Crossword abbreviations, sorted by what they stand for

Abbreviations are the mortar of a crossword. A grid needs short, vowel-friendly fragments to hold the long entries together, and setters get them by shortening a word the reader already knows. Most published abbreviations come from a small number of families: compass points, Roman numerals, chemical symbols, ranks, sport, music, places and dates. Learn them by family rather than alphabetically, because that is how a clue reaches for them.

How a clue flags an abbreviation

In a quick crossword the signal is explicit. Words such as "for short", "briefly", "in brief", "abbr.", "initially" or "say" attached to a definition mean the answer is a shortened form, and that convention is covered in abbreviations in clues.

In a cryptic the signal is silent, and the abbreviation is a building block rather than the answer. The clue names the long word and expects you to supply the short one. "Quiet" hands you P, "loud" hands you F, "learner" hands you L, "small" hands you S, "about" hands you C or RE. Two original examples make the mechanism plain.

• Small concern causes fright (5). Small gives S, concern gives CARE, and the definition is fright: SCARE.
• Small cold rebuke (5). Small gives S again, cold gives COLD, and the definition is rebuke: SCOLD.

There is a third case that catches new solvers, and it is the one worth naming. A cryptic clue can use an abbreviation without any word in the clue looking short. "Model" can be T, "note" can be any of A to G or DO and TE, "point" can be any compass letter, "duck" can be O and "love" can be O as well. The abbreviation is hiding inside an ordinary noun, and the only defence is recognising the family it belongs to.

The tables below are grouped by what the letters stand for rather than alphabetically, because that is how they arrive in a clue. They cover the abbreviations that recur often enough to be worth recognising on sight. Where a set of letters has more than one common sense, the extra senses are listed beside it, since that ambiguity is the working material of the wordplay.

Compass points and numerals

Letters	Usually clued as
N	North, new, noun, nitrogen, knight
S	South, small, second, singular, son
E	East, English, energy, note
W	West, with, wide, watt, women
NE	Northeast, direction
NW	Northwest, direction
SE	Southeast, direction
SW	Southwest, direction
L	Left, learner, lake, line, large, fifty
R	Right, river, run, king or queen in chess

Letters	Roman value
I	One
II	Two
IV	Four
V	Five
IX	Nine
X	Ten
L	Fifty
C	Hundred
D	Five hundred
M	Thousand
MM	Two thousand

Chemistry and measurement

Letters	Element or symbol
H	Hydrogen
O	Oxygen, also nothing, old, duck
C	Carbon, also cold, caught, circa
K	Potassium, also king, thousand
NA	Sodium
FE	Iron
CU	Copper
AG	Silver
AU	Gold
SN	Tin
PB	Lead
HE	Helium, also man, fellow

Letters	Measure
KG	Kilogram
KM	Kilometre
CM	Centimetre
MM	Millimetre
FT	Foot, feet
IN	Inch, also fashionable
LB	Pound in weight
OZ	Ounce
MPH	Speed
GAL	Gallon, also girl

Ranks, services and sport

Letters	Rank or service
GI	American soldier
NCO	Non-commissioned officer
PVT	Private
CPL	Corporal
SGT	Sergeant
LT	Lieutenant
COL	Colonel
GEN	General
ADM	Admiral
RAF	Royal Air Force, fliers
RN	Royal Navy, sailors
AWOL	Missing from duty

Letters	Sporting sense
B	Bowled in cricket, also born, book
C	Caught in cricket
W	Wicket or wide in cricket
LBW	Leg before wicket
RBI	Runs batted in, baseball
ERA	Earned run average, baseball
HR	Home run
KO	Knockout
TKO	Technical knockout
REF	Referee, official
PGA	Golf body
NBA	Basketball league

Music, time and places

Letters	Musical sense
P	Piano, quiet, soft
F	Forte, loud
PP	Pianissimo, very quiet
FF	Fortissimo, very loud
MF	Mezzo forte, moderately loud
RIT	Ritardando, slowing
OP	Opus, work
ARR	Arranged, arrangement
SYM	Symphony
ORCH	Orchestra
MUS	Music, musical degree
LP	Album, record

Letters	Time or date
AM	Morning, before noon
PM	Afternoon, also prime minister
GMT	Greenwich Mean Time
EST	Eastern Standard Time, also established
AD	Year of our Lord, also advertisement
BC	Before Christ
HR	Hour
SEC	Second, also secretary
YR	Year
MON	Monday
SAT	Saturday
DEC	December

Letters	Place
US	United States, American
UK	United Kingdom
GB	Great Britain
IRE	Ireland, also anger
CA	California
NY	New York
TX	Texas
FL	Florida
PA	Pennsylvania, also father
DC	District of Columbia, the capital
AVE	Avenue, also hail
ST	Street, saint, state

People, Latin and editorial shorthand

Letters	Title or role
DR	Doctor
MR	Mister
MRS	Married woman's title
MS	Title, also manuscript
PROF	Professor
REV	Reverend, clergyman
SEN	Senator, senior
CEO	Company boss
ER	The queen, also hesitation
ED	Editor

Letters	Latin or editorial sense
EG	For example
IE	That is
ETC	And so on
CF	Compare
VIZ	Namely
NB	Note well
PS	Afterthought in a letter
RE	About, concerning
AKA	Also known as
QV	Which see, cross reference

Using the lists without being misled

Two cautions keep these tables useful. The first is that most short forms are ambiguous by design. C is a hundred, carbon, cold, caught and circa, and the setter chose it precisely because you would have to pick. Never treat an abbreviation as confirmation on its own. It is a candidate letter, and the crossing entry decides, which is the argument made at length in solve the crossings first.

There is a related trap in the other direction. Because these letters are so useful, solvers start seeing them everywhere and break a perfectly ordinary word into abbreviations that were never intended. If a clue yields an answer only when four separate two-letter shortenings are stacked in a row, the reading is probably wrong. Real wordplay tends to use one or two abbreviations around a longer, recognisable chunk of the answer.

The second caution is national. British puzzles lean on cricket, military ranks, sol-fa and Latin. American puzzles lean on state postal codes, sports leagues and brand names. A solver who moves between the two traditions should expect to learn a second list rather than to find the first one failing.

If the same abbreviations keep appearing and you want to know why a grid needs them, the answer lies in construction: a fill has to satisfy every crossing at once, and short flexible entries are what make that possible. The working habits behind that are described by people who build puzzles at Puzzle Makers. For definitions of the terms used above, including crosswordese, checked squares and fill, see the glossary.