gamesmanship

the use of clever underhanded actions to achieve an end that author doesn't go in for literary gamesmanship, so the reader is never led astray by the novel's narrator Synonyms artifice, chicane, chicanery, trickery, hanky-panky, jiggery-pokery, jugglery, legerdemain, skulduggery (or skullduggery), subterfuge, wileRelated Words artfulness, caginess (also cageyness), craftiness, cunning, deviousness, foxiness, oiliness, shadiness, sharpness, shiftiness, shrewdness, slickness, slipperiness, slyness, sneakiness, treachery, underhandedness, wiliness; crookedness, crookery, cunning, deceit, deceitfulness, deception, deceptiveness, dishonesty, dissimulation, double-dealing, dupery, duplicity, guile, guilefulness, hypocrisy, insincerity; fakery, humbuggery, imposture, quackery; dirty pool, dirty tricks; design, plotting, scheming, secrecy, stealthNear Antonyms artlessness, forthrightness, guilelessness, ingenuousness, sincerity; candidness, candor, directness, openness, plainness, plainspokenness