juff's cryptic crosswords

I had a vacation last week during which I concluded I need to scrap Crossing Pairs #3 and start over...  In the meantime, here's a themeless mini I thew together mostly to display the clue for six across which I just adore (but no one else does.) Hints are included again!  Click reveal-->hint on a computer or tap the lightbulb icon on a phone. ( Fullscreen solve )

[Edit--Just inserting a note in case you came to this blog more recently and are interested in Crossing Pairs but feel like you should do them in order.  You don't have to!  These first two are among the first puzzles I posted and are REALLY ROUGH.  I'd recommend starting the series at 3 or 4 if you feel like going in order, but going backwards is just fine.  I kind of intend to reclue the first two (maybe 3?) someday to get the collection in better shape than it is.  But that day isn't today.  --6/1/23]  This is the second in the Crossing Pairs series.  It's much better than the first.  My favorite cryptics are variety cryptics, and I'm hoping this puzzle might be a nice way for people new to cryptics to see the beauty of the meta.  For this puzzle each clue has a 'hint' that identifies the 'definition' or 'straight clue' part of the clue, and also gives a parse of what the cryptic half is trying to instruct you to do.  On a phone,...

[Edit--Just inserting a note in case you came to this blog more recently and are interested in Crossing Pairs but feel like you should do them in order.  You don't have to!  These first two are among the first puzzles I posted and are REALLY ROUGH.  I'd recommend starting the series at 3 or 4 if you feel like going in order, but going backwards is just fine.  I kind of intend to reclue the first two (maybe 3?) someday to get the collection in better shape than it is.  But that day isn't today.  --6/1/23] This is the first of my Crossing Pairs puzzles--three exist already as of now and at least a fourth will be made.  There are some aspects of this one that will seem unnecessary--hopefully those will make more sense if you keep doing the series. There are two consecutive unchecked squares in this at the bottom that I thought a lot about when I made this a few weeks ago.  It's fixable, by cutting that 11-letter word into a 5 and a 6 (and changing so...

 This was the second cryptic I ever set.  As of this writing I've finished five and this one already makes me wince a little, especially the double-unchecked cells on the right.  But I still think the theme is cute and there are some neat clues in here.  Thanks to oddthority and Liari for test-solving (Fullscreen solve)