0 to be in a situation where it is very difficult to decide what to do, usually because both of your two choices of action would cause problems:
While the hop growers and the brewers have reached absolute unanimity with regard to the scheme, the brewers found themselves in a cleft stick.
He called it a cleft stick but it is the thin end of the wedge.
The family is caught in a cleft stick.
But here we are in a cleft stick.
The trouble is that in this matter we are in a cleft stick.
The authority is in a cleft stick, because it can only improve one area to the detriment of another.
If events make it, as they may, impossible for you to implement that undertaking, then you are in a cleft stick.
On that matter we have been in something of a cleft stick.
