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The Origin of “Clue”

In one of history’s greatest stories about yarn, Theseus famously made it back out of the deadly Minotaur’s labyrinth by unspooling a ball of yarn so he could retrace his steps. In Middle English, such rolled-up yarn was called a clewe. Eventually, clew took on the metaphorical meaning of something that will lead you to a solution. Pretty soon, the spelling was changed to clue, and now we’ve got that awesome board game and of course, that blue pooch and his bits of evidence. This is part of a complete episode.

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