Forcing closed unbounded subsets of ω2

It is shown that there is no satisfactory first-order characterization of those subsets of ω₂ that have closed unbounded subsets in ω₁,ω₂ and GCH preserving outer models. These “anticharacterization” results generalize to subsets of successors of uncountable regular cardinals. Similar results are proved for trees of height and cardinality κ⁺ and for partitions of [κ⁺]², when κ is an infinite cardinal.