Enigmatic Variations No. 1201: The Last One by Ifor

I’ve come to treat an Ifor puzzle with some trepidation. His last EV was No. 1188, Portmanteau, with its phrases for helping the aspiring solver: spilling the beans, giving the game away, and letting the of cat out of the bag. I hoped that I wouldn’t find this one as tricky since Portmanteau stumped me.

This week, we had a pair of letters being dropped from every across clue, which “represented the theme, no longer produced”. This “unavailability” was reflected in consistent removals from all down answers. Luckily lengths in brackets referred to answer lengths, and they were all 4 letters longer than their entry. Four cells would need highlighting at the end.

I assumed that the two letters which needed dropping from each across clue would be easy to spot, and so they were… in 1 and 5: CHAN. After that, they got a bit tricky. In fact, the whole puzzle got a bit tricky, and across clues were entered fairly slowly. They were certainly reluctant to reveal the theme.

As for the down entries, they were even less forthcoming. FLIRTING, FLUOROSCOPIC and BEFRIENDED seem to have little in common, although all having a letter F seemed suspicious. It was finally having CHANDLER before the JO at 13ac that enabled me to pounce. Luckily I was, for about ten years, a fan of the American sitcom Friends and the six main characters were CHANDLER, JOEY, PHOEBE, ROSS, MONICA and RACHEL. Interesting that they all have an even number of letters.

I don’t think Friends was actually dropped by the network NBC; I could be wrong. If it had been, it would have been a nice way of indicating that F, R, I and the ENDS of all the down answers needed to be dropped before entry. I think the producers just realised it had run its course. However, it didn’t take long to see that that was what was required. Having said that, solving a lot of the down clues still took time.

All in all, this was a tough puzzle, but at least this time I got there in the end. Highlighting the four central squares referred to the coffee shop Central Perk, which is where some of the action takes place.

I have to say that I don’t think I have seen a single episode of the programme since it finished. I think saturation set in. The same will probably happen with my current favourite American sitcom The Big Bang Theory when that comes to an end.

Episodes of Friends all had titles like The One with the… or The One where…. All, that is, except the last one, which was called The Last One.

Constructing the grid must have been tortuous, and clueing all those long words a bit of a slog! My only question is the relevance of Disney in 7dn.

So thanks for another toughie, Ifor. I’m looking forward to your next.

Legend:
Definition in clue
ex = Letters dropped from across clues
FORTHCOMING = Down answers with letters dropped
ABC* = anagram
ABC< = reversal
abCDef = hidden