David Karp author page

"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.

★ This kind of themeless typically locks all the long answers together, creating severe inflexibility. David did something brilliant: the black squares between MASCARA / OFFSETS and SEVILLE / NAPSTER make all the difference in the world, allowing much more flexibility in filling the sides of the puzzle.

Themelesses featuring a slew of long entries live and die with those long entries. All six of David's are dynamite, and the fact that they're all ripe for clever cluing elevates them even further. I can't decide whether I enjoyed WHATCHAMACALLIT more or the head-scratching [Word when you can't find the word]. (Mine usually is "consarnit.")

I fell in love with [Dated TV star?] for THE BACHELORETTE. Consarnit, I imagine there were some SLEEPLESS NIGHTS coming up with such a devious clue! Probably some on THE BACHELORETTE, too, but for different reasons …

I was also impressed by the cluing for the short entries, helping them pop. [Places with multiple outlets] so innocently drew me to electrical outlets, so I put in WALLS instead of MALLS. I'd already been stymied by WHATCHAMACALLIT words, and [Words to remember, for short] continued to confound. That's VOCAB lists to remember!

Any themeless of this audacious style will require a bit of Elmer's to hold the long stuff together. AGS is awkward, LAH a partial, and NEC isn't as huge here as in Japan. All minor, thankfully. The only one that held me up was KORS, last used in the NYT way back in 1972, as [Hebrew measures]. Thankfully Michael KORS came along!

Sizzling long entries and snappy cluing in an innovative design? I would never have guessed that this was someone's second puzzle.

It's been a while since we've had a "tic-tac-toe" themeless. These usually live or die on the snazziness of the six grid-spanning entries forming the tic-tac-toe backbone, along with the quality of their clues. I used to love the SLAM DUNK CONTEST — 2016 Zach Lavine / Aaron Gordon duel! It's since fallen apart, the latest one depressing. Not one of the NBA's SEXIEST MAN ALIVE candidates participated.

Some of the others almost tell a story. HIGH STAKES POKER, with COLLECTORS ITEMS in the pot … I don't know what the MORAL OF THE STORY is, but I'd love to find out!

There's no doubt that the jarabe tapatio is the national dance of Mexico. I get flashbacks of my brother's kid — the only Asian in his elementary school class — being asked to dress up in a dragon costume. I'm sure this says a lot more about me and my hang-ups than anything.

A tic-tac-toe themeless usually has room for two or possibly four more long entries, and NAP TIMES and ESCAPE KEY are assets. PLACATED is a single-worder that might not placate editors, and HENS TEETH has an old-timey feel to it.

Tic-tac-toes tend to be incredibly difficult to fill cleanly, since the rigid skeleton constrains each and every subregion. David did well to escape with AON AVS FLOR HOC, with HOC being super minor; only dinged because it's hard to clue without reusing [Ad ___]. And I'm sure Colorado Avalanche fans will call me for icing.

Solid solve, bolstered by a sprinking of great clues. I appreciated the wordplay in that NW corner — ALEXA on Amazon Echo disguised as [Echo voice], plus People magazine's capital P similarly hidden in [People person?] made for a fantastic pair of "hidden capitalizations."