Entering the city while letting most of the fighters escape would pave the way for a long partisan war, waged by guerrillas based in the mountains, where they are almost impossible to winkle out.

ECONOMIST: Agony in Chechnya | The

Its existence came to public notice just when, after a quarter-century of intermittent activity on the Labour back benches, Mr Robinson had become a Treasury minister in Tony Blair's new government, and not long after he, of all ministers, had been put in charge of a government effort to winkle out offshore tax havens.

ECONOMIST: The

Very hard to winkle him out from the air, no sign at the moment of any kind of putsch.

BBC: Transcript of Douglas Alexander interview

Russia is finding it hard to winkle Chechen fighters out of their strongholds in mountain gorges in the south, where the fugitives from Grozny were heading this week.

ECONOMIST: Russia

The tale of Ponce de Leon's quixotic quest for the fountain of youth, Mr. Allman points out, was concocted in the 1820s by Washington Irving, the creator of Rip Van Winkle.

WSJ: Book Review: Finding Florida