Unfruitful paths ... or a description of both words in the answers to the seven starred clues?

Usage examples of deadends.

They'd been using a lot of special effects to get out of impossible kinks and deadends that these say-sos forced.

I ran the word through my mind like a rat in a maze, and it bounced off deadends everywhere it went.

Rubble lay packed from wall to wall, torn with channels that were sometimes deadends, other times seemed to go down and down and down for eternity.

Rubble lay packed from wall to wall, torn with channels that were some­times deadends, other times seemed to go down and down and down for eternity.

Attired in a taupe pants suit, I sit in my own office eighteen floors above where Wilmot deadends into Grainge.