Welcome to The Clue Clinic – where people interested in solving or setting cryptic crosswords come to learn, sharpen their skills, and get expert guidance from experienced setters.
If this is your first visit, we would recommend visiting the About This Site page to get some ideas about the areas of the site which may be of particular interest to you and the ways in which you can interact with Clinic staff and other readers.
What’s New
The PDF of the latest Gemelo puzzle is available at this link: Gemelo 38 As of 16th June a number of improvements have been made to the Clinical Data table display. See the Refurbishment Project Status page for details. The PDF of the latest Azed puzzle is available at this link: Azed 2780 The May Digest is now live, providing a short round-up of news and views from the Clinic.
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Latest Comments
Hi Conor, and welcome to the world of clue writing. There’s no great mystery about it – the key thing…
First time writing cryptic clues. (God help me) Seeking advice for when part of the wordplay clue can be part…
On the 60%, the matching entries I could find in the online Langenscheidt German-English version were all based on Aussiedlung,…
Thanks – it reminded me of a couple of my own clues from days gone by where, try as I…
You make a fair point re Gemelo’s def in 23dn – perhaps “… might have got …” would have better…
I’d forgotten the ‘Holding’ one, but I think it would lie very close to the border of acceptability for me.…
Two good examples there, although “Twist” in the first one is nounal, of course. BTW I felt you were slightly…
😃 Agreed – I would also propose to offer the option of “Don’t care about false addition or removal of…
Capital idea to have a poll about misleading capitalization in clues! Might I suggest, however, that such a poll be…
I think that in the surface reading ‘bottom’ and ‘palm’ are indeed body parts belonging to different people, and we…