Petits Fours (Meta)

I am anticipating that a modicum of back-solving will be needed for this one. While YOLO and AWOL will be well-known to cruciverbalists everywhere, and MIDI should be relatively well-known among musicians of a certain age, CMOS is not exactly a well-known acronym except among computer hardware specialists. A Complementary Metal-Oxide-Semiconductor (CMOS) is a small amount of memory on a computer motherboard that stores the Basic Input/Output System (BIOS - yet another petit four!) settings. So now you know!

I've never heard these called petits fours... petits four? petit fours? I don't speak French!

Fun one, Ben!

Needed to reveal the 62D/68A square, never having seen either show. But clocked the meta fairly quickly. Started by trying to combine first 2 and last 2, but spotted YOLO relatively quickly, then CMOS (which I certainly know as a term, though I had to look up what it stood for), then AWOL and then backsolved for MIDI, which for some reason didn't strike me as a 'petit four' even though it seems obvious in retrospect. Like I saw MIDI early (before any of the others I think), but my brain didn't connect it to the theme until I needed the M. Fun one, thanks.

p.s. -- also don't understand the 27D/41D cross reference. But that's probably just me being dumb.

Got hung up on MIDI -- thought it was IDIC, which, according to Google, was a Vulcan philosophy known as Infinite Diversity in Infinite Combinations. But then I saw Y_CA staring me in the face and the answer became fairly obvious. Thanks for the puzzle, Ben!

Didn't need back solving so much as sideways solving. Figured I needed a four letter acronymb in RUNIC MOSS that scans the two words so either NICM (Nonischemic Cardiomyopathy), ICMO (Indirect Cost Monitoring System), or CMOS of which CMOS was the most common and familiar to all.

The revelation was an "YMCA? Yeah, okay. That works, I'll give that a submit.)

CMOS indeed. What's up with BUB/PTS?

Enjoyed it...thanks Ben!

I'm old enough and techie enough to know all of these immediately (I've never seen CMOS used in a puzzle before!), but still wasted some time trying to find alternate clues until it hit me :-)

Curious which generation of musicians you think won't know MIDI... Seems to me like it's been around forever, although I'm on the young side. I still assumed that couldn't be the right answer though since it seemed to niche to my own wheelhouse to be general knowledge. Not familiar with CMOS either, so Y??A could have been anything, even after I gave up looking for alt clues or another second step.

ROFL ;) Fanastic aha moment on this one. And of course, now I have an ear worm... Thanks for a fun puzzle, Ben!

It was luck! :D I was actually surprised at the answer, but I "saw" YOLO and AWOL and then Googled to see that the other sequences were legit.

I was just doing some hobby electronics last night, so CMOS fell quick for me. (Also fun to see it in a puzzle!)

Also, 31D will NEVER get old. :)

Took me a little bit to spot CMOS- but I'm a software guy, so I have an excuse!

Nice one. I agree with your comments that YOLO and AWOL were easy and gave me the idea of what to look for. Once I found MIDI I figured it had to be CMOS.

I quickly got that "petit four" = 4-letter abbreviation, and I saw YOLO in MAYO LOVER pretty much as soon as I got it. PYRAMIDIC felt off (isn't it PYRAMIDAL?), RUNIC MOSS is not a thing, and ALPHA WOLF is green paint-ish. So I knew that the 9-letter answers were meta-related. BUT, this is an 82-word grid and I got double-Naticked at ARJ OCASIO JOELY, so I (over)thought that there had to be a next step after locating 4-letter abbreviations and maybe the J just HAD to be there. Also there are FOUR theme answers, the answer is FOUR letters long, but this is the third meta this month so it's obviously a red herring.

Turns out that I was making this much harder than it actually was, and maybe the high word count is just a result of you wanting to construct the puzzle ASAP. I like to call this kind of puzzle a "guess the theme" meta, one where there's no meta trickery outside of a few long answers, basically a themed puzzle where the theme isn't given away by circles, a revealer or something like that. I expect these kinds of crosswords to look like an early-week non-meta themed grid, which is why I was overthinking so much.

Needed a nudge on this one because I got hung up on sandwiches! If the four corners are petit fours (tiny sandwiches with a bottom, middle, and top, or four letters across and 3 letters high, within each block there is one diagonal double letter (there are actually more, but in this case stick to diagonal doubles where one hits the side edge and the other hits the top or bottom of the block). Those letters, in clockwise order, starting in the NE corner, art M-O-A-T. Imagine my surprise when that got rejected. Had some helpers nudge me to the long theme answers, and spotted YOLO right away, but CMOS was a backsolve (I saw >>OS and thought... Child Minder Over Shoulder??) but googled it for the actual acronym, which I've never heard of.

Could swear that I already submitted my comments here (??). I was too stuck on the sandwiches to look at the long themers. In each corner there’s a 3-high-stack of 4-letter words, creating a tidy little petit four. In each of these there is a diagonal pair of matching letters, where one of the pair touches a grid edge, and the other touches either the top or bottom of the petit four rectangle. In clockwork order starting in NE corner, these spell M-O-A-T. Imagine my surprise when this answer was not accepted! I got some kind nudges that the long themers were the ticket. YOLO fell first, then AWOL and MIDI. The other I had to look up. When I saw I needed a C for YMCA I looked at CMOS and thought … “Child Minder Over Shoulder??” (Google set me straight.). Great puzzle, Ben, and sorry if this comment doubles the one that apparently got lost in cyberspace and may re-appear!

Nice! My way in was rather convoluted. I saw SALAMI SELLER and knew that DELI had to be one, and MAYOLOVER seemed too contrived so. "let's see, MAYO and SALAMI, well MAYO is a PETIT FOUR itself so maybe there is an associated 4 letter word in the themers" No other were evident so I started to look for "hidden" 4 letter words and then I saw YOLO! Hmmm...what about others, yep AWOL and there it stalled. I saw CMOS and know I have worked with a few (Chief Medical Officers) and MIDI which to me is a time, a canal or a skirt. Anyway I had Y?CA so what else could it be. Turns out, with research that MIDI and CMOS have other names and they are acronyms. I thought the answers could be either short forms or acronyms since the Petits Fours were a mix of both. Regardless, a satisfying arrival...now to rid myself of that worm!

First of your puzzles I've played, what a fantastic introduction! Got tripped up when I saw ASAP was similar to ASAHI and went down a rabbit hole, but I woke up with a fresh mind and instantly got it lol.