A transitive finite permutation group is called elusive if it contains no nontrivial semiregular subgroup. The purpose of the paper is to collect known information about elusive groups. The main results are recursive constructions of elusive permutation groups, using various product operations and affine group constructions. A brief historical introduction and a survey of known elusive groups are also included. In a sequel, Giudici has determined all the quasiprimitive elusive groups.Part of the motivation for studying this class of groups was a conjecture due to Marušič, Jordan and Klin asserting that there is no elusive 2-closed permutation group. It is shown that the constructions given will not build counterexamples to this conjecture.

The notion of a directed strongly regular graph was introduced by A. Duval in 1988 as one of the possible generalizations of classical strongly regular graphs to the directed case. We investigate this generalization with the aid of coherent algebras in the sense of D.G. Higman. We show that the coherent algebra of a mixed directed strongly regular graph is a non-commutative algebra of rank at least 6. With this in mind, we examine the group algebras of dihedral groups, the flag algebras of a Steiner 2-designs, in search of directed strongly regular graphs. As a result, a few new infinite series of directed strongly regular graphs are constructed. In particular, this provides a positive answer to a question of Duval on the existence of a graph with certain parameter set having 20 vertices. One more open case ୋ This paper is a revised and shortened version of the preprint [29]. This preprint stimulated a new wave of interest in the investigations of d.s.r.g.'s, in particular results by L. Jorgensen, S. A. Hobart and T.J. Shaw, A. Duval and D. Iourinski. We refer to [11,21,25,30] where a part of recent investigations is discussed with more details. We also mention that the most of the current status of the theory of d.s.r.g.'s can be found in Andries Brouwer's home page

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