Burglar caught by king in irrational bolt (8)
I believe the answer is:
picklock
'burglar' is the definition.
(I've seen this in another clue)
'king in irrational bolt' is the wordplay.
'king' becomes 'ck' (I can't explain this - if you can you should give a lot more credence to this answer).
'in' indicates putting letters inside.
'irrational' becomes 'pi' (an irrational number).
'bolt' becomes 'lock' (I've seen this before).
'pi'+'lock'='pilock'
'ck' placed into 'pilock' is 'PICKLOCK'.
'caught by' is the link.
I am not very happy about this link. Some or all of it may belong to another bit of the clue.
Can you help me to learn more?
(Another definition for picklock that I've seen is " Housebreaker's tool".)