As we said in the preface to the first edition, C "wears well as one's experience with it grows." With a decade more experience, we still feel that way.
Trying to outsmart a compiler defeats much of the purpose of using one.
C is a razor-sharp tool, with which one can create an elegant and efficient program or a bloody mess.
If you're as clever as you can be when you write it, how will you ever debug it?
Each new user of a new system uncovers a new class of bugs.
Trivia rarely affect efficiency. Are all the machinations worth it, when their primary effect is to make the code less readable?