cunning

… this cat has made his way into the Fitness Center for cunning reasons of his own and reveals himself only to certain privileged individuals. —Joyce Carol Oates, Harper's, June 2008

Throughout his time hunting the vampire, Manolito had been wounded and poisoned on many occasions, but still he'd survived because he'd always used his brain. He was cunning and shrewd and very intelligent. —Christine Feehan, Dark Possession, 2007

I have recounted the advice I received from an old-timer about how to keep raccoons out of garbage cans—advice that eventually included the purchase of a combination lock. (“A raccoon's cunning, but he's got no head for figures.”) —Calvin Trillin, New Yorker, 11 Oct. 1993

So the Leader went into his den and looked at his children—two very cunning little cubs, lying on the floor. —Hugh Lofting, The Story of Doctor Dolittle, 1920

A cunning politician is often found skulking under the clerical robe, with an outside all religion, and an inside all political rancour. —Washington Irving, A History of New York, 1809, in History, Tales and Sketches, (1977) 1983

She was cunning enough to fool me.

a cunning, underhanded plan to win the election by preying on people's fears and prejudices

The writing is best in the play's later scenes, when More deploys his legal cunning to help him weasel out of a political trap set by the oleaginous Thomas Cromwell … —John Lahr, New Yorker, 20 Oct. 2008

Tsvetaeva was lacking, moreover, in any instinct for cunning or self-preservation, or even for what might be called mere getting along … —Claudia Roth Pierpont, New Yorker, 7 Feb. 1994

He could see no change, save that in the eyes there was a look of cunning and in the mouth the curved wrinkle of the hypocrite. —Oscar Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Gray, 1891

He may be a fraud, but you have to admire his cunning.

the cunning with which Tom Sawyer was able to get others to whitewash the fence for him