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.
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What’s New
The PDF of the latest Azed puzzle is available at this link: Azed 2,784 The September Digest is now published, with views, news…and a chance to give your opinion on the health of the cryptic The PDF of the latest Gemelo puzzle is available at this link: Gemelo 49 The Forum is now available for discussion of all things crossword-related
Latest Posts
Latest Comments
Latest Forum Topics/Posts
I did enjoy this, but was stumped by the parsing of 3d. Never heard of that Iris, I assumed “Iris’s…
I thought 4a was just a mistake. Like you, I can’t say I enjoyed that puzzle. Very clunky.
Of course! For some reason I had it in my mind that they used dried lingonberries, a Livonian staple of…
Regarding the surface reading of 23d, I’m surprised yourself (or Claude) are unaware of the practice in 13th century ‘Terra…
My view would be that it is absolutely fine. I can’t see a problem with anything that suggests something being…
Hi Doctors, thoughts on ‘draped in’ as an insertion indicator?
Hi Billy That’s a very fair question, and the answer is an unequivocal ‘no’. In general, if every nth letter…
Hi Dr Clue, can the fodder use excess letters? So for example, could a clue for PROTEIN be: “alternatively, sport…
Oh. Well, I mean, thank-you for the steer. But how on earth are you supposed to know that without knowing…
You’re on the right lines, but the anagram fodder is just BADLY I. The rest of the answer is an…
RE: Cruciverbiana
Wait, what?! This is amazing work. I hope DW and others get to see it and it gets shared.
By Crossguesser , 22 hours ago
RE: Cruciverbiana
Wonderful! But…there is a slight problem – Ronnie C's last entry is ??IT, which means that both the G and the R must b…
By Doctor Clue , 1 day ago
RE: Cruciverbiana
I love that someone's attempted this! An entertaining read from Skirwingle. And he did manage to produce a complete puzz…
By Doctor Cluelittle , 2 days ago
RE: Cruciverbiana
It's great. Dave Williams, aka Skirwingle in the crossword community, went above and beyond by trying to see if the cr…
By Crossguesser , 5 days ago
RE: Cruciverbiana
I cannot find the anecdote – perhaps I imagined it! When I searched for stories involving crossword setters and trains, …
By Doctor Clue , 5 days ago
RE: Cruciverbiana
I'm not familiar with that anecdote, but I can confirm there are quite a few instances of the same clue (a CD usually) r…
By Crossguesser , 3 weeks ago
RE: Cruciverbiana
There is a slight irony here, in that Roger Squires kept a card index system (initially set up by his sister-in-law) con…
By Doctor Clue , 3 weeks ago
RE: Cruciverbiana
Wow, I had no idea about this! Thanks for sharing the story. I have so many questions… 🤔 A database of 42,…
By Doctor Cluelittle , 3 weeks ago
RE: Cruciverbiana
Another reason to be grateful to Boris Johnson – sort of – is his backing down when he was an assistant editor at the Te…
By Crossguesser , 3 weeks ago
RE: Cruciverbiana
Great topic – I'm also very partial to crossword-related stories and now I have a couple more to add to my collection, s…
By Doctor Cluelittle , 1 month ago