grift

In search of something to call his own, Asad grifts his way from Mogadishu to Kenya to Ethiopia to South Africa, a child virtually without belongings or family, who learns to live by his wits and - with the sometime support of the complex clan networks of the Somalian diaspora, which Steinberg elucidates with great clarity - hustle his way to a remarkable survival.

The legendary Goddess Bunny (aka Sandie Crisp, nee John Edward Baima), muse to photographer Joel-Peter Within, was also in the standing-room-only crowd that evening, going around collecting money for one of her many grifts, though I can't remember which.

Once Ethan's scheme shifts into gear, with Foley in charge, "The Samaritan" suddenly appears in a hurry to wrap up rather than deliver the kind of deliciously intricate plotting that makes well-done movie grifts such a pleasure to witness.

If gritty realism is your thing, Hustle's shiny bubble of grifts and glamour is probably never going to be quite your bag.

"He had to prove that he was better at cons and grifts than anybody else.

Topics include Lewis Carroll's doublets, a profile of Fan Chung, magic squares, the legislation of pi, geeks bearing grifts, the endless search for a practical map fold, baseball, card games, knots, and the mathematical instability of democracy.

Roy (Cusack) gets by working low-key cons or "grifts" but his sultry girlfriend Myra (Annette Benning) is built for limousines and the fast life and sees Roy as her ticket back to the big time.

The senator pointed to a chart that showed how point-shaving scandals have boomed like the stock market: In the 1990s, there were eight such grifts, compared to only one in the 1970s.

The coaster grifts removed wood quickly, and the finer grits wi shine up curved surfaces in a jiff.