A clue or a hint is a piece of information bringing someone closer to a conclusion or which points to the right direction towards the solution It is revealed either because it is discovered by someone who needs it or because it is shared (given) by someone else.

Etymology

The word originally was an alternate of spelling of ''clew'', which was defined as "a ball of thread". The word evolved to have its current meaning in part because of the common motif in mythology and folklore of using a ball of thread to aid in escaping a maze.

Clues in crimes

Clues help solving crimes in a criminal investigation by using

forensic science Forensic science, also known as criminalistics, is the application of science to criminal and civil laws, mainly—on the criminal side—during criminal investigation, as governed by the legal standards of admissible evidence and criminal ...

. They can be physical clues discovered on the crime scene, or discovered later during investigation by re-examining recorded evidence, or by interviewing witnesses, victims, or suspects. In fiction, the fictional character

Sherlock Holmes Sherlock Holmes () is a fictional detective created by British author Arthur Conan Doyle. Referring to himself as a " consulting detective" in the stories, Holmes is known for his proficiency with observation, deduction, forensic science and ...

remains a great inspiration for forensic science, especially for the way his acute study of a crime scene yielded small clues as to the precise sequence of events. Clues were introduced to

detective fiction Detective fiction is a subgenre of crime fiction and mystery fiction in which an investigator or a detective—whether professional, amateur or retired—investigates a crime, often murder. The detective genre began around the same time as s ...

Arthur Conan Doyle Sir Arthur Ignatius Conan Doyle (22 May 1859 – 7 July 1930) was a British writer and physician. He created the character Sherlock Holmes in 1887 for ''A Study in Scarlet'', the first of four novels and fifty-six short stories about Ho ...

's Holmes stories, and they remain a staple of the genre today.

Clues in games

In some

game A game is a structured form of play (activity), play, usually undertaken for enjoyment, entertainment or fun, and sometimes used as an educational tool. Many games are also considered to be work (such as professional players of spectator s ...

s, if a player is stuck on a

puzzle A puzzle is a game, Problem solving, problem, or toy that tests a person's ingenuity or knowledge. In a puzzle, the solver is expected to put pieces together (Disentanglement puzzle, or take them apart) in a logical way, in order to arrive at th ...

or riddle, they can ask or pay for clues to help them progress in the game. In some games, clues are an integral ludeme of the game mechanics, whereas in others they are considered

cheat Cheating generally describes various actions designed to subvert rules in order to obtain unfair advantages. This includes acts of bribery, cronyism and nepotism in any situation where individuals are given preference using inappropriate cr ...

s. Clues in games or crosswords can either be given straight, be cryptic,Kevin Skinner.
1 The Cryptic Clue in General
p 7, p 10, ''How to Solve Cryptic Crossword'', 2008. be riddles, or contain contradictions. Clues can be intentionally misleading.

Context clues

When a reader encounters an unknown word or phrase in a text, context clues are anything in the text that helps them understand or guess the meaning of it. It can be

synonyms A synonym is a word, morpheme, or phrase that means exactly or nearly the same as another word, morpheme, or phrase in a given language. For example, in the English language, the words ''begin'', ''start'', ''commence'', and ''initiate'' are all ...

antonyms In lexical semantics, opposites are words lying in an inherently incompatible binary relationship. For example, something that is ''long'' entails that it is not ''short''. It is referred to as a 'binary' relationship because there are two members ...

, explanations, examples, or familiar word-parts (

prefix A prefix is an affix which is placed before the Word stem, stem of a word. Adding it to the beginning of one word changes it into another word. For example, when the prefix ''un-'' is added to the word ''happy'', it creates the word ''unhappy'' ...

suffix In linguistics, a suffix is an affix which is placed after the stem of a word. Common examples are case endings, which indicate the grammatical case of nouns, adjectives, and verb endings, which form the conjugation of verbs. Suffixes can carry ...

). It can be

definition A definition is a statement of the meaning of a term (a word, phrase, or other set of symbols). Definitions can be classified into two large categories: intensional definitions (which try to give the sense of a term), and extensional definitio ...

s, comparisons, or contrasts. Meaning can also be derived via descriptions of

cause and effect Causality (also referred to as causation, or cause and effect) is influence by which one event, process, state, or object (''a'' ''cause'') contributes to the production of another event, process, state, or object (an ''effect'') where the cau ...

or through

inference Inferences are steps in reasoning, moving from premises to logical consequences; etymologically, the word '' infer'' means to "carry forward". Inference is theoretically traditionally divided into deduction and induction, a distinction that in ...

. A 1966 study identified fourteen types of context clues for native speakers. A 1971 study classified clues for second language readers into three categories: intra-lingual, inter-lingual and extra-lingual.Zhaochun Yin.
Infer the Meaning of Unknown Words by Sheer Guess or by Clues? –An Exploration on the Clue Use in Chinese EFL Learner's Lexical Inferencing
, English Language Teaching; Vol. 6, No. 11; 2013.

Clue words

In a conversation, clue words, can be used by a speaker to indicate to the listener which direction they are moving the conversation. Examples of clue words are "But anyway" and "Incidentally".R. Reichman.
Plain Speaking: A Theory and Grammar of Spontaneous Discourse
' p3 (abstract), Bolt Beranek and Newman Inc, 1981.

References