elude
v.v. to avoid being caught, seen, or understood. You use this when someone or something is hard to catch or hard to find.
v. to succeed in avoiding or escaping from something; to be beyond the reach of capture or detection. Often used in the context of law enforcement, physical pursuit, or abstract concepts like truth or memory.
The thief managed to elude the police for three days.
Despite the detective's best efforts, the suspect managed to elude capture by hiding in a crowded subway station.
The solution to the puzzle seemed to elude the researchers for months, only revealing itself when they finally considered a completely different set of variables.
From Latin ēlūdō (“to evade, elude”), from ē- (“out of”, short form of ex-) + lūdō (“to play; to trick”).