Prison in Texas first to execute crook? (4)
I believe the answer is:
cane
'crook?' is the definition.
(thesaurus)
'prison in texas first to execute' is the wordplay.
'prison in texas' becomes 'can' (I can't explain this - if you can you should give a lot more credence to this answer).
'first to' suggests taking the first letters.
The first letter of 'execute' is 'e'.
'can'+'e'='CANE'
Can you help me to learn more?
(Other definitions for cane that I've seen before include "Eg, bamboo; punish" , "Hollow jointed stem of, say, bamboo (4)" , "Walking stick; punish" , "e.g. Bamboo stem" , "Birch" .)