play possum

Any chance that the M’s were playing possum with Marte and Arroyo?

After running the simulation thousands of times, the researchers found that “playing possum” indeed helped the antlions: It increased the survival rate in a given patch by about 20 percent.

At first, I considered playing possum — not responding.

Someone might be playing possum with great cards, but it’s worth putting out a larger bet to see if you can exploit their weakness and scare them into folding.

“Alternative viewpoints”? It’s exasperating to watch a smart woman play possum like this — not just in the interviews but in the writing, especially when her conclusions don’t tell us anything we didn’t know before.