As always, thanks very much indeed for the blog and for all the comments, which are much appreciated.

Without prejudice I should say that Natty Bumppo is himself The Deerslayer, and not simply a character in the book, plus lots of other names (such as Hawkeye) according to which of Fenimore Cooper’s Bumppo works you read. I’m possibly blinkered by my very familiarity with the topic, having delved as a kid. (Boy, am I glad Alastair got it from the SI, as I can now claim that I try to make clues less difficult when the required words may not be all that well-known.)

For OUTPOINT, the def is ‘sail closer to the wind than’.

The ‘on as in wearing’ I would probably not have used had the clue been down, due in part to gravity. Nonetheless, I’m aware of the Times convention that, in across clues, ‘X on Y’ = YX.

GENTOO is listed only as ‘a Hindu’ in my desktop Collins. I have to go to the shelf, where Chambers and SOED live, to find the Falkland Islands penguin.

Despite NealH’s experiences I must counter that the wording – honest – is NOT designed to be ‘as confusing as possible’. On the other hand, and like a lot of Indyists I suppose, I’m always trying to get away from standard indication and sentence order, whilst hopefully remaining fair, and grammatically correct at the cryptic level.

I failed to complete this (five to go), but apart from the ludicrously difficult BUMPPO I understood it all when I saw the answers. Fair cop.

Fair play to the setter, I suppose! Just not every day, please . . .