One winding up thread’s beginning with cylinder (7)
I believe the answer is:
troller
'one winding up thread's' is the definition.
The answer is a person as well as being a singular noun. This is suggested by the definition.
'beginning with cylinder' is the wordplay.
'beginning' becomes 'ter' (I can't justify this - if you can you should give a lot more credence to this answer).
'with' means one lot of letters goes inside another.
'cylinder' becomes 'roll' (roll is a kind of cylinder).
'ter' enclosing 'roll' is 'TROLLER'.
Can you help me to learn more?
I've seen this clue in The Times.
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