Question marks, quotation marks and other clue signals

Punctuation in a crossword clue is not decoration and it is not accidental. In American puzzles in particular, a question mark, a pair of quotation marks or a set of square brackets each carries a fixed meaning that editors apply consistently. Reading those marks first tells you what kind of answer to look for before you have worked out what the words mean.

The question mark

A question mark at the end of a clue means the definition is not straight. Something has been stretched: a pun, a play on a second meaning, or a whimsical rather than literal description. It is the editor's way of saying that if you read this clue plainly you will get nowhere.

Consider Place for a bad joke? A plain reading looks for a venue. The question mark says look for wordplay, and the answer might be GROANERS ROW or something equally arch. A more typical case is a clue whose surface describes one thing while the answer describes another: Bank employee? with a four letter slot is not a teller but something like TELL or SILT, the material a river bank holds. Without the mark that clue would be unfair. With it, it is a puzzle.

Quotation marks

Double quotation marks around a clue mean the answer is something said. It will be a spoken phrase, an interjection or a line of dialogue, and it very often runs to several words in the grid.

A clue reading "Not a chance" wants a spoken refusal: NO WAY, FORGET IT, DREAM ON. A clue reading "Calm down" wants EASY NOW or TAKE IT SLOW.

Quotation marks around a single word inside a clue do different work. They mark the word as a word rather than as its meaning, which is how a setter signals letters, spelling or a title. Word after "high" treats the word itself as raw material.

Square brackets

Square brackets in an American puzzle mark a non-verbal sound or a stage direction. The answer is what a person would make rather than what they would say. [Not again] gives SIGH or UGH. [I am freezing] gives BRR. [Look over there] gives PSST. Round brackets in the body of a clue behave differently and simply supply context that is not part of the definition, as in Ran (into), where the bracketed word tells you which preposition the answer takes.

Example signals: e.g., for one, and others

A clue that offers one instance of a category wants a category answer, or the reverse.

• e.g., for one, for instance, say: the clue names an example and the answer is broader, or the clue is defining by example and the answer is one member of the set.
• and others, et al., and kin: the answer is a group or a plural.
• in a way, of sorts, so to speak, maybe, perhaps, loosely: softeners. They do the same job as a question mark and warn you the definition is approximate.
• with "The": the answer includes the word THE, so a nine letter slot might hold THE BRONX rather than BRONX.

Asterisks and cross references

An asterisk at the start of a clue almost always marks a themed entry. The starred clues share an idea that a separate clue, called the revealer, explains outright. Finding the revealer early can hand you three or four long answers at once, which is the subject of the next lesson. A clue that reads See 17 Across or With 40 Across, a long phrase means the answer is split across two slots and neither half will make sense alone.

Two cautions

First, British puzzles use punctuation more sparingly and less systematically. In a cryptic clue the punctuation usually belongs to the surface reading and can be ignored entirely when you parse the wordplay, which is a reversal of the American habit. Second, a capital letter at the start of a clue is not a signal of any kind, since the first word is always capitalised. That point and the rest of the grammar rules are covered in reading the clue, and the vocabulary in this lesson appears in the glossary.

Editorial conventions are explained in the specification the New York Times gives its contributors at the paper's submission guidelines, and individual clues are taken apart most weekdays in the Wordplay column. Reading a finished grid alongside its clues is the fastest way to internalise the marks, and daily NYT crossword answers make that comparison easy the morning after.