The New York Times Crosswords to Boost Your Brainpower: 75 Crosswords to Sharpen Your Mind, Improve Your Crossword Skills, and Increase Your Vocabular

Great for newer puzzle fans. There's helpful clues about clues, how they're written and how to interpret them. Of course, there are plenty of the great NYT puzzles, too.

I bought the book and love it! Its great for a novice or experienced crossword puzzle solver. Just have patience, and some quality reference books and you be occupied.

This is a terrific introduction to New York Times crosswords. The seventy-five daily crosswords here run the gamut of difficulty, beginning with the easiest and going all the way to the tough end-of-the-week puzzles. And for each crossword, there are a few asterisked clues with hints in the back of the book. These hints give us information that most of us had to figure out on our own the hard way, through trial and error (mostly error). For example, Shortz tells us that clues always agree in number and tense. Seems obvious now, but I didn't know that until I'd muscled through some puzzles. A question mark after a clue means a tricky (possibly punny) answer, NYTimes puzzles don't tell you if an answer consists of more than one word, well you get the idea. Even though New York Times Crosswords to Boost Your Brainpower is an excellent intro to Shortz-era NYTimes puzzles, it is also a lot of fun for old-timers, too.