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I don’t much like it, but I think it must be an American phrase meaning to investigate thoroughly, gaining complete knowledge of. Five letter word for watch, as in a Boy ?????, pocketing a word for plain, frank, missing its final letter.

So, for avoidance of doubt, I’d go with SCOPE OUT

Thanks Quisling for revealing the answer. Even with your parsing, it would have been difficult for me to get confidence with the answer.

Quisling, I expect your answer may be correct - but if it is, it's one of the worst clues I've seen for quite some time! The surface reading is awful and the answer - if it's correct - really does seem a bit of a stretch.

I quite agree, Malone. The definition is sketchy, and the surface terrible. It’s only the plural pockets which almost forces the wordplay to be as I described. I find Bharat’s clues grimly fascinating, like a verbal car crash sometimes. I hope they’ll enlighten us on whether my speculation was correct!

Thanks, Quisling, there have been several unsatisfactory clues on this thread recently, but this one really was the shoddiest. You're more generous than I am - you described the definition as 'sketchy', I'd simply class it as wrong! The surface reading was grim, the clue seemed just a collection of words strung together.

Bharat, I'm pleased that you feel you are learning things from the Forum. As a keen crossworder, I appreciate good, well-written clues - and am always disappointed when clues fall short, as some of these ones do.

Thanks Quisling and Malone. The answer SCOPE OUT is correct and it was correctly parsed by Quisling as intended by the setter. I am not an expert to comment on the clues. But I learn from you about the quality of the clues posted by me. Thanks

Please help me in parsing / solving this cryptic clue -
"Release animal as Shri ordered (9)"

I thought of DISCHARGE as it means release and also contains SHRI, but unable to parse the remaining letters CAGED. So I didn't pursue with Discharge.

Please help me with the above clue

Thanks for the update, Bharat. In a way, I hope there aren't many people doing these clues - a setter choosing to make Scope Out equal Master is a little worrying!

The animal is a feline, plus an anagram of as shri, so the definition is release, emotionally, a noun