I Do, I Do ... Do!

David Karp, of Victoria, British Columbia, is a civil servant who works on economic policy for his provincial government.

This was his second attempt at building a puzzle around 119-Across, which is his favorite band. The first attempt, in a themeless grid, didn't work out because the fill wasn't flashy enough. But here the band's name sets up some clever thematic wordplay, which is even better … and you don't need to know anything about the band to get it.

My first-ever attempt at making a crossword was a themeless with THIRD EYE BLIND plastered across the middle. The Times editors' overly generous verdict: "It's nice work, but the vocabulary wasn't quite flashy enough for Will to say yes." Eventually, I realized it might be fun if I could find ordinary phrases that made silly new ones when their third "I" was dropped.

I'm grateful for the editors' suggestion to drop the underwhelming DINING ROOM CHARS (Arctic fish dishes in a fancy restaurant?), which allowed for cleaner and livelier surrounding fill. Other candidates that didn't make the cut include RISING TO THE BAT (Really stepping up, in baseball?) BOILING PONT (French bridge that's on fire?), and the rather depressing FAIR IS FAR ("We've got a long way to go to reach equality"?).

"Drop a letter" puzzles are so overdone, that you need something else to even get noticed. There are hundreds of possibilities for dropping an I — try out our Replacement Finder to see for yourself — so David's THIRD EYE BLIND adds an extra layer to tighten things up.

SPITTING IMAGE to SPITTING MAGE is hilarious, evoking images of Draco Malfoy getting so mad at Harry Potter he could spit. This one was the big winner for me, especially since IMAGE to MAGE is a dramatic change.

It took me a minute to figure out the base phrase to ORIGIN STORES — that's ORIGIN STORIES, as in the legends of how various superheroes got their powers. The base phrase PICKING ONES BRAIN was much easier to pick out, although PICKING ONES BRAN reminds me of my kids' reaction when I pick out my bran cereal at the grocery store instead of Froot Loops.

I wonder if riffing on the FIVE PILLARS OF ISLAM will be controversial. A few readers have told me that it's offensive to use ALLAH in a crossword puzzle, for example. Not being Muslim or even any sort of religious believer myself, I'm in no position to say, but I wasn't believing in the resulting FIVE PILLARS OF SLAM, which feels as lyrical as I would be in a slam poetry event.

I'm not familiar with THIRD EYE BLIND's music, but I appreciated how the band helped elevate an old-hat theme into something more modern. It takes a lot for anything to register as notable for me, and David's favorite group now has a place in my memory banks.

RegEx can help you find words and phrases with exactly 3 inner I's, but that's just the first step. Finding good phrases that can be sensibly clued with the third I missing, even with help from a Python script, will be a mostly manual process.