Indigent, being reduced in rank? (3)
I believe the answer is:
gen
'rank?' is the definition.
Although both the answer and definition are singular nouns, I don't understand how they can define each other.
'indigent being reduced' is the wordplay.
'indigent' becomes 'g' (I can't justify this - if you can you should give a lot more credence to this answer).
'being' becomes 'ens' (I've seen this in other clues).
'reduced' means to remove the last letter.
'ens' with its last letter taken away is 'en'.
'g'+'en'='GEN'
'in' acts as a link.
Can you help me to learn more?
(Other definitions for gen that I've seen before include "'Information, colloquially (3)'" , "Info" , "Information yielded" , "Information (colloq.)" , "Knowledge" .)