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Dirty, like the little boy’s clothes (4)

Ross

I believe the answer is:

blue

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'dirty' is the definition.
('blue' can be similar in meaning to 'dirty')

'like the little boy's clothes' is the wordplay.
'like' becomes 'lu' (I can't explain this - if you can you should give a lot more credence to this answer).
'the little' means to remove the last letter (the word is not quite complete).
'boy' becomes 'ben'.
'clothes' indicates putting letters inside.
'ben' with its last letter taken away is 'be'.
'lu' going within 'be' is 'BLUE'.

Can you help me to learn more?

(Other definitions for blue that I've seen before include "and 17 World's largest mammal" , "This movie is X-rated" , "coarse" , "in Oxford, it's dark" , "Colour; depressed" .)

I've seen this clue in the Evening Standard.
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