Sunday's cruciverbal forecast: warm and sunny

Great Sunday NYT by David Kahn ("Field of Dreams"), with a timeless theme because, after all, when will the Cubbies ever return to the World Series? (I have a feeling it'll be awhile.) I liked how Kahn unspooled the little story line by line, and how easy it was to figure out the rest of 92A once the word CUBS was in there and the concept of ungrantable wishes had been raised. Plenty of goodies in the rest of the grid, such as the crossing EUGENE/ONEILLS pair, KITTENISH, the crossing "John"/"John of England" LAV/ELTON pair, APOLOGY clued as "fight stopper," the crossing FOGY/STOGY pair, SOBERS atop ALANON just to the left of a cocktail ONION, POESY clued as "it's measured by the meter," DOGNAP clued as "Grab some chow?" and ACNE clued as "Tough problem to face?" Elegantly done, Messrs. Kahn and Shortz. The puzzle seemed to be flowing smoothly, so I can't say why I finished 2 to 3 minutes behind Barry Haldiman and Byron Walden (nemeses!).

The Second Sunday puzzle, another Going Too Far creation from Eric Berlin, was also a fun challenge. Thanks for serving up these treats, Eric! I don't care whether you publish them in the NYT or the Sun so long as you keep publishing them.

Updated:

Berlin 16:00
NYT 10:30
LAT 7:18
CS 3:20
10/9 Puns & Anagrams 9:35