I enjoy doing crosswords, particularly NY Times Thursday, Friday & Saturday.  I also usually do Emmet Quigley’s challenging Monday puzzles.   Sometimes you get stuck on an answer.  You don’t want just find out (Googling is soooo easy…) but you’d love a hint to get you unstuck.   So, if you want to see some hints-not-answers, here you go.   To be honest, the point of this xword blog is to attract word-centric readers who might, just might, be interested in checking out the essays of my blook.

Update, 2014-11-20:  After about a month of doing this which was mostly fun, I’m not updating the crossword blog currently.  I still enjoy doing crosswords regularly, but it my real interest lies in the essays more than the blog.  So I’m “on hiatus” from blogging the NY Times puzzle for a while.  If you’re the kind of person who would enjoy a hint now and then, though, shoot me an email through the contact page and I’ll pass back to you an occasional hint.   — Jon Mack