loser

In a two-horse race there is always one winner and one loser.

That guy is a born loser!

Mike didn't work but insisted that Jewell have a job. He would stay home and do whatever — smoke pot, screw around. He was a total loser, and she picked up the slack. That's around the time that Mom met her soon-to-be-next husband. He immediately moved in. He was a loser, too, with the same work ethic Mike had.

Another way to speed search (in general) is to order or bias the hypothesis space based on some heuristic. Suppose you are a habitual car key loser and that you keep track of where your keys turn up after each search.

A new Guard came to town and decided to flex his muscles with George. We could have told him that he was on a loser but bright young men, then as now, know it all.

He's a three-time loser doing twenty years.