I solved this quite quickly (for an xmas special). I made a lucky guess and got the theme almost on the first clue. There after I have to admit cheating and looking up lists of Dickens character names on the web. I have read many Dickens books, but even the most recent was probably 30 years ago so I could remeber very little.

If you have not seen it already then try Gozo’s xmas alphabetical jigsaw puzzle in the FT. I thought this was much more of an xmas challenge.

My way in to the theme was via ‘chicken soup’ which led me to ‘Pumblechook’ and hence to ‘Dahl’s Chickens’. I’m another that wouldn’t have had a hope without a list of Dickens characters, but even so I found this special less challenging than the August Potter horror. Kept me pleasantly diverted around Christmas.

Re: Skyscraper. Is it too convoluted to suggest that ‘scraper’ = ‘fiddler’ (as in violinist) and that Fagin was certainly a fiddler the sense of being a cheat?

Re: Cusack. I definitely thought of the American Cusacks, especially John and Joan.

In retrospect my favourite is ‘pole’. I completely missed the two Dickens characters referred to and was lucky to arrive at the correct answer as a double definition of ‘measure’ and ‘skim’ (as in a punt) being not particularly happy with the latter and baffled by ‘clay’.

Finally, I too was tempted by Beadle, but found Merdle just in time.

Thanks for the blog bridgesong, and as ever thanks to the Master.

Seems plausible to me. I checked the OED for “skyscraper” without result, but didn’t think to look at the entry for “scraper”.