How to Use shell game in a Sentence

shell game

noun

• And the $120 million in bonds is something of a shell game.
  — Nancy Armour, USA TODAY, 16 June 2023
• Adams walked out of that meeting calling the House plan a shell game.
  — Richard Ruelas, azcentral, 23 Apr. 2018
• These games include a pet-friendly versions of the shell game, hide and seek and more.
  — Kelli Bender, PEOPLE.com, 5 Apr. 2021
• And there’s this major problem: This whole thing seems like a shell game.
  — Ann Killion, SFChronicle.com, 20 Nov. 2019
• For all of its visual beauty and brilliant writing, the movie is a shell game in the end.
  — Ginia Bellafante, New York Times, 5 Mar. 2021
• Is Shell just engaged in spin, playing some kind of (ahem) shell game?
  — David Roberts, Vox, 30 Mar. 2018
• First, there's the shell game where your dog has to find the Pupper dog treat hidden under one of three shells.
  — Amber Smith, Discover Magazine, 23 Oct. 2022
• Cristian Benvenuto is convinced the whole thing is a shell game.
  — Winston Ross, Newsweek, 25 May 2015
• Since then Florida has waged a human vs. snail shell game.
  — Bruce Y. Lee, Forbes, 2 July 2022
• Lineups lately have been something of a shell game to account for pitching matchups, days off and the need to give bench players more work.
  — Phil Thompson, chicagotribune.com, 20 July 2019
• The young athletes who have spent lifetimes dreaming of this moment are pawns in a huge financial shell game.
  — Ann Killion, San Francisco Chronicle, 3 Feb. 2022
• That made operating an Airbnb out of a large building like the MiMA, where someone watches the door 24 hours a day, a shell game.
  — Curbed, 2 Nov. 2022
• Enjoy the warped Swarm shell game, treasure Fishback’s performance and join me in waiting to see how the breadth-over-depth approach ages.
  — Daniel Fienberg, The Hollywood Reporter, 15 Mar. 2023
• American farming is, by design and not by nature, an exploitative shell game, run by those wealthy enough to write the rules.
  — Nick Martin, The New Republic, 11 Sep. 2020
• At a rigged roulette wheel, they’re taxed at a higher rate than businesses or the wealthy, then, via shell game, suckered into subprime mortgages.
  — Daryl H. Miller, latimes.com, 13 Oct. 2017
• The kit itself is appropriate for ages 8 and up and contains 200 tricks including a classic ball-in-cup shell game.
  — Popular Science, 11 May 2020
• At the Defense Department, officials have played what amounts to a bureaucratic shell game to get money for the wall.
  — W.j. Hennigan, Time, 28 Aug. 2019
• The Gophers football team’s offense has created a shell game that has been producing more and more points this season.
  — Andy Greder, Twin Cities, 11 Oct. 2019
• Blockchain is either the most radical invention of the century or a worthless shell game.
  — Gideon Lichfield, Wired, 3 Jan. 2022
• Democrats have decried the maneuver as a shell game and challenged the GOP to devote more state funding to schools in light of the state's unprecedented $4.4 billion surplus.
  — Todd Richmod, Star Tribune, 21 June 2021
• Like a shell game on a beach boardwalk, when the researcher moved the cup around, the bird was still able to identify where the food was, reports Rachel Nuwer for Scientific American.
  — Rasha Aridi, Smithsonian Magazine, 15 Dec. 2020
• Even when the projects are well suited for the local economy, the result can look a bit like a shell game: Things are built, money goes to Chinese companies and the country is saddled with more debt.
  — Brook Larmer, New York Times, 13 Sep. 2017
• The current practice of shutting some services and shifting those officers to patrols is a shell game that’s not sustainable.
  — Bill Rodriguez and Jim Galvan, Star Tribune, 16 Oct. 2020
• Many companies try to dodge prosecution by playing a shell game.
  — Ron Hurtibise, sun-sentinel.com, 22 Aug. 2021
• The leaguewide shell game of sneaking talent onto practice squads is intensified.
  — Andrew Krammer, Star Tribune, 4 Sep. 2020
• So zookeepers developed a shell game called double-clutching.
  — Jak Wonderly, Smithsonian Magazine, 19 May 2021
• His one-of-a-kind decks of cards, shell game equipment, juggling balls, crystal ball, silk pieces to wave over disappearing objects and other tools of his trade had vanished into thin air.
  — Heather Knight, San Francisco Chronicle, 20 Jan. 2018
• Without any penalties for failure for first-pass tender acceptance, carriers and shippers have played a shell game on price.
  — Lora Cecere, Forbes, 15 Nov. 2021
• At six of the country’s missile bases, trucks hauled rock from underground construction sites as workers dug a maze of new tunnels and bunkers, allowing North Korea to move weapons around like peas in a shell game.
  — Author: Joby Warrick, Simon Denyer, Anchorage Daily News, 1 Oct. 2020
• The money comes from somewhere, a shell game of shady boosters in the background writing checks, money diverted from more noble potential causes.
  — The Indianapolis Star, 3 Oct. 2022

Last Updated: 27 Jun 2024