My first time trying to make any sort of theme, though its pretty small in this puzzle lol. Some of the clues are a little iffy, but any and all feedback is greatly appreciated!
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Fun idea for a set of theme entries! I'm not sure their cluing would parse in a normal crossword, but I was able to figure out what was going on from just the two clues on the right.
As for the rest of the grid, I would be careful of both two-letter entries and unchecked cells. Both could be solved by making a bigger grid, or perhaps giving barred crosswords ago. The latter works well for cryptic crosswords (for your critic clues, "on" in 1A is normally reserved for down entries, and I'm not sure where the A in BRITA is coming from).
While doing some play testing I came to a similar conclusion about the clueing for the themed entries. If I wanted to be more clear, I could've included something about holes in the clues, but I really liked the "ace of _" construction (with each word having a /e/ vowel to rhyme with ace of spades and sound like a card suit). I also think it could be easy to accidentally make them more cryptic which isn't what I was really going for. So, I made sure to make some of the downs that checked the clues pretty unambiguous.
I agree about the two-letter words. They made creative clueing hard and solving them is never much fun either. I didn't even think about doing bars, but that's a good idea.
For 1A, yeah I was a little iffy on using "on" but I think the allusion to estrogen would be lost if I tried something else. Maybe I'll just rotate the puzzle 90° next time!
s/with each word/with each clue