"elaborate means" is correct and can be used in written English.
This phrase is typically used to describe a method or process that is detailed, thorough, and extensive in order to achieve a desired result. Example: One way to improve our company's customer service is by using elaborate means, such as conducting surveys, holding focus groups, and implementing personalized training for employees.
Doll- and shadow-puppet figures are carved according to similarly elaborate means of identification.
It was just an elaborate means by which blame could be displaced and attention diverted.
Many hospitals have devised elaborate means to accommodate the faithful with "bloodless surgery".
Ferguson had gone to elaborate means, such as moving the company to Ireland, to distance himself from consequences.
Yet the fact that the Kremlin was forced to use more elaborate means to rig the election was also testimony to the growing pressure from civil society.
The German clocked a best lap of 1 minute 22.593 in an eventful day in Spain where new team Lotus started testing and Ferrari used elaborate means to keep improvements to the back end of Felipe Massa's car covered up.
One man held a sign reading "Not Saying No is Yes," which he elaborated, meant yes to gay marriages.
But mass non-take-up is an inherent feature of elaborate means-tested schemes like this.
The elaborate reveal means that the ball of string used in the trick is not the only thing that is unravelling.
To the Editor: In noting the atrophy of conversational skills wrought by texting, e-mailing, tweeting and so on, Sherry Turkle echoes J. B. Priestley's uncannily prescient observation, deduced long before the advent of these near pre-emptive modes of human interaction: "The more elaborate our means of communication, the less we communicate".
Lit by luridly coloured theatrical lights, these scenes are both hilariously literal and distinctly un-Beckettian; they use elaborate visual means to say something elegantly minimal about the act of turning words into performance, while cunningly reminding us of Beckett's throwaway claim that he based the set of Godot on Caspar David Friedrich's Man and Woman Observing the Moon.
