Start of flood eventually surrounding old hollow willow (3,5)
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I believe the answer is:
low water
'start of flood' is the definition.
'low water' can be an answer for 'flood' (thesaurus). I'm not certain of the 'start of' bit.
'eventually surrounding old hollow willow' is the wordplay.
'eventually' becomes 'later' (I've seen this in another clue).
'surrounding' is an insertion indicator.
'old' becomes 'o' (abbreviation).
'hollow' says to hollow out the word (remove centre letters) (the word is hollowed out).
'willow' with its centre removed is 'ww'.
'o'+'ww'='oww'
'later' placed around 'oww' is 'LOW WATER'.
Can you help me to learn more?
(Other definitions for low water that I've seen before include "Minimum tide level" , "Furthest fall of tide" .)
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