Koalas, drongos and numbats

The Cryptic puzzle for 17 June by Qaos had a clue (21 down) that read: 'Bear a left, then a right, then reverse (5)' for the solution KOALA [A/L then A/OK (all reversed)]. This issue has come up before, as of course we all know that the state emblem of Queensland, though it may look like a little bear, is in fact a little marsupial.

When it has come up before I have defended by quoting from the dictionaries on my desk: eg Collins – koala or koala bear, also called (Austral.) native bear; Chambers – koala, also called koala bear or native bear; Oxford Dictionary of English – koala, also called native bear in Australia. The basis of the defence has been that, though a koala is zoologically no kind of a bear, it is a kind of a bear, linguistically. (In the same way, since what Buffalo Bill killed in large numbers on the prairies were bison, not buffalo, zoologically he should have been called Bison Bill, but he wasn't.) As a crossword editor's plea bargain, that seemed to hold up, more of less.

But this time came a much more dangerously focused attack. It was from someone working for a multinational energy company in Perth, Western Australia and clearly sought to undermine the whole basis of my position. The dictionaries cited were admittedly English (or, in the case of Chambers, originally Scottish). The counterattack from Perth ran: 'According to local [ie Australian] experience, the terms you refer to [ie koala bear and native bear] are not commonly used. If they are used at all, the user is regarded as a drongo or numbat. [The first is an insect-eating bird and the second a termite-eating marsupial and, in this context, neither is presumably something you want to be called, even metaphorically.] Suggest your dictionaries get updated to reflect this.'

Feeling cornered, I looked for possible further evidence. The Australian Oxford Dictionary offered some welcome support. Its online version gives: 'koala; also native bear in Australia', noting further that 'in non-technical contexts koala bear (as opposed to koala) is widely used'. But, for all its Australian consultants and expert editors, the AOD might still be seen as tainted by the Oxford connection.

So I turned to what is universally regarded as the national dictionary of Australian English, the Macquarie Dictionary. It was originally the creation of the Linguistics Department at Macquarie University in Sydney and the first edition was published in 1981. It has since been acquired by Macmillans and has move its editorial offices to Sydney University. The sixth edition was published in 2013. It says of the tailless, grey, furry arboreal diprotodont marsupial: koala, also koala bear (though it properly notes that 'there is no zoological justification of the expression koala bear').

To be honest, I am not entirely sure where this leaves us, Cryptic crossword-wise, though clearly 'kind of bear' would be totally wrong as a clue for KOALA in a Quick crossword.

Those who do the Guardian crosswords on line and make use of the facility for posting comments in the space below the clues may from time to time find that some comment or other has been removed without notice by the in-house moderators. I hasten to establish that I have no part of any kind in the process and am not involved in any disputes after the event about whether of not the removal was justified. Normally removals are triggered by considerations of taste and decency, or sometimes because the comments seem to have no relationship of any kind to the matter being commented on. But quite a few such comments were removed from below the Quick crossword for 25 June for a legal reason. Andy Coulson, the former editor of the News of the World and subsequently David Cameron's director of communications, had been found guilty of serious criminal charges related to phone hacking but had not been sentenced and the jury had still come to a verdict on some of the other charges against him. It seems that a thread of comments related to the case, which was still ongoing, and the Guardian's legal view was that these could have been construed as a contempt of court, if any of the jurors involved had been Guardian crossword enthusiasts and had been doing the Quick crossword online for relaxation that day.

The June Genius (No 132 by Paul) got a much lower than normal entry: only six on the first day and 301 by the deadline. This is either a good thing or a bad thing, depending on how you rate the pain factor in a Genius puzzle. The first three past the post were Dave H, Tony C and Jonny R (a newcomer to the frame, I think).

Congratulations to Linda Urquhart who is the winner of the June Genius puzzle.

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