Snatched a brief look at heartless guard employing long weapon (7)
I believe the answer is:
glanced
'snatched a brief look' is the definition.
Although both the answer and definition are past participle verbs, I don't see how they can define each other.
'heartless guard employing long weapon' is the wordplay.
'heartless' says to hollow out the word (remove centre letters).
'employing' means one lot of letters goes inside another.
'long weapon' becomes 'lance' (I've seen this before).
'guard' with its centre taken out is 'gd'.
'gd' going around 'lance' is 'GLANCED'.
'at' acts as a link.
Can you help me to learn more?
(Other definitions for glanced that I've seen before include "Looked briefly or bounced off" , "Took a quick look" , "Peeked" , "Looked quickly" , "Glimpsed" .)