Answer
Deletion Clues
deletion clues remove letters from a word — first, last, middle, or both ends. Learn the indicator families, "endless" and "endlessly", and worked examples.
The short answer
Deletion clues build the answer by chopping letters off a fodder word: the head (first letter), the tail (last), the heart (middle), or both ends ("endless", "unlimited"). Any phrase about loss, cropping, or boundaries is the signal. Take the fodder, apply the amputation, check the length.
The four amputations
Beheaded drops the first letter ("headless", "topless"); tailless drops the last ("endless" — note the setter's pun, since "endless" technically means no end at all, setters use it to mean no end-letter); heartless drops the middle; external deletion drops both ends ("unlimited", "borders removed"). Each has a standard indicator family listed in the indicators reference.
Deletion inside bigger clues
Pure deletion clues are teaching exercises; in real puzzles deletion is one component of a charade — a seven-letter fodder losing its last letter to leave six letters that feed the next piece. The habit to build: whenever a component's letter count is one short or one long for the gap it must fill, ask "is a deletion applied here?" Miscounted components are the number-one parse error in manual solving.
The "almost" family and near-miss traps
A related device: "oddly"-style extraction (take every other letter) is sometimes filed with deletions, but it is a distinct mechanism — alternation, not boundary removal. Do not conflate them. And watch for "nearly" or "almost" indicators, which signal something subtly different: the answer is a real word that itself means "nearly X".
A second worked example, end to end
Clue: "Endlessly talk about garment (5)" — "endlessly" drops the last letter of "talk": TAL(K), leaving TAL, 3 letters — too short alone, so it feeds a bigger assembly with "garment"... garment = ROBE, GOWN, SARI... TAL + ? Suppose the answer is TALIS... The realistic lesson: deletions are rarely the whole mechanism. They are almost always one gear — which means the solver's habit should be to ask "which component here is one letter short of what the slot needs?" rather than "is this a deletion clue?" Device-first thinking works for pure anagrams and hiddens; component-first thinking is what solves multi-gear clues.
FAQ
What does "endless" mean in a cryptic clue?
It signals dropping the last letter of the adjacent fodder word — e.g. "endless snake" = SERPEN(t). Despite the literal meaning, setters use it for tail deletion.
What are heartless and headless in crossword clues?
"Heartless" removes the middle letter(s); "headless"/"beheaded" removes the first letter. They describe the fodder, not the answer.
Which indicators signal both ends removed?
"Unlimited", "boundless", "borders off", "shells removed", "external" — strip the first and last letters.