diff --git a/NEWS.md b/NEWS.md
index 5e3fb88de6..f7c46a17b2 100644
--- a/NEWS.md
+++ b/NEWS.md
@@ -2,7 +2,7 @@
 
 **Benchmarks are regularly updated: [here](https://h2oai.github.io/db-benchmark/)**
 
-# data.table [v1.13.3](https://github.com/Rdatatable/data.table/milestone/20)  (in development)
+# data.table [v1.13.3](https://github.com/Rdatatable/data.table/milestone/21)  (in development)
 
 ## NEW FEATURES
 
@@ -10,6 +10,8 @@
 
 ## NOTES
 
+1. Continuous daily testing by CRAN using latest daily R-devel revealed, within one day of the change to R-devel, that a future version of R would break one of our tests, [#4769](https://github.com/Rdatatable/data.table/issues/4769). The characters "-alike" were added into one of R's error messages, so our too-strict test which expected the error `only defined on a data frame with all numeric variables` will fail when it sees the new error message `only defined on a data frame with all numeric-alike variables`. We have relaxed the pattern the test looks for to `data.*frame.*numeric` well in advance of the future version of R being released. Readers are reminded that CRAN is not just a host for packages. It is also a giant test suite for R-devel. For more information, [behind the scenes of cran, 2016](https://www.h2o.ai/blog/behind-the-scenes-of-cran/).
+
 
 # data.table [v1.13.2](https://github.com/Rdatatable/data.table/milestone/19?closed=1)  (19 Oct 2020)
 
diff --git a/inst/tests/tests.Rraw b/inst/tests/tests.Rraw
index f5f7136641..e3753ebd2d 100644
--- a/inst/tests/tests.Rraw
+++ b/inst/tests/tests.Rraw
@@ -4195,7 +4195,7 @@ setNumericRounding(old_rounding)
 
 DT = data.table(id=INT(1,2,1), val1=3:1, val2=3:1, val3=list(2:3,4:6,7:10))   # 5380
 test(1199.1, DT[, sum(.SD), by=id, .SDcols=2:3], data.table(id=1:2, V1=INT(8,4)))   #875 made the .SD case work
-test(1199.2, DT[, sum(.SD), by=id], error="only defined on a data frame with all numeric variables")
+test(1199.2, DT[, sum(.SD), by=id], error="data.*frame.*numeric")  # this is R's error message so use flexible string pattern to insulate from minor changes in R, #4769 
 test(1199.3, DT[, sum(val3), by=id], error="Type 'list' not supported by GForce sum [(]gsum[)]. Either.*or turn off")
 
 # Selection of columns, copy column to maintain the same as R <= 3.0.2, in Rdevel, for now