How to Use three-card monte in a Sentence

three-card monte

noun

• Just like in three-card monte, everyone wins except the mark.
  — Robert Pearl, Forbes, 1 Mar. 2021
• Like three-card monte, or jazz, the play — and, at its best, Kenny Leon’s direction of it — moves too fast for analysis.
  — Jesse Green, New York Times, 20 Oct. 2022
• At intermission, the audience has just learned that Lincoln, who’s vowed to get out of the three-card monte game for good, is ready to get back into it after all.
  — Rebecca Milzoff, Billboard, 18 Nov. 2022
• New Orleans watched for months as the top three candidates for mayor shuffled to the lead in poll after poll like a game of three-card Monte, deceiving anyone who thought a favorite would emerge.
  — Richard Rainey, NOLA.com, 17 Oct. 2017
• In the wide-open world of grifts and schemes, an overinflated basketball may not rank with identity theft, Facebook come-ons from a Nigerian prince or even a hurried game of three-card monte.
  — Dan Barry, New York Times, 18 Feb. 2023
• His hands move quickly, rearranging the clips as deftly as a three-card monte dealer manipulates his cards.
  — Steve Nadis, Discover Magazine, 10 Feb. 2020
• Crime plummeted, corporate profits soared, and three-card monte dealers in Times Square gave way to Disney characters.
  — Devlin Barrett, Washington Post, 16 Sep. 2022
• And now, 40-odd years later, their achievements are under assault from a gaggle of lightweights and a president-elect whose only apparent political skill is the equivalent of a three-card monte game on the E train.
  — Charles P. Pierce, Esquire, 17 Jan. 2017
• In depicting three-card monte Parks is also depicting capitalism, the über-hustle.
  — Jesse Green, New York Times, 20 Oct. 2022
• Lincoln supports them with a gig as an Abraham Lincoln impersonator, and Booth spends his days shoplifting, aggressively trying to woo an ex and planning his debut as a master of three-card monte.
  — Maya Phillips, New York Times, 14 Jan. 2023

Last Updated: 24 Jul 2024