After all, hints and help can give away puzzles that they spent months perfecting. Without hints and walkthroughs many games wouldn't be appreciated to the extent they should be. There's a very fine line between challenging and frustrating. The best games toe that line with the greatest of care. Though they may be hard, they're fair.
Authors see hints as a bridge between their minds and the audiences.
Some players can make it all the way over, some need a push in different places. Neil deMause, who wrote Lost New York, agrees. I'm deeply concerned that we're falling out of the habit of providing in-game clues. Well, getting help for IF games is a fact of life and we all need to stop feeling guilty about it. After all, it's the rare occasion where author and player click at the right level for an entire game.