Word: sleight-of-hand
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...Beatles. In three months, it has sold a staggering 2,500,000 copies-each a guaranteed package of psychic shivers. Loosely strung together on a scheme that plays the younger and older generations off against each other, it sizzles with musical montage, tricky electronics and sleight-of-hand lyrics that range between 1920s ricky-tick and 1960s raga. A Day in the Life, for example, is by all odds the most disturbingly beautiful song the group has ever produced. The narrator's mechanical progress through the day ("Dragged a comb across my head, found my way downstairs") is tensely...
...with the country, he explained that he had reopened talks with the lending agencies and proposed his own "Colombian plan." Beaming, he announced: "Naturally, they accepted it." The plan included further import controls, tight restrictions on capital movement, and something called "full convertibility"-which almost certainly meant a sleight-of-hand devaluation within six months...
...stage area alone is six times as large as the one in the old Met. The main stage, 100 ft. wide, 80 ft. deep, is bordered on the sides and rear by motorized stage wagons. In a dazzling display of sleight-of-hand, the main stage can drop 28 ft. into the subterranean storage chambers and emerge with a teahouse, garden, bridge and cherry orchard all ready for Madame Butterfly's entrance. Meanwhile, the three wagons can be loaded with upcoming scenes and wait to glide into the center-stage slot at the push of a.button. For other effects...
...what he'll find where urban community development once stood is hard to say -- perhaps something like "better burg breeding" or "coached community commotion" or any one of a thousand possible locutions which would shed an aura of respectability on an undertaking whose very nature suggests a lurking, sleight-of-hand presence...
...Murphy game" is underworld argot for a slick maneuver in which a victim puts his cash in an envelope and gives it to the con man, who makes a fast sleight-of-hand switch and hands back an identical envelope stuffed with newspaper strips. It was named after an Irishman who was arrested many times for perpetrating such tricks...