Crossword Genius

Space close to patient with bad disorder (7)

Ross

I believe the answer is:

entropy

'disorder' is the definition.
(thesaurus)

'space close to patient with bad' is the wordplay.
'space' becomes 'en' (in printing, a space as wide as a letter 'n').
'close to' indicates one should take the final letters (the close/ending of).
'with' means one lot of letters go next to another.
'bad' becomes 'ropy' (ropy can mean bad quality).
The last letter of 'patient' is 't'.
'en'+'t'+'ropy'='ENTROPY'

(Other definitions for entropy that I've seen before include "Degree of disorder (physics)" , "state of increasing disorder" , "Tory pen (anag) - measure of disorder" , "Measure of the disorder of a system" , "Term in physics" .)

I've seen this clue in The Guardian.
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