Natural Order (META)

whoa

Yeah, wow.

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

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!