OF THE DEVIL .... move up a level"?! I am a 53yo man who speaks English and yet does not "know the rest" of this proverbial phrase. It appears that the ending is "... and he doth (or shall) appear." Huh. OK. Maybe I heard that whole expression once, somewhere. But its fame, as a complete phrase, is noooooooooooowhere near the universal familiarity of all the other phrases. But honestly this is beside the point, the point being: there's nothing here. When life gives you lemons... then what? No seriously, tell me.
Relative difficulty: Easyish
Theme answers:
- A BIRD IN THE HAND ... (22A: *"Let's stick with what we've got...")
- GREAT MINDS ... (33A: *"How clever we both are ...")
- SPEAK OF THE DEVIL ... (50A: *"Look who it is...")
- IF YOU CAN'T STAND THE HEAT ... (68A: *"Timid types shouldn't be here...")
- ALL THAT GLITTERS ... (88A: *"Looks can be deceiving...")
- WHEN IN ROME ... (105A: *"Well, if the locals are doing it...")
In the maintenance of file systems, defragmentation is a process that reduces the degree of fragmentation. It does this by physically organizing the contents of the mass storage device used to store files into the smallest number of contiguous regions (fragments, extents). It also attempts to create larger regions of free space using compaction to impede the return of fragmentation. Some defragmentation utilities try to keep smaller files within a single directory together, as they are often accessed in sequence.
Defragmentation is advantageous and relevant to file systems on electromechanical disk drives (hard disk drives, floppy disk drives and optical disk media). The movement of the hard drive's read/write heads over different areas of the disk when accessing fragmented files is slower, compared to accessing the entire contents of a non-fragmented file sequentially without moving the read/write heads to seek other fragments. (wikipedia)
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What about the rest of it? I dunno, it was there and I did it. I had no idea McDonald's had a SECRET MENU (47D: Where a grilled cheese can be found at McDonald's). Is this true? I mean, I'm still never going there, but I'm curious. EXTENDING felt super-awkward as an answer for 79D: Like many suitcase handles. They're called "extension handles" or maybe "telescoping handles" or "telescopic" or "collapsing"—the idea that they are (currently in the act of?) EXTENDING seemed weird. The puzzle's weird infatuation with that creep ELON Musk continues unabated (two days in a row now) (58A: Twitter boss Musk). Apparently we're going to keep making TROU happen for the rest of my life (95A: Pants, slangily). There are two many variations on the spelling of ISADORA for me ever to be confident with the version I'm writing in (30A: Modern dance pioneer Duncan). Are the "characters" in 122D: Either of two lead characters in "Kiss Me, Kate" (KAY) literally just the letters at the beginning of "Kiss" and "Kate"??? So that "lead characters" = "first letters"??? That is nuts. I mean, clever, but shouldn't that clue have a "?" on the end of it? Anyway, that clue may be my favorite thing in this puzzle. STOMPS before CLOMPS (84A: Hardly tiptoes). ELENA before ELLEN (107D: Pompeo of "Grey's Anatomy"). I thought that where there was smoke there was FIRE, but apparently where there is smoke = the fireplace FLUE. That one got me. Not much else got me. I just hacked through it methodically, deliberately, funereally. Oh, ROAD GAME, that clue was tough—and good (10D: What an "@" might signify). Besides "the rest" of "SPEAK OF THE DEVIL...," the one thing I well and truly did not know today was that a SHIRE was a draft horse (20A: British draft horse). A SHIRE is a place name suffix or a place where a Hobbit lives or maybe a Talia. A draft horse, you say? I'd like to think I'll remember that. I doubt it, but I'll try.