1970s rock band that launched the career of Sammy Hagar / FRI 6-19-20 / Kazakh capital renamed Nur-Sultan in 2019 / Rocky's best friend in Rocky films / Craps throw called Little Joe / Measure equal to about 57º / Ad campaign featuring mustaches

Constructor: Greg Johnson

Relative difficulty: Medium-Challenging (more Medium, maybe) (6:49)

THEME: none

Word of the Day: MONTROSE (20A: 1970s rock band that launched the career of Sammy Hagar) —

Montrose was a California-based hard rock band formed in 1973 and named after guitarist and founder Ronnie Montrose. The band's original lineup featured Montrose and vocalist Sammy Hagar, who would later go on to greater fame as a solo artist and as a member of Van Halen. Rounding out the original foursome were bassist Bill Church and drummer Denny Carmassi. The group disbanded in early 1977. (wikipedia)

There's just nothing interesting going on here. I don't understand themelesses like this, where there are literally no marquee answers. There's some fine, solid stuff here and there, but there is Zero to make you go wow or hey or cool. The grid shape has a lot to do with it. Nothing over 8 in this grid; but still, you'd think there'd be a number of sizzling, interesting, colloquial, original, some other adjective 8s lying around for you to start with, as your seed entries. What ever *were* the seed entries here? Hard to imagine being excited about putting any of these answers in the puzzle. And it's not even like the grid is that clean overall. One potential solace of a boring grid is that it's fill is never yuck, but ANE and ERINS and LBO and ÉGAL / TÊTES in same corner and CIRC MACAO SNO ... that stuff starts to rankle when there's no great stuff to justify it. The NYTXW absolutely must run killer themelesses every single time, because right now, the New Yorker is just eating their lunch. They've got an elite stable of constructors turning out three timely, fresh, current, well-crafted themeless puzzles per week. Their constructing team is diverse and talented and (most importantly) ambitious. Hungry. It'll be a long time before the New Yorker competes with the NYTXW in terms of total audience, to say nothing of revenue, but they are clearly coming. Quality-wise, they've already blown past the NYTXW (where average themeless quality is concerned, anyway). What's worse (for the NYTXW) is that they've got some of what *had* been the NYTXW's best talent (Robyn Weintraub comes to mind). If the New Yorker added a couple of themed puzzles and went to a daily puzzle format, they'd immediately be the best daily in the country. These are just facts.


But back to this puzzle. MONTROSE? Oof. To me, that is a smallish northern Pennsylvania town about 20 miles from me. I knew Sammy Hagar was eventually in VAN HALEN (which fits!) and I knew he eventually had a solo hit with "I Can't Drive 55" (maybe there were others...?), but MONTROSE ... that's a new one. They appear to have had no real hits. Cool cool. Annnyway, everything around that answer was hard (not surprisingly). Had real trouble with ORDERING because of the deceptive clue (21D: Counter action — you order at a counter) and with FLOOR WAX for the same reason (12D: Coat placed on the ground). Forgot ASTANA existed but was able to work around it pretty easily (3D: Kazakh capital renamed Nur-Sultan in 2019). Wanted SPCA before PETA (41A: Rights org. whose logo includes a rabbit), but not much else proved that challenging. The STAGE part of STAGE SET weirdly took some effort (52A: Theater background). Oh, and REBOXED was briefly elusive (36A: Made more secure for shipping, say). I don't see the necessary connection between reboxing and security. I also think REBOXED is not the greatest fill. But then *nothing* was the greatest fill today. When EVEN KEEL and PUMP IRON are your stand-outs ... you need to try harder.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter and Facebook]