Recently, Sanjaya has managed to stay in tune but hasn’t shown the vocal chops necessary to win the competition. “If you had the gumption

to just totally go for it” vocally, judge Paula Abdul said during Tuesday’s show, “then it

would fit the wackiness of the mohawk.”

Earlier in the competition, when the judges criticised him, Sanjaya seemed hurt. With his huge grin and bushy, expressive eyebrows, he now appears emboldened, almost carefree on stage. “I think he’s bought into the freak show,” said Constantine Maroulis, a Season Four finalist, during a post-show commentary on Wednesday on tv.yahoo.com.

Idol Executive Producer Nigel Lythgoe even turned Sanjaya into a strange verb earlier this week during a press conference. “I was myself ‘Sanjayaed’ purely and simply because he’s got guts, this kid, and you have to applaud that,” Lythgoe said. Idol remains America’s No. 1 show in its sixth season by a large margin, but ratings and number of votes tallied each week are down slightly from a year ago.

One popular theory for Sanjaya’s staying power is that pre-teen and teenage girls love his harmless, vaguely effeminate looks and are providing enough votes to keep him around. Debra Byrd, an Idol vocal coach since the show’s first season, on Wednesday called Sanjaya a fun, witty kid with potential. “His first performance, he was not in tune,” she said. “But he’s getting progressively better. You realise he can sing. I make him work for it.”

Nonetheless, “we are all pondering the mystery that is Sanjaya,” she said.