How to select table cells without selecting nested table cells in jQuery

I want to select only the first level of 'td' elements in a table and not the cells of any nested tables. eg:

<table id="Outer">
    <tr>

        <td> --this one
        </td> 

        <td> --this one
            <table>
                <tr>
                    <td></td> -- but not this one or any deeper nested cells
                </tr>
            </table>
        </td>

    </tr> 
</table>

(and yes in prod code i would include tbody, thead...)

Solution

I'd use the children selector, which only selects the immediate children matching the expression. To make it easy to select just the outer table, I'd give it a name. NOTE: this won't work with your sample as I've added in the selectors for thead, tbody, and tfoot as you indicate you will have in production. Adjust accordingly for your sample.

$('table#namedTable').children('tbody,thead,tfoot')
                     .children('tr')
                     .children('td')