12 Part I: Crossword Strategies and Brain Benefits
Gathering Your Resources
Let’s get real: Most of us can’t work a crossword puzzle without a little outside
help. Or a lot of it. Even fairly easy crossword puzzles are bound to contain a
few clues that stump you. And when you build up the courage to work on the
toughies, well... you may feel like you’re doing battle. And no one should go
into battle alone.
Thanks to the Web, the number of resources available to you while you’re
working a puzzle is pretty much infinite. But that doesn’t mean I recommend
entering the key words in every clue into a search engine to see where they
lead you. Not only does that suck the fun out of puzzling, but it’ll also probably
lead you astray about 95 percent of the time.
Instead, I recommend that you spend some time gathering a handful of key
resources that you’re likely to use again and again. Whether you prefer online
resources or the hard-copy versions, here are some I suggest you keep handy:
✓ A dictionary (particularly a crossword dictionary)
✓ A slang dictionary
✓ A thesaurus
✓ A quotation resource
✓ An atlas
✓ An almanac
In Chapter 6 at the end of this book, I list some specific Web sites that I con-
sider worth using as resources.
If you have a friend who’s particularly brainy or a fellow puzzler, feel free to
consider that person part of your resource list as well. Puzzling can absolutely
be a shared experience.
Some people consider it cheating to use any outside resource when working a
puzzle. I respect that opinion but don’t think it works for most of us. The fact is,
nobody knows every word in the English language, every city in the world, every
source of every quote that’s ever been spoken. It doesn’t matter how fit your
synapses are, you’re bound to need help sometimes. And if using an outside
resource helps you learn something new, I’m all for it.