Exceedingly wily, imprisoning rebellious soldiers, … (9)
I believe the answer is:
supremely
'exceedingly' is the definition.
(thesaurus)
'wily imprisoning rebellious soldiers' is the wordplay.
'wily' becomes 'sly' (synonyms).
'imprisoning' means one lot of letters goes inside another.
'rebellious' becomes 'up' (I can't explain this - if you can you should give a lot more credence to this answer).
'soldiers' becomes 'REME' (Royal Electrical and Mechanical Engineers).
'up'+'reme'='upreme'
'sly' placed around 'upreme' is 'SUPREMELY'.
Can you help me to learn more?
I've seen this clue in The Independent.
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