Smooths back of keel in the liner (6)
I believe the answer is:
sleeks
'smooths' is the definition.
(sleeking is a kind of smoothing)
'back of keel in the liner' is the wordplay.
'back of' shows that the letters should be reversed in order (I've seen 'backed' mean this).
'in the' means one lot of letters goes inside another.
'liner' becomes 'ss' (I can't explain this - if you can you should give a lot more credence to this answer).
'keel' placed into 'ss' is 'skeels'.
'skeels' backwards is 'SLEEKS'.
Can you help me to learn more?
I've seen this clue in the Sydney Morning Herald.
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