tricksy

tricks +‎ -y

tricksy (comparative tricksier, superlative tricksiest)

1. Inclined to trickery; sneaky, devious.
   • 1610, The Tempest, by Shakespeare, act 5 scene 1

     (Prospero, to Ariel):

     My tricksy spirit!

   • Samuel Taylor Coleridge

     There will succeed, therefore, in my opinion, and that too within no long time, to the rudeness and rusticity of our age, that ensnaring meretricious popularness in literature, with all the tricksy humilities of the ambitious candidates for the favourable suffrages of the judicious public, which if we do not take good care will break up and scatter before it all robustness and manly vigour of intellect, all masculine fortitude of virtue.

   • 2004, David Mitchell, Cloud Atlas

     As an experienced editor I disapprove of backflashes, foreshadowings and tricksy devices […]