Word: payoff
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1950-1959
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...Skill. But spooning has become a crude technique, with a relatively picayune payoff. The real returns (from $15 to $1,000) come in hitting the jackpot. When that happens in most Nevada gambling houses, only a few coins tumble down. A bell rings, the box lights up, and a sharp-eyed change girl arrives at the machine, sometimes with an assortment of mechanic types who check to see that there has been no ham-handed tampering. If the win looks legitimate, the change girl pays the big money...
...quiz shows have been found wanting and the big quizmasters have found subpoena servers waiting, neither the clerk with the photographic memory nor the student with the encyclopedic mind has much of a chance to turn a fast TV dollar. Almost the only quizzes left are the small-payoff contests that the trade calls "peanut" shows. But this week, after four months on the air, Air Force Lieut. James Astrue will have proved that, given time, tenacity, and a modest amount of information, a man can still amass an astonishing amount of peanuts...
Black Line Payoff. At lift-off Dr. Debus looked through the window, studying the quality of the roaring flame. His experienced eye told him that ignition had been perfect. He strolled to the instrumentation room, where a moving pen was tracing a black ink line on a flowing chart. If the black line, which represented the rocket's trajectory, stayed sufficiently close to a blue line representing the planned course, all would be well. He watched for a minute or so. Then his saber-scarred face smiled gently. "It looks good," he said. Pioneer...
...attorney who once represented King Mohammed V of Morocco, and ex-Premier Edgar Faure, whose government had given Morocco its independence. Paris-Presse warned that "other characters" who have played "great roles in our postwar history" might come into the case, warned: "This affair must not serve as a payoff between two opposing political clans. It is imperative to know the truth quickly. Stifled scandals have always deeply hurt the Republic...
...display of political mastery, De Gaulle made each of his objectives support the others. By flying Rebel Organizer Jacques Soustelle out of Algiers and making him his Minister of Information, De Gaulle yanked the insurgents' sharpest tooth, yet at the same time gave the embattled settlers enough of a payoff to keep them submissive if not content. By tying the vote on autonomy for France's Black African territories to the vote on his proposed constitution, he obliged right-wingers to swallow his liberal colonial policy, at the same time picked up 9,000,000 African votes to swell...