wheedle

He’s always looking to learn something, whether it’s from someone or just the cracks in their armor or the information he can wheedle out of somebody.

Then, at his busiest, with a wife and three children impatiently waiting at home, he wheedled Mel Brooks for a cameo in “Young Frankenstein.”

Ask any nerd who wheedled her parents for a little more cash to buy books: What you get from Scholastic is what your parents are willing to buy you.

He wheedled money from the city for more cops, more police stations, more equipment, and he made nice with community organizations.

Then he had the woman hand her phone to a visiting technician and wheedled the phone number of the department head out him.