the.com/collusion

means A secret agreement between two or more parties to deceive, cheat, or gain an unfair advantage over someone else.

from From Latin colludere, 'to play together' — com- ('with') plus ludere ('to play,' the same root giving us 'ludicrous' and 'ludic'). The Romans already used it in the sinister sense of playing a rigged game together, and English borrowed it in the 1300s mostly for legal trickery — collusive lawsuits, secret deals dressed up as honest disputes. The playfulness in its DNA is the dark joke: collusion is always a game, just one where only some of the players know the rules.