14 across: Music clip stopping bitter period in Arab network (2, 7)

It’s not a difficult clue: music = jazz, music clip = jaz, bitter = ale and period = ale, which gives music clip stopping bitter period = Al Jazeera = Arab network. The impressive bit: DA managed to get the j and the z to fall on cross squares and get words out for them. The obscure letters in this crossword generally were a delight to behold.

Unfortunately, after that, there’s not much else I would proffer as worthy of gold status, which makes this particular crossword a particularly barren one.