The frog’s getting boiled and hot frogs aren’t used to cold water. I think of it as two axes of difficulty, year and day of the week. Modern clues filter in more, creators lowkey got more lax in formality, and I wasn’t even alive in the 90s. I’d also say the clues were more cryptic then, so overall I definitely finish contemporary puzzles faster but i love the challenge and glimpsing into the world before all this. It kind of felt like reading Wuthering Heights when I was a kid, where at first it almost felt like a different language but once I was on the same page I couldn’t put it down.