Yes, I try to do them straight up first, but once I can get no further, I start going to the books.

I have always used the New York Times Crossword puzzle dictionsry, The Dell Crossword Puzzle Dictionary, any really old and particularly large giant sized dictionary. I also have a fairly large library of non-fiction resource material, but not enough, as I can rarely get more than two thirds of the msot difficult puzzles solved, more often less than half that.

So far I have never really used the web to solve puzzles, that seems like going to far, but I suppose there are excellent resources out there, too, and if anyone knows of them I'd love to hear.