Brazilian actress Sonia / MON 3-27-23 / Stark daughter on Game of Thrones / Cold War contest featuring Sputnik and Apollo / Crude outbuilding

Constructor: Simon Marotte and Trenton Lee Stewart

Relative difficulty: Easy? Sure, easy

THEME: A completely implausible game of 20 Questions where all the answers are bands whose names follow the pattern [verb]ING [noun] —

Theme answers:

• COUNTING CROWS (19A: "Does the name contain an animal?" YES. "Is it a band fronted by Adam Duritz?" YES!)
• SMASHING PUMPKINS (31A: With 45-Across, "Does the name contain a vegetable?" YES. "Is it a band fronted by Billy Corgan?" YES!)
• ROLLING STONES (59A: "Does the name contain a mineral?" YES. "Is it a band fronted by Mick Jagger?" YES!)

Word of the Day: COUNTING CROWS (19A) —

Counting Crows is an American rock band from San Francisco, California. Formed in 1991, the band consists of guitarist David Bryson, drummer Jim Bogios, vocalist Adam Duritz, keyboardist Charlie Gillingham, multi-instrumentalist David Immerglück, bass guitarist Millard Powers, and guitarist Dan Vickrey. Past members include the drummers Steve Bowman (1991–1994) and Ben Mize (1994–2002), and bass guitarist Matt Malley (1991–2005).

Counting Crows gained popularity following the release of its first album, August and Everything After(1993). With the breakthrough hit single "Mr. Jones" (1993), the album sold more than 7 million copies in the United States. The band received two Grammy Awards nominations in 1994, one for "Best Rock Performance by a Duo or Group with Vocal" (for "Round Here") and one for "Best New Artist". The follow-up album, Recovering the Satellites, reached number one on the US Billboard 200 album chart and reached number one in several other countries. All but one of their subsequent albums reached the top 10 on the Billboard 200 list.

Their hit singles include the aforementioned "Mr. Jones" as well as "Rain King", "A Long December", "Hanginaround", and a cover version of Joni Mitchell's "Big Yellow Taxi". Counting Crows received a 2004 Academy Award nomination for the single "Accidentally in Love", which was included in the film Shrek 2. The band has sold more than 20 million albums and is known for its dynamic live performances. Billboard has also ranked the band as the 8th greatest Adult Alternative Artist of all time. (wikipedia)

• • •

"Wow, we're really committing to this '90s bands thing, aren't we? Yesterday, THIRD EYE BLIND, and now ... this." That was my main thought after first COUNTING CROWS and then SMASHING PUMPKINS came into view. Then came ROLLING STONES and the apparent thematic consistency went out the window. But OK, "blanking blanks" bands, that's almost a thing. Then, I looked at the actual theme clues (oh, right, so I was solving Downs-only, as per my normal Monday habit, sorry to bury the lede). I don't ... I don't know ... I can hardly begin to describe the number of ways that this theme does not work. First, that is not how you play "20 Questions." That's not even how you play "Animal, Vegetable, Mineral." In the latter, the answerer *tells* the questioner at the start of the game what category (A, V, or M) the object falls under. There is no scenario in which a questioner would ask "Does the name contain an animal?" Also, "Does the name..."??? This implies that somehow the range of answers has already been pre-limited to names, which is also not how "20 Q" or "AVM" works. If you're just playing "20 Q," you might use your first Q to ask "Animal, Vegetable, or Mineral?" but you'd never ask anything remotely resembling these questions. The entire imagined context for the game is bizarre, and the game itself resembles nothing humans actually play. 

The very (impressively) narrow category of the actual themers (i.e. bands with names that follow the [verb]ING [nouns] pattern) loses all its tightness once it's been shoe-horned into this contrived game scenario. Why would such a game play out in a series of "[verb]ING [nouns]" bands??? Two more problems that make this theme D.O.A. First, it's *THE* ROLLING STONES. The other bands are perfect as is, but the name of the band is *THE* ROLLING STONES, so it's technically clued inaccurately. Lastly, pumpkins are not vegetables, they are fruits. Yes, if you were *actually* playing "Animal Vegetable Mineral" (which, as we've established, you definitely aren't), then "PUMPKINS" would fall under "Vegetable" because it fits that category much better than the others. But the question as you have dreamed it up here is "Does the name contain a vegetable?" and since we are dealing with PUMPKINS the answer is "absolutely not." I feel like if you'd just stuck to the "[verb]ING [nouns]" rock band thing and clued ROLLING STONES "with 'The'" and found a different overall cluing gimmick, you might have something here. But the attempt to force this to be a game of "Animal Vegetable Mineral" just doesn't come off on the page. It's like the clues were written by AI and not by humans who had actually played human games before.

The grid is just fine–clean and smooth, and my only objection is to SANSA. My ongoing grudge against all "GOT"-related fill just won't die. Do you know how many damn names we're gonna be dealing with from that show (for god knows how many years)? LANNISTER and STARK and NED, sure, but then not just SANSA but DAENERYS TYRION CERSEI JON SNOW ARYA ROBB BRAN and god help you when they get into the tertiary characters. I'm not a fan of how deep into the "Star Wars" universe I have to crawl to learn all the crossword names, but at least "Star Wars" has some right: it's an institution, a universe that spans almost a half-century of movies, TV shows, products etc. etc. "GOT," big as it was, never had an audience larger than the average audience of "Home Improvement" circa 1993 (36.3 million viewers / week!), and how many of those characters' names do you remember? Uh ... Wilson? Was that someone? Sigh. I cleared out that NE corner and plugged the puzzle into my own construction software and whaddya know, SANSA rose straight to the top of suggestions for me too. It's just ... sometimes you gotta override your machine helper monkeys. 

Maybe SANSA is no worse than BRAGA, I don't know (52D: Brazilian actress Sonia). But Sonia BRAGA is a real person, and I know her, so I'm more favorably inclined toward her. From a Downs-only perspective, SANSA is miserable if you don't know it ("TANSA? TARSA?"), but I managed to pull it from somewhere. No other part of the grid gave me any trouble—about the easiest Downs-only solve I've had to date. I needed to infer a bunch of Acrosses in order to see SLIDESHOW (35D: TED talk accompaniment, often), but that's fairly normal where longer Downs are concerned. I was slowed, but not stymied or flummoxed or otherwise stopped. SPACE RACE was easier to come by (3D: Cold War contest featuring Sputnik and Apollo). That's all, see you tomorrow.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

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