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
Information about the latest changes to the site as of 22/08/26 can be found on the Clinic Refurbishment Status page The Forum is now available for discussion of all things crossword-related 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
Yes, I doubt whether 4d will have caused a single eyebrow to have been raised among the solving community -…
I was pleased that the May poll results suggested no great desire for changes to current barred puzzle enumerations. (Other…
‘How many prepositions, conjunctions and adverbs can dance on the head of an invisicomma?’ We’re a bit closer to an…
“Your view” is widely confirmed ✅: “By definition in English syntax, a preposition cannot introduce a main clause because any…
Yes, it does. The cryptic reading ‘feels’ right because we are so familiar with the conjunctional construction where ‘after’ (in…
A very useful discussion in highlighting potential issues arising from simply exporting a seemingly analogous form of a ‘safe’ prepositional…
Sound in all respects 😉.
I can’t see how the unpunctuated string ‘after one loses head’ can be grammatically sound when ‘after’ is required to…
No, this is all very interesting from the wings. How about “Deny access when confronted by topless individual”? I certainly…
My mental invisicomma, if any, would again have come after “access”, but it just goes to show there’s often more…
Cruciverbiana
Do you have any favourite crossword-related anecdotes, either gleaned from others or drawn from your own experience? I…
By Xotic , 2 days ago