Cheating? Me?

A couple of years ago I became aware of a pretty cool website, http://www.oneacross.com/.

It helps you work your crossword puzzles. You put in the clue and the number of letters and it will give you a number of choices. Most times your options will include the one you're looking for.

Last night I was on the sofa, down to about six words left in my puzzle, and Wife was at the computer. I asked her to pull up one-across and put in the clues for me.

Wife, not a crossword worker, asked with a scowl, "Isn't that cheating?"

Cheating?! Well I never thought of it that way. I only go to one-across when I've exhausted my own brain, then the dictionary, crossword dictionary and thesaurus. I'm proud to say that sometimes I can work the crossword without consulting any of them.

But it's a personal defeat if I put down the newspaper with blanks still in the crossword puzzle. So I go to one-across as my last stop.

But now Wife has got me to thinking that maybe I'm cheating, maybe I'm just living a lie. I never once in my life have cheated at Solitaire. If the cards aren't there, the cards aren't there and I just leave it at that or start another game.

I also never allowed my children to use Cliff''s or Sparks notes as a substitute for reading a book they were assigned, nor did I allow them to watch a movie version in a book's place. If I had ever found out they were getting a canned research paper online, I would have grounded them for at least a year.

Now, if they find out I use a website to help me with a crossword puzzle, will they decide I was just a hypocrite all along and the values I attempted to instill were all for nothing? They might have to go to therapy and send me the bill. All because Wife thinks maybe I'm cheating.

Well I guess I'm cheating myself. I'll have to see if there's some crossword puzzle governing body and see what their rules are. In the meantime, I'll have to give this a little more thought.

A five letter word for taking a shortcut????