11.   It was a vain attempt to shift the responsibility for the murder to somebody else.

12.   The drafting committee worked through the night in a vain attempt to finish on schedule.

13.   In her article the professor resorts to garrulity in a vain attempt to disguise the fact that she has very little worth saying.

14.   Cornelius made a vain attempt to do so.

15.   Made a vain attempt to tidy up the room, which was already looking like a heavy-metal combat zone, and took himself off for a shower.

16.   Something walking across her grave... or the forces in heaven laughing at her vain attempts to re-write her future?

17.   In a vain attempt to maintain her independence, she spent Monday and Tuesday nights at home -- alone.

18.   An opposition battery several miles behind the front line fired in a vain attempt to hit the vehicles.

19.   As one carpenter elf drills, he clasps his hand around the tool in a vain attempt to mask its noise.

20.   A New York street pigeon persisted in trying to dive-bomb the netting in a vain attempt to join its African cousins in their free meal.