Word: ciphering
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Hulot, on the other hand, is just a pleasantly boring presence, a cipher who shows no feelings beyond a spaniel-like curiosity and momentary flutters of frustration that never approach the level of anxiety, let alone threaten him with breakdown. He and the people he encounters are scarcely less abstract than their settings, juiceless and lifeless. Going to a Tati movie for laughs is about as practical as going to an exhibition of Mondrian paintings with the same goal in mind, though the painter may actually excel the actor in terms of motion and emotion. · Richard Schickel
...everybody, that I for one couldn't tell you whether Lazenby's dead or alive? Well, it was pats on the back for us cynics who looked upon efforts to replace Sean Connery with skepticism after that one. Better to retire the series undefeated, than replace Him with the cipher Lazenby -- who promptly confirmed our worst fears. None of this daunted producers Broccoli and Saltzman, who are determined to cash in on the Bond phenomenon. They came up with Roger Moore, who was no big deal as the Saint. So. More is a credible 007, dignified if a little stiff...
...Saigonese suggested that the CIA might have used expert forgers as a means of punishing the corrupt minister, who was scarcely in a position to complain. All a forger would need in such a case would be an authentic check and a signature with which to practice, or the cipher code of a numbered account. Once that is provided, Swiss banks cash checks for almost any amount with few questions asked. As one banker put it last week...
...August 1914, despite a graceless translation and fictional failures, is an extraordinary book. The horrors of the 20th century have produced a more and more widespread belief that, confronted by such things as bureaucracy, modern war and concentration camps, man is necessarily reduced to pliable victim, meaningless cipher, hopeless bundle of conditioned reflexes. Solzhenitsyn, however, fought the Nazis for four years. He has endured slave camps and near death from cancer. His experiences seem to have produced a strong belief in the existence of an inextinguishable sense of justice in human society and-despite the power and prevalence of evil...
...radio technician who posed as a photographer and amateur artist while leading his double life in Brooklyn. There he rented a $35-a-month studio near the federal courthouse. Like fictional spies, Abel used a variety of arcane items: hollow bolts and coins to carry messages, phony documents, cipher books. In 1953 one of his hollow nickels containing microfilm found its way into the hands of a newsboy, who gave the coin to the police. But FBI agents did not bag Abel until four years later, when an underling defected and turned him in. He admitted only that...