Xers

I don’t usually get around to doing weekend crosswords but I went ahead and did the Saturday one this weekend while I was on a roll. If I recall correctly, the Post used to have a somewhat different puzzle style on Saturdays, but this one is not very different from the weekday editions:

I am having trouble rating the difficulty of these: none of them seem too difficult. I guess this is similar to Friday’s, about a 4 out of 10. It gets some props for not having anything terribly stupid or inappropriate, though the theme is not very interesting and I have my doubts about the validity of “ART I” (13 down) since I never thought of the Is as letters after the names of courses.

I haven’t looked up “tantara” (54 across) but with help from google, I can confidently add “smew” (60 down) to my vocabulary.

I liked finding “Gen-Xers” listed as boomers’ kids (73 across) and I spelled “niece” wrong the first time through. (I have a similar problem with “controversy.”) At least I am finding some challenges in the crosswords lately: spelling, plus not getting addicted to “Ask Amy” as I make my way down to my favorite comic strip.