There are some who feel the magazine critically peaked under Kurtzman and never again regained its magic, settling into a predictable formula.

As poems, even good song lyrics often feel beholden to easy rhymes or predictable formulas.

The Stranger in Town "Red Heat" does not try to overcome or resist its predictable formula.

The basic dispute is whether Social Security is sustainable in its current form, as a system that provides guaranteed retirement benefits on a predictable formula.

The novels relied on a series of predictable literary formulas appealing to mass tastes and were often written in as little as a few days.

As usual the camps have divided into their predictable formulas.

"Most houses for the period were built on a formula - either saltboxes or big center-chimney colonials: totally predictable," she said last week.

We want a more predictable base-deepening formula for determining the evolution of tax rates.

We want a more predictable base-deepening formula through an accelerator principle to determine the evolution of tax rates, given the new tax base.

Even at the height of their appeal, the movies usually followed a simple and predictable formula, with warring drug dealers and corrupt white cops.