Army capturing Greek character with 21 suffering put in 9? (12)
I believe the answer is:
hospitalised
'suffering put in 9?' is the definition.
The answer and definition are not the same part of speech. However, past participle verbs and adjectives can sometimes mean the same thing.
'army capturing greek character with 21' is the wordplay.
I cannot quite see how this works, but
'army' could be 'ta' (abbreviation for Territorial Army) and 'ta' is present in the answer.
'character' could be 'pi' (pi is a kind of character) and 'pi' is located in the answer.
This may be the basis of clue (or it may be nonsense).
Can you help me to learn more?
(Another definition for hospitalised that I've seen is " Bound for the theatre maybe".)