4A: Implied; MEAN IT (“to not joke around”) without I 3D: Sees; STEADY* with Y (“young commander” referring to the first letter in “young”) missing (“gone AWOL”)
Nice stuff, smooth and breezy. Many setters wouldn’t be a fan of the noun as an anagrind in 3D, preferable would be [deteriorates] or [deteriorating] (though the surface would have to change). Love the use of AWOL but [young commander] isn’t very clear/precise for Y. Really like the surface sense though! Only other quibble is in 5A, I can’t justify [exist]=IS, you’d need [exists]=IS, although obviously it would break the surface.
Fan of most everything else though, 1D is very clean.
Thank you for the feedback! Still new to this style of clueing, so I’m still trying to figure things out. I think it’s still an improvement from my first cryptic crossword though.
Not a fan of ‘like’ as a connector, I’d probably go with something like [Still exists as mythical creatures], though the surface is much worse. I’d probably look for a different clueing angle though. [Exist] and IS are conjugated differently, there’s no sentence where you could swap between them that would be grammatically correct, so I don’t think it’s fair/precise to use one to define the other.
Some advice I’ve heard is this: if a clue almost works, then it doesn’t work. The surface of the original is lovely but the charade is a little bit off, and trying to preserve the surface while fixing the cryptic grammar might be harder than finding a new way to clue it!
A lot of great feedback here from people, and I agree with most of the points about noun anagrinds and not-quite synonyms. I'd add that above all, surface is king, so I'd be most inclined to forgive [deterioration] in 3D because it's such a nice split between [Sees] and [steady deterioration]. By contrast, a clue like 2D, which is grammatically sound, leaves me a bit cold: what is a [cater], and how would you respond to it? That's why 1D is your best clue IMO: solid grammar, solid surface, fun discovery. To be clear: really great ideas throughout this puzzle, and it was fun to solve.
3D: Sees; STEADY* with Y (“young commander” referring to the first letter in “young”) missing (“gone AWOL”)