The theme of this special issue is the distribution of indicative and subjunctive in languages that display this distinction in the mood category. Mood distribution and interpretation has not been deprived of enough attention in descriptive grammars and traditional linguistics, but it has never become a major focal topic in theoretical approaches. Mostly overshadowed by other verbal categories such as aspect or tense, mood often appears in the discussion of other phenomena as a co-occurring factor. Following the editorial statement for the ‘Taking up the gauntlet’ special issues of Lingua, the contributors were asked to address some of the questions and puzzles raised in the questionnaire below, which are meant to constitute a significant selection of the problems that remain open in the existing treatments of mood. These are presented in the form of possible questions around specific sets of data and theoretical gaps in the existing analyses. Obviously, each author has chosen to concentrate on one or some of the aspects pointed out in the questionnaire. In some cases, the issues are addressed directly; in other cases, only indirectly as a consequence of the specific analysis presented. As a whole, the five contributions provide a whole range of new insights within syntactic and semantic analyses. These are put into perspective in the concluding section of this issue.