Visual clues, or cryptic drawings, can help you to crack elusive written clues (and vice versa), or they may help confirm your solution. Here’s a fairly easy one to solve:

Here’s a more complex construction from artist Frank Paul for a phrase (7,2,5):

A drawing of a cup of espresso and three t-shirts of ascending size - S, M and L. The S t-shirt has an X on it, and the M has a tick. Beside this is a diagram of a fin followed by a minus sign and a digital scale showing 0.001kg.

Here we have a cup of ESPRESSO with three t-shirts of ascending size – S, M and L. One S is out and M is in instead. So far that gives us ESMPRESSO. Next we have a diagram of a fin, from which is subtracted 0.001kg, or a gram. So that’s FIN DIA~~GRAM~~. Put them together and we have EMPRESS OF INDIA.

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