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I carefully observe trouble — not good, putting it tersely (2,5)

Ross

I believe the answer is:

in brief

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'tersely' is the definition.
Both the answer and definition are adverbs. Perhaps you can see a link between them that I can't see?

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(Other definitions for in brief that I've seen before include "To cut a long story short" , "Where barrister finds the facts" , "Summing it all up, with just a few words" , "shortly" , "To summarise or put succinctly" .)

I've seen this clue in The Times.
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