Index: docs/topics/auth.txt
===================================================================
--- docs/topics/auth.txt	(revision 16140)
+++ docs/topics/auth.txt	(working copy)
@@ -185,6 +185,8 @@
         the user. (This takes care of the password hashing in making the
         comparison.)
 
+        See also :func:`~django.contrib.auth.models.check_password()`
+
     .. method:: models.User.set_unusable_password()
 
         Marks the user as having no password set.  This isn't the same as
@@ -617,6 +619,12 @@
     ``password`` field in the database to check against, and returns ``True``
     if they match, ``False`` otherwise.
 
+    You can also authenticate a user by calling :meth:`~django.contrib.auth.models.User.check_password`
+    on a :class:`~django.contrib.auth.models.User` instance and passing a
+    a plain-text password as an argument, which will be checked against
+    the password stored in the database for that user. This is essentially a
+    wrapper for the function described above.
+
 How to log a user out
 ---------------------