| ESCAPEROOM | Team activity in which players co-operatively discover clues and solve puzzles to exit a confined setting (6,4) |
| WORDSMITHS | People who create and solve puzzles like this one |
| ENSIGNS | Officers discover clues by printing unit |
| SCACCHI | "The Player" co-star Greta |
| COLLABORATE | Perform co-operatively (11) |
| PITCHIN | Co-operatively contribute (5,2) |
| OARING | Crew team activity |
| DEBATE | Certain school team activity |
| AUTORACING | Track team's activity |
| TREASUREHUNT | A game in which players act upon successive clues and are eventually directed to a prize (8,4) |
| OMNIDIRECTIONAL | Like the answers to eight starred clues ... and a hint as to how to fill them in |
| DROPTHEBALL | Lose focus, and a visual hint to solving seven Across clues and a literal hint to seven Down answers |
| ICECREAM | *Foundation ingredient of a treat built upward in the answers to starred clues and spelled downward in the circles |
| PUTINAWORDORTWO | Intervene in conversation and solve a bit of a crossword? (3,2,1,4,2,3) |
| DOORWAY | Portal represented 20 times in this puzzle that lets you in and out of a confined space (Note: These special letters, reading left to right, row by row, will produce an apt four-word phrase) |
| STILLIRISE | Classic Maya Angelou poem ... or a hint to the answers to the starred clues and the circled letters, in two different ways |
| TOPHATS | Items sported by the answers to the starred clues ... and something depicted in this puzzle in more |
| ERRORS | Evidence of dropping the ball, as found in the starred clues and in 12 crossings in this puzzle |
| SUB | Prefix for the answers to starred clues, and word needed for those clues to make sense |
| DOUBLENEGATIVE | Grammatical faux pas seen in four of this puzzle's clues . . . and, in a different way, their answers? |
