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Crossword 126: Why? Because I Said So!

Sir William Quiller Orchardson, Four Generations- Queen Victoria and Her Descendants
Sir William Quiller Orchardson, Four Generations- Queen Victoria and Her Descendants

I want to thank Ralph Bunker for suggesting the title of this puzzle.  It was originally called “Generation Y,” and was inspired, like so many of my puzzles, by petty annoyance.  Is there any journalistic habit more painfully dimwitted than that of attributing essential characteristics to demographic groups?  Baby Boomers do this, and Millennials do that, etc., etc.—and the point is usually that they’re all a bunch of fools, unlike us; or that we’re good people, unlike them.

However, the practice of attributing difficult-to-cross letters to these groups has been a great boon to cruciverbalists.  Where would we be without Xers and GenX?  It’s another instance of what Leibniz, Pope, Voltaire’s Dr. Pangloss, and other such thinkers long ago discovered:  that underlying all the apparent evil of this best of all possible worlds is real, often unsuspected, good.

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126 Why?-Because-I-Said So!.puz

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126 Why?  Because I Said So!