Well, then, if the gender of "it" was the question and implication, then it was the gender that "it" possesses as a word, so the possessive "its" would be, literally, correct (non-apostrophically speaking).Hey, is apostrophic any relation to annastrophic? But with the typical calculated ambiguity of crossword clues, the creator could claim it works on both planes...so 'neuter' is a linguistic gender (it's not genderless, in German we'd say 'what gender does it take, feminine, masculine, or neuter?'), therefore, if neuter is "it", then "it" is gender as well. There, now, does that help clear things up a bit? Would you pass me R.D. Laing's Knots again, please...