Enigmatic Variations No. 1735: Unstated by Kcit

Kcit challenges us to find an UNSTATED end to a poem where the relevant part wasn’t even in the original published version. To paraphrase Donald Rumsfeld: ‘There are known unknowns and there are unknown unknowns…and there are unstated endings to unpublished verses…‘

The preamble states that:

“The four unclued rows are alternative visualisations of the UNSTATED end to the second verse of a poem, the verse itself not included in the original published edition. The first line of the more familiar first verse is given, with a small modernisation, by words to be removed before solving in a clue to one entry in each column, reading left to right. The second verse’s participants are given by an anagram of the two unclued entries on the middle row. The wordplay in each across clue includes an extra letter not entered in the grid; in clue order these spell the author. Chambers Dictionary (2016) is recommended.”

[In fact the whole quotation was: “There are known knowns. These are things we know that we know. There are known unknowns. That is to say, there are things that we know we don’t know. But there are also unknown unknowns. There are things we don’t know we don’t know.” Cofveve to that! There were mad word-salad-ing Donalds in and around the White House well before the current one…]

Anyway, back to the issue at hand. Quite a complex preamble, and quite a few unclued rows to fill – let’s hope the Downs can provide enough crossers to help…

Well, things gradually started to take shape – with a surfeit of 4-letter Down entries (presumably driven by the amount of thematic material in the Acrosses and in the interests of maintaining some impressive symmetry) … and I eventually had most of the middle row looking like THROW and PANEL.

Not enough in themselves, but there were also a few likely extra words in the Down clues, including VOICE, LOBSTER, HEARD and DECLARE…and once the Across extra letters started looking like LEWIS CARROLL it wasn’t a great mental leap (assisted by a little Wiki-oogling) to come up with the relevant pome…not the Jabberwocky or the Snark, but a talking Lobster.

The original version had an Oyster and an Owl, but the ‘sexed-up’ version changed this to a PANTHER and an OWL (THROW + PANEL):

‘Tis (It is) the voice of the Lobster, I heard him declare
“You have baked me too brown: I must sugar my hair.”
As a duck with its eyelids, so he with his nose
Trims his belt & his buttons, & turns out his toes.
When the sands are all dry, he is gay as a lark,
And will talk in contemptuous tones of the Shark:
But, when the tide rises and Sharks are around,
His voice has a timid & tremulous sound.

I passed by his garden, & marked with one eye
How the Owl & the Panther were sharing a pie:
The Panther took pie-crust, & gravy, & meat,
While the Owl got the dish as his share of the treat.
When the pie was all finished, the Owl, as a boon,
Was kindly permitted to pocket the spoon:
While the Panther received knife & fork with a growl,
And concluded the banquet by [eating the Owl].

[I am assuming the above is out of copyright and OK to reproduce here!…]

So, the Panther ends up [eating the Owl] in an unstated way [Quentin Tarantino remakes ‘The Owl and the Pussycat‘?], and similarly the unclued rows all have a large cat eating a poor defenceless owl:

Notwithstanding the fairly complex preamble, I found myself quite quickly on the wavelength with this puzzle, and once I’d spotted the Carroll and the Lobster it was reasonably plain e-sailing to get to the end.

This being a Kcit, AKA Phi and Pangapuku inter alia elsewhere, and with well-known NZ connections, there are the obligatory nods to Maori heritage, with PAKEHA (‘white man’/non-Polynesian) and RURU (the mopoke, a NZ owl). He is also known for his love of cats, though usually of the more domesticated variety, so there is another theme/pattern showing there as well.

(Shame, really, that this one didn’t fall on Kitty’s turn in the EV rota…)

Otherwise, there wasn’t too much obscurity, with TORANA and ROOT-PRUNE both new to me, but gettable and check-able…and my favourite clue was obviously 31A EMCEE (;+>)

My thanks to Kcit for the challenge and the Carroll-ean education, and I trust all is clear below…