FRIDAY PUZZLE — Today’s Peter Wentz grid is a real kitchen sink. I usually find myself making fanciful connections in a themeless; today I got just one, three little nautical references in the southeast corner. I found a lot of fun in the maelstrom, though, and I happened to love the pop culture names today that drew from several decades in living memory.

I found myself solving this puzzle slowly, in chunks, but this kind of heat we’re having makes me reason through molasses. Every corner gave me just enough to get started, and there were plenty of interesting bits to keep me fighting my summer torpor.

Tricky Clues

The literary figures, CABOT and WELTY, were known to me, and I knew the name but not the clue for Rod LAVER. ALAN HALE, nope. I liked funny IKE, muppet ERNIE and especially BJORK. I loved Bjork back then — in this video, she’s traveling all over Midtown Manhattan in the early ’90s. It’s kind of a neat time capsule.