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.

An infinite family of vertex-and edge-transitive, but not arc-transitive, graphs of degree 4 is constructed.

The present paper is a sequel to the previous paper bearing the same title by the same authors [3] and which will be hereafter designated by the bold-face Roman numeral I. Further results are obtained in determining whether a given finite non-abelian group G has a graphical regular representation. In particular, an affirmative answer will be given if (|G|, 6) = 1.

Inasmuch as much of the machinery of I will be required in the proofs to be presented and a perusal of I is strongly recommended to set the stage and provide motivation for this paper, an independent and redundant introduction will be omitted in the interest of economy.

In this paper, all groups and graphs considered are finite and all graphs are simple (in the sense of Tutte [8, p. 50]). If X is such a graph with vertex set V(X) and automorphism group A(X), we say that X is a graphical regular representation (GRR) of a given abstract group G if

(I) G ≅ A(X) , and

(II) A(X) acts on V(X) as a regular permutation group; that is, given u, v ∈ V(X), there exists a unique φ ∈ A(X) for which φ(u) = v.

That for any abstract group G there exists a graph X satisfying (I) is well-known (cf. [3]).