Word: devilish
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Gambit. A perfect crime is like a soup-can skyscraper in a supermarket. Its smug symmetry, the hubris of it all, inspires the naughty little boy in everybody with a devilish desire to give the arrogant thing a nudge and bring it down in a thundering great heap. In Gambit, the naughty little boy in everybody should have the time of his life...
...Stakes. So devilish have Charlie's contraptions become that not even veteran demolition men can be sure of avoiding them. Land mines lie buried in paddy trails; coconuts filled with explosives hang in jungle trees. A nylon trip wire can plunge a man onto a bed of iron spikes-or needle-sharp bamboo stakes smeared with excrement that will poison his blood. Stepping on an invisible thread can trigger a cross-bow's arrow into his chest, and stepping on a half-buried nail can pierce the detonating cap of the shotgun shell beneath his foot. The door...
...them throbbing, at least, with that high, rollicking rebel spirit that made Behan different from other skins. He was indeed a fine doorful of a man, as a friend said of him once, and the sight of him there in it, showing a grin that was all the more devilish for lacking teeth, was ever enough to warm the kindred heart...
Died. Maxfield Parrish, 95, Quaker-born dean of U.S. illustrators, whose diaphanous damsels, Homeric heroes, devilish dwarfs and capering clowns enlivened magazine covers (Collier's, Harper's Weekly), made dull books popular, and helped turn Jell-O and Fisk tires into bestsellers by virtue of their ads; of chronic lung disease; in Plainfield, N.H. In 1964, with a retrospective show in Manhattan, Parrish was hailed as a precursor of pop art, and responded by saying: "How can these avant-garde people get anything out of me? I'm so hopelessly commonplace." Probably his most lasting single work...
...phenomenon that results is known to scientists as ignis fatuus - "the wicked and devilish wills-o'-the-wisp," as Thackeray noted 126 years ago, that "gambol among the marshes and lead good men astraye...