You stared at the clue. Eleven empty boxes waited for an answer. “Futures experts?” sat there on your Thursday crossword, and your mind went straight to Wall Street.
Commodities traders. Financial analysts. Market forecasters. Pick your poison. None of them fit.
The answer turned out to be SOOTHSAYERS. Fortune tellers. The people who read palms and claim to see tomorrow. Not a Bloomberg terminal in sight.
This particular clue from the August 7, 2025 New York Times crossword puzzle has become a textbook example of how a single question mark can completely redirect a solver’s thinking. Six months later, it still gets mentioned in crossword forums as one of those clues that made people pause and rethink everything.
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How the Wordplay Actually Works
The brilliance here is in what you assume versus what the clue actually says. Most crossword solvers have seen “futures” in a grid before. It usually points toward financial markets, trading floors, economic forecasts. Your brain creates that shortcut after solving enough puzzles.
This clue uses that shortcut against you. “Futures” here means the actual future. What happens tomorrow, next week, next year. And who claims expertise in that domain? People who predict what’s coming. Soothsayers fit that definition exactly.
That question mark does all the work. In crossword construction, it’s a warning sign. The clue means something other than what you first think. Your straight-ahead interpretation is probably wrong. You need to look sideways.
Ben Zimmer, the puzzle’s constructor, is a linguist who writes about language for The Wall Street Journal and The Atlantic. He succeeded William Safire as the language columnist for The New York Times Magazine. For someone who built a career studying how words work and how they trick us, this kind of misdirection makes perfect sense.
The August 7 puzzle marked his solo debut in the Times crossword. He chose a Thursday slot, which traditionally features more complex wordplay than earlier in the week. Monday puzzles play straight. Thursday puzzles get creative.
Where Soothsayers Come From
The word traces back to Old English. “Sooth” meant truth. A soothsayer was someone who said true things, particularly about events that hadn’t happened yet.
The term appeared in writing during the mid-14th century with two meanings: a person who spoke candidly, and someone who predicted the future. The fortune-telling definition survived. The honest adviser meaning faded away.
In ancient Rome, soothsayers held government positions. They weren’t carnival mystics working for coins. Roman augurs interpreted omens by studying bird flight paths and animal entrails. Their predictions shaped military strategy and political decisions.
The most famous soothsayer warning in history came before Julius Caesar’s assassination. Historical accounts say Caesar was told to beware the Ides of March. He ignored the advice and showed up to the Senate anyway. You know how that ended.
The Psychology Behind the Misdirection
Financial vocabulary appears regularly in crossword puzzles. “Wall Street index” means DOW. “Investment account” could be IRA or ROTH. If you solve crosswords consistently, you develop reflexes for these clues.
That reflex is exactly what makes “Futures experts?” work. Your brain jumps to the financial context because you’ve seen it before. The path of least resistance leads you toward markets and trading.
The question mark interrupts that reflex. It tells you to stop and reconsider. But by then, your initial assumption has already formed. You’re halfway down the wrong path, and the clue knows it.
Good wordplay doesn’t lie to solvers. It just presents information in a way that encourages the wrong conclusion. “Futures experts?” never claims to be about finance. Your assumptions filled in that gap.
The Bigger Picture of Thursday Puzzles
The August 7 crossword had a theme called “FRUITLESSLY.” Zimmer removed fruit names from common phrases to create new words.
TOPEARNERS became TONERS after removing PEAR. IMPEACHED turned into IMED without PEACH. ROMANGODS lost its MANGO to become RODS.
According to puzzle documentation, finding phrases where the fruit removal still created valid words took considerable time. The grid needed careful construction to make all the pieces fit together.
Thursday themes tend to involve tricks like this. The difficulty curve across the week means Monday offers straightforward clues while Thursday introduces complexity. Friday and Saturday get harder still, but usually without themes.
How Question Marks Change Everything
That punctuation mark signals a specific kind of wordplay. Without it, crossword clues mean what they say. “Capital of France” means Paris. “Longest river in Africa” means the Nile. The answer matches the literal meaning of the clue.
Add a question mark and the rules change. The clue might involve:
- A pun where words have double meanings
- Unexpected usage of a familiar term
- Metaphorical rather than literal interpretation
- Wordplay that requires lateral thinking
For experienced solvers, a question mark is both a warning and a hint. It says the clue is playing games, but it also confirms you’re looking at wordplay rather than a straight knowledge question.
The key is figuring out which type of wordplay you’re dealing with. Is it a pun? A phrase taken literally? A word with multiple meanings? The crossing letters and word count help narrow down the possibilities.
What Makes This Clue Stick
Thousands of crossword clues get published every year. Most do their job and disappear from memory. A few become reference points that solvers remember months or years later.
“Futures experts?” landed in that second category. It has the qualities that make wordplay memorable: misdirection that feels fair after you see the answer, multiple layers of meaning compressed into two words, and a satisfying moment when the logic clicks into place.
The clue also connects to something deeper than puzzle mechanics. Humans have always wanted to know what comes next. Soothsayers, oracles, prophets, fortune tellers, they all represent that desire to peek beyond the present moment. The clue taps into centuries of history about prediction and prophecy.
The Lesson for Crossword Solvers
When you spot a question mark in a New York Times crossword clue, your first answer is probably wrong. That punctuation exists to make you second-guess yourself.
Think about alternative meanings before committing to an answer. Consider whether words in the clue might mean something unexpected. Look for puns hiding in plain sight.
And if you’re tackling a Thursday puzzle, expect exactly this kind of trickery. The mid-week slot is where constructors start flexing their creativity. The rules are still fair, but the clues stop playing it straight.
Six months after this puzzle ran, “Futures experts?” still serves as a reminder that the best crossword clues are the ones that make you see familiar words in a completely new way. The futures experts were never on Wall Street. They were reading tea leaves and crystal balls the entire time. You just had to stop looking at the financial pages to find them.
