The Clue Clinic

all about cryptic crossword clues

The Clue Clinic

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 44
The PDF of the latest Azed puzzle is available at this link: Azed 2,782
The July Digest is now live, providing a short round-up of news and views from the Clinic.

Latest Posts

Latest Comments

Latest Forum Topics/Posts

  1. “Your view” is widely confirmed ✅: “By definition in English syntax, a preposition cannot introduce a main clause because any…

  2. Yes, it does. The cryptic reading ‘feels’ right because we are so familiar with the conjunctional construction where ‘after’ (in…

  3. A very useful discussion in highlighting potential issues arising from simply exporting a seemingly analogous form of a ‘safe’ prepositional…

  5. I can’t see how the unpunctuated string ‘after one loses head’ can be grammatically sound when ‘after’ is required to…

  6. No, this is all very interesting from the wings. How about “Deny access when confronted by topless individual”? I certainly…

  7. My mental invisicomma, if any, would again have come after “access”, but it just goes to show there’s often more…

  8. Are you suggesting an invisicomma that produces ‘Deny // having access after, one loses head’, with ‘after’ being an adverb?…

  9. You’re absolutely right, of course, that “after” in 4dn is a conjunction rather than a preposition, and your new explanation…

  10. Thanks, RK I think ‘powerless’ is universally accepted for the deletion of P, on the basis that it means ‘without…