Breaking the ice perhaps to win over the first crone (7)
I believe the answer is:
thawing
'the first crone' is the definition.
Although both the answer and definition are singular nouns, I can't understand how one could define the other.
'breaking the ice perhaps to win' is the wordplay.
'breaking' indicates putting letters inside.
'the' becomes 't' (the is pronounced as a 't' sound in some dialects).
'ice perhaps' becomes 'hag' (I am not sure about this - if you are sure you should give a lot more credence to this answer).
'to' says to put letters next to each other.
't'+'hag'='thag'
'thag' placed around 'win' is 'THAWING'.
'over' acts as a link.
Can you help me to learn more?
(Other definitions for thawing that I've seen before include "(Of snow) melting" , "Changing from solid to liquid with heat" .)