Clinical Data – Dec 2024 Update

Whenever I make changes to the lists, I now update the change history on each of the relevant pages, so I don’t routinely issue consolidated summaries.

I’ve added several entries this month, all of them in the ‘Standard’ category, ie I think they are suitable for use in any puzzle since they don’t rely on uncommon meanings. As seems appropriate at this time of year, ‘revelling’ has joined the anagram list, along with (among others) ‘skittish’. I was surprised to find that the various inflections of ’emit’ didn’t feature among the deletion indicators, so they have been added. An omission from the reversal indicators was ‘returned’ – I remember leaving it out for a reason, but it seems perfectly sound to me now. A couple of selection indicators that I’d never considered before have been included: ‘nose’ (‘a projecting forepart of anything’) for first letter selection, and ‘excavated’ for first/last letters.

I very much welcome suggestions from readers regarding additions, deletions or modifications to the lists. Anything that I’ve actively rejected for the main lists will be in the Lexicon with a ‘questionable’ marker, so something that can’t be found in there has probably not even received consideration. The only things that I don’t include are indicators which seem highly unlikely to appear in clues, such as ‘inarming’ for containment. Even allowing for that, I have no doubt that there are still plenty of cryptic indicators missing, so if you see something used in a puzzle that isn’t in the Lexicon, or you think of a word/phrase that you feel has claims for inclusion, do let me know.