Abbreviations: how a clue tells you the answer is shortened

Crosswords are full of answers that are not words: NNE, MMI, SGT, ASAP, EST. None of them is a trick. A fair clue always warns you that the answer is shortened, and once you recognise the warning the answer often follows immediately, because abbreviations come from a small and stable set.

The rule behind the flags

The convention is symmetry: a shortened clue takes a shortened answer, and a full clue takes a full answer. If the clue says Sergeant, the answer is the full word. If it says Sergeant, for short, the answer is SGT. Setters keep to this because without it every three letter slot would be unsolvable.

The same logic runs in reverse, and this is the half beginners miss. An abbreviation inside the clue usually signals an abbreviation in the answer. Dr's order points at a shortened answer such as RX rather than a full word, because the clue has already dropped its own letters.

Explicit flags

These appear at the end of a clue and mean the answer is cut short.

• for short, briefly, in brief, for brevity
• Abbr. and the bracketed (abbr.)
• on a schedule, on a calendar, on a map, in an address, which point at the shortened forms used in those places
• initially, initials, letters, which usually want the first letters of the words in the clue
• org., co., agcy., assn., which both shorten the clue and name the kind of answer

So Doctors' group, for short wants an organisation's initials, and Tuesday, on a calendar wants TUE or TUES depending on the slot length. The slot decides between the variants, which is another reason to write the letter pattern out before choosing.

Quieter flags

Not every signal is formal. A clue written in the clipped style of a label, a form or a headline is telling you the answer is clipped too. Wt. unit wants LB or OZ. Mil. address wants a rank. Bracketed context such as (Fri., say) does the same work as for short.

Cryptic clues use abbreviations differently again. There the abbreviation is raw material for the wordplay rather than the answer: a clue may want you to convert quiet into P, learner into L, about into RE or CA, or fifty into L before the letters are assembled. That mechanism belongs to how a cryptic clue is built, but the letter values are the same ones listed here.

The families worth memorising

Almost every abbreviation you meet belongs to one of these groups.

Roman numerals deserve a note. A clue asking for a year wants the numeral form, so 2001 becomes MMI and 1990 becomes MCMXC, and the slot length usually tells you which century is meant. A full set of abbreviations sorted by what they stand for is kept in crossword abbreviations by meaning, and the terms used in this lesson are defined in the glossary.

Using them in a solve

Abbreviations are also where the grammar rule from reading the clue keeps working: a plural clue still wants a plural answer, so Sergeants, for short gives SGTS. Standard forms can be checked in Merriam-Webster, which lists the accepted spellings editors follow, and the daily puzzles at the New York Times crossword page use these flags consistently enough to serve as practice. Further lookup tools are indexed at Crossword Resources.