The Clue Clinic has a small but dedicated staff, highly skilled in all branches of cruciverbal medicine. They are licensed to perform manipulations of many kinds, including reversals, rearrangements and juxtapositions, though not at the same time. The short biographies below do contain several grains of truth, while the images are artist’s impressions designed to confuse autograph hunters.
Home schooled by his mother in the basics of crossword lore, for many years Doctor Clue (or Mr Clue, as he then was) contented himself with privately honing his solving skills by studying the works of Araucaria and Mephisto, at the same time doing IT stuff to make ends meet. His life changed when he discovered the University of Azed and enrolled on a post-graduate course in crossword surgery. A few botched practicals made it clear that he didn’t know quite as much as he thought he did, so he buckled down and put his new-found understanding of cruciverbal anatomy to good use in the monthly competitions for students past and present.
Emerging with a DuD (Duplicitatis Doctor) degree and a new eye for the beauty of a well-formed clue, he started to practise his own constructive surgery (largely using parts acquired from Chambers) and succeeded in stitching together entire bodies of clues, some more satisfactory than others. He then ventured into carrying out public dissections of other people’s creations, trying as he sliced open each clue to explain how bits worked (or why they didn’t work).
This led him to establish the Clue Clinic in 2017, with the objectives of helping solvers to develop their skills and providing setters with the reference material to assist them in their own practices. ‘Doctor Clue’ is a pseudonym, which has thus far successfully shielded him from claims for cruciverbal negligence.
Doctor Cluelittle is a keen solver currently undertaking clinical rotations in General Practice (The Times, FT), Rare Pathologies (Azed, Gemelo), and Accident & Emergency (The Listener) who joined the practice in 2025. Around the same time, she began attending regular luncheons with The Gruntlings to dissect Azed’s clue-writing competitions – under their expert tutelage, she feels confident that a stint in Hepatology is a likely prospect.
A graduate in Modern and Medieval Languages, Dr Cluelittle set crosswords for Varsity and The Cambridge Student while at University and has dabbled ever since, nursing ambitions of setting for a national newspaper one day. She has been an invited panellist at the FT Weekend Festival’s ‘Live cryptic crossword solve-along’ where she discussed her cruciverbal case history.
Beyond the daily rounds, Dr Cluelittle has appeared as a contestant on Countdown, Fifteen to One, and The Chase. Differential diagnosis suggests a chronic addiction to puzzles, games and quizzes of all aetiologies (prognosis: favourable but incurable).
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