Puzzle surfacing whale with short pole (8)
I believe the answer is:
acrostic
'puzzle' is the definition.
(I've seen this before)
'surfacing whale with short pole' is the wordplay.
'surfacing' says the letters should be written in reverse (as opposed to capsizing).
'whale' becomes 'orca' (orca is a kind of whale).
'with' is a charade indicator (letters next to each other).
'short pole' becomes 'cits' (I can't explain this - if you can you should give a lot more credence to this answer).
'orca' after 'cits' is 'citsorca'.
'citsorca' reversed gives 'ACROSTIC'.
Can you help me to learn more?
(Other definitions for acrostic that I've seen before include "Legal document" , "Puzzle spelling out something with first letters" , "Word puzzle using first letters" , "Bit of wordplay" , "Poem with word(s) reading downwards" .)