I have a domain object (Cat) like this:
class Cat { String name static hasMany = [ nicknames: String ] }
(A cat has a name,
After a lot of trying and researching, I found this will work with Grails 2.4.0, I don't know about older versions.
Cat.withCriteria { createAlias('nicknames', 'n') ilike 'n.elements', '%kitty%' }
The trick is to use 'n.elements'