:contains breaks with (

[lexxx]

if the quoted needle contains ( without a closing ), it throws an exception: uncaught exception: Syntax error, unrecognized expression:

i think finding this kind of text should be allowed

$('li:contains("xxx(yyy")'); exception

[addyosmani]

The main reason that this isn't working is that you're not escaping the special characters (eg ") that you're trying to use in your selector. As per the jQuery documentation on selectors:

If you wish to use any of the meta-characters (#;&,.+*~':"^$[]()=>|/@ ) as a literal part of a name, you must escape the character with two backslashes:
.

Closing as invalid.

[pwolk@…]

This doesn't work:

$("td:contains('\\(')")

I get: "Syntax error, unrecognized expression: '\(')"

And this doesn't work:

$("td:contains('\(')")

I get: "Syntax error, unrecognized expression: '(')"

[dmethvin]

This seems to work for me as of 1.8.2:  http://jsfiddle.net/xnRgW/