Natural Order (META)

whoa

Amazing! Picking the meta phrase based on elements, then finding Across entries, cluing them in order, AND fitting in the two hints? A great effort

Yeah, wow.

Wow! Quite inspired and excellently executed, all the way down to the meta answer itself… bravo!

Impressive as always! It really blows my mind how much of a technical achievement each of your puzzles are.

Fun! Nice construction

Wow! I really liked that! I can't believe what a layered and satisfying meta you managed to pack into a smooth, small puzzle!

I got stuck on "INSKERFODICAP"... I want to facepalm. Impressive either way!

Solution path:

Per 3D, read the circled letters top to bottom to get ATOM. If you take the center 1/2 letters of each across clue, each one forms an element symbol. Furthermore, since ATOM can also be parsed as A TO M, we can reorder the across clues by the letter of the alphabet they start with, which ranges from A to M. Finally, take the first letter of each element name in this order to get IN A PERIODICAL.

genius! loved it!

As a publisher, I’m not sure about 11A. The ISBN is an identifying number for a particular book. It is not a copyright page and actually has little to do with the copyrights of a text at all. You can copyright a book’s text while it can have 4+ different ISBNs for each available format, language, etc. The two aren’t related.

I didn't want the fun to end, so I kept looking for further steps to take. For instance, the meta phrase could be parsed as IN A PERIODIC "AL", meaning something that's hidden at the core of the element ALUMINIUM. The answer to the prompt "Where might you find a crossword" would then be "I", meaning that crosswords are in one's heart (aww). But I guess that IN A PERIODICAL is ok too.

fire

very impressive

This is incredible!