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This crossword is themed, and in fact, the theme is revealed in the unclued answer. Note that some of the clues won't make a lot of sense without knowledge of this theme, as I couldn't find much in the way of definitions outside of it. The wordplay should all be solid, however.

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  1. Rock-and-roller back in endless times past
  2. --
  3. High espanol confused Frenchman
  4. Awesome toll stopped early prince
  5. Page misunderstood Erik's son
  6. A silicate mineral? I laugh back, silver-haired maiden!
  7. At first I knew eleven, liked one
  8. Frozen figure article irrelevant
  9. Literary priest sounds like an idiot
  10. Detective mixed in with anime type finds Israeli tribe
  11. In burrow, antelope hides tree
  12. Main character? Mostly Kent woman
  13. Donations without end, lord!
  14. Priestess disguised, excel, I can!
  15. Hearing thievery he's rockin'
  16. Gird us, strange epic norseman!
  17. One hundred...alternatively, one Trojan
  18. Small name in northern roadside assistance for princess
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2 Answers 2

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Partial answer: all solved but 18-Across

The theme:

All of the clue answers are characters from Fire Emblem, a series of tactical role-playing games. (I've been heavily using this list to help find potential answers, though if it happened to be incomplete I wouldn't know.)

The grid:

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Clue explanations:

  1 Rock-and-roller back in endless times past                 (-e)ROY<
  2 --                                                         FIRE EMBLEM
  3 High espanol confused Frenchman                            ALPHONSE*
  4 Awesome toll stopped early prince                          COR + RIN(-g) ("cor" is a britishism)
  5 Page misunderstood Erik's son                              LEIF ("leaf")
  6 A silicate mineral? I laugh back, silver-haired maiden!    MICA+I+AH<
  7 At first I knew eleven, liked one                          IKE (inits)
  8 Frozen figure article irrelevant                           AN+NA
  9 Literary priest sounds like an idiot                       CLAUDE ("clod")
 10 Detective mixed in with anime type finds Israeli tribe     EPHRAIM (indirect anag: PI + HAREM)
 11 In burrow, antelope hides tree                             _ROWAN_
 12 Main character? Mostly Kent woman                          MARTH(-a)
 13 Donations without end, lord!                               ALM(-s)
 14 Priestess disguised, excel, I can!                         _CELICA_
 15 Hearing thievery he's rockin'                              ROBIN ("robbin'")?
 16 Gird us, strange epic norseman!                            SIGURD*
 17 One hundred...alternatively, one Trojan                    HECT+OR
 18 Small name in northern roadside assistance for princess

Some feedback:

There's an extra "in" in clue 1 that doesn't work in the cryptic reading.

Clues 3 and 10 are indirect anagrams, a type of construction where you synonymize words and then anagram them. These are widely considered to be a Very Bad Thing, because they're unfair to the solver due to the number of possibilities. Most publishers won't accept them, even the more lenient ones.

In clue 14, "disguised" doesn't apply grammatically to the text after it - you'd need "disguised by".

I don't understand how clue 15 works - looks like "rockin'" is supposed to clue that "thievery" should be "robbin'" rather than "robbing", but then where's the definition? The wordplay seems to span the whole clue.

Clue 16 doesn't seem to fit its light on the grid, even though the answer is very clearly correct?
In clue 17, you use "one hundred" to clue HECT -- but that doesn't quite work. HECT is not a synonym of "one hundred" because the parts of speech don't match; the SI prefix is "hecto-", and that means "one hundred times".

In general, a "skeleton" grid like this requires all clues to be very easy, because the crosses don't really help at all. It's very easy for the solver to solve most of the clues, yet still have only one or no letters on all of their remaining clues - this is liable to cause a fair bit of frustration.

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10
  • $\begingroup$ Hmmm, I feel like the cryptic crossword solving videos I watch have abbreviations involved in their anagrams, and that's the London Times crossword, but maybe I'm misremembering. Thanks for the feedback. $\endgroup$
    – Exal
    Aug 26, 2019 at 6:37
  • $\begingroup$ I never even heard of the theme. A link might help. $\endgroup$
    – Rand al'Thor
    Aug 26, 2019 at 6:43
  • $\begingroup$ @Exal It's partially a British vs American thing - British cryptics are more willing to use a bit of indirectness in their anagrams (usually just abbreviations). But even then, you very rarely, if ever, see the amount of indirectness in clue 10. There's no way I would've gotten that clue without heavy use of the Nintendo wiki. $\endgroup$
    – Deusovi ♦
    Aug 26, 2019 at 6:43
  • $\begingroup$ I gotcha, as I said, I may be misremembering. And you're spot on about "one hundred times." @Randal'Thor: fireemblem.fandom.com might help. As a clue for the last few, almost all are the main characters of their respective games. $\endgroup$
    – Exal
    Aug 26, 2019 at 6:48
  • $\begingroup$ All solved but 18-Across ? (Also, 16D isn't in the grid, but is in the explanations) $\endgroup$
    – Rubio ♦
    Aug 27, 2019 at 3:18
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Partial answer

  1. Page misunderstood Erik's son

    LEAF (a page can be called a "leaf", and it's a homophone of Leif Erikson).

  1. Detective mixed in with anime type finds Israeli tribe

    Assuming this is going to be a name of a detective mixed with a name of a type of anime to give a name of an Israeli tribe, the only possibilities with seven letters are Zebulun and possibly Ephraim.

  1. Donations without end, lord!

    DON (remove the end of the word "donations", and a "don" in mafia slang is a boss or "lord").

  1. One hundred...alternatively, one Trojan

    HECTOR (a hectare is one hundred ares, and it's almost the same word as Hector the Trojan prince).

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  • 1
    $\begingroup$ Not all of them are correct. 13, for example, is themed. $\endgroup$
    – Exal
    Aug 26, 2019 at 6:27

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