contrive

They can dominate chunks of a game with their excellence and then contrive to lose that same game with their mental wobbles.

From BBC ● Feb. 6, 2026

The members must contrive to pay the new guy off, which means redeeming the deadbeat’s paper.

From The Wall Street Journal ● Nov. 6, 2025

As Mariko, Sawai, recently seen in “Monarch: Legacy of Monsters,” is the picture of melancholic resolve, and the filmmakers contrive to highlight her otherworldly beauty, filling the screen with her face at every opportunity.

From Los Angeles Times ● Feb. 26, 2024

One of the first things McCartney did when he took over the Buffs in 1982 was contrive a rivalry with Nebraska and ban red in the football building.

From Seattle Times ● Sep. 6, 2023

‘There will be no escape again, if we do not contrive it. How that is to be done cannot be guessed, but first we must overtake them.’

From "The Two Towers" by J. R. R. Tolkien

So even if the U.S. somehow contrives to lose to Paraguay, draw with Australia, and lose to Turkey, for example, it’s highly likely they’ll get into the Round of 16.

From The Wall Street Journal ● Jun. 12, 2026

The travel industry contrives all manner of ways to objectify the locals for the benefit of tourists on a quest for the extraordinary or the “authentic.”

From Los Angeles Times ● Dec. 12, 2022

A couple of times in this short and occasionally exhilarating feature from Colombia, its director, Camilo Restrepo, contrives striking visual juxtapositions.

From New York Times ● Apr. 28, 2022

Lethem’s plot contrives for have Journeyman ride out the end of the world in a Maine idyll where people are both well-off and self-sufficient—a rarity in modern life.

From Slate ● Mar. 18, 2021

Technical proofs are the arguments that the orator contrives.

From "Words Like Loaded Pistols" by Sam Leith

Scenes designed to advance the plot feel more contrived than ones in which characters just share thoughts and feelings, but there are plenty of those.

From Los Angeles Times ● Sep. 10, 2026

I’m wondering if the justices are themselves creating these absurd notions or if appellate advocates are suggesting and steering the justices toward these contrived ways of thinking.

From Slate ● Aug. 16, 2026

An independent disciplinary commission ruled at the time that the espionage was authorised by Eckert and was a "contrived and determined plan from the top down".

From BBC ● Jul. 22, 2026

An antigovernment paranoiac, she has contrived to disappear from public records and hides away inside a New York ministorage unit.

From The Wall Street Journal ● Jul. 10, 2026

Adams would have been overjoyed to receive such a message—given the stilted language of their most recent and rather contrived correspondence, it seemed to meet him more than halfway—but the letter was never sent.

From "Founding Brothers: The Revolutionary Generation" by Joseph J. Ellis

The FDA implicitly concedes that the RP1 results are impressive by contriving ridiculous reasons to argue they could be exaggerated.

From The Wall Street Journal ● Apr. 14, 2026

Warren Zaire-Emery was punished for contriving to strike the post with the goal gaping as Mats Hummels arrowed in a towering header to score for Dortmund shortly after.

From BBC ● May 7, 2024

Perhaps his primary knack was for contriving a tension between immaculate optics and human entropy.

From Washington Post ● Mar. 25, 2023

But I wonder if such a connection can even be made between then and our friendship now, or if I’m contriving it to appease in me some compulsion for closure.

From New York Times ● Apr. 12, 2021

We worked by contriving intricate and open-ended emotional conspiracies.

From "Native Speaker" by Chang-rae Lee