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cryptic
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  • Tucked into the palm of her glove there's a square of folded paper, with cryptic directions, but she doesn't need to look at it.†   (source)
  • The site had been created two months earlier, and like Davis's previous journal, most of the entries began with a quote from someone else and then concluded with a short, cryptic essay.†   (source)
  • Ongoing arguments about the "correct" interpretation of some cryptic passage in Anorak's Almanac.†   (source)
  • There were also a few highly cryptic lines distilling the art and science of navigation.†   (source)
  • It's all too cryptic.†   (source)
  • "You're going to like this," she said cryptically.†   (source)
  • 'You see, when you gave Professor Snape that cryptic warning, he realised that you had had a vision of Sirius trapped in the bowels of the Department of Mysteries.†   (source)
  • For this reason they must necessarily be cryptic —†   (source)
  • Cryptic notes scrawled on alley walls above where I slept.†   (source)
  • Handheld looking glass communicators had never been viable for anything but short, cryptic intelligence reports, as dispatches could be intercepted by anyone at any time.†   (source)
  • Wandering among the cardboard boxes, Vivian trails her fingertips across the tops of them, peering at their cryptic labels: The store, 1960–.†   (source)
  • It was cryptic, sort of a Confucius-says answer, but it worked on almost every civilian.†   (source)
  • I figured that's what all the cryptic-sounding stuff about the loop and the grave and the letter was.†   (source)
  • I thought of Maxon's cryptic promise earlier this week….†   (source)
  • And the fact that he feels enough regret about it to turn it into some cryptic tattoo is really beyond any guesses I could fathom at this point.†   (source)
  • Apart from Andy—cryptic, isolated, self-sufficient, incapable of dishonesty and completely lacking in both malice and charisma—the other Barbours, even Todd, all had something slightly uncanny about them, a watchful, sly amalgam of decorum and mischief that made it all too easy to imagine their forebears gathering in the forest by night, casting off their Puritan garb to frolic by the pagan bonfire.†   (source)
  • 'Nothing is nothing,' commented Artemis cryptically.†   (source)
  • Overhead signs with cryptic symbols and writing come and go before I can decipher them.†   (source)
  • "No, I was born," said Murtagh cryptically.†   (source)
  • "No," I disagreed quickly, my eyes narrowing, "I can't imagine why that would be frustrating at all — just because someone refuses to tell you what they're thinking, even if all the while they're making cryptic little remarks specifically designed to keep you up at night wondering what they could possibly mean… now, why would that be frustrating?"†   (source)
  • —he offers a cryptic "No."†   (source)
  • The messages were cryptic, meant to pique curiosity and discussion.†   (source)
  • He killed me at the Scrabble board, barely concentrating, and on those occasions when speech was necessary he had a way of compressing large thoughts into small, cryptic packets of language.†   (source)
  • Also their style of graffiti, quite colorful and cryptic — and their ability to sneak into the Hills unnoticed and cross out Lomas placas — brought much ire upon them.†   (source)
  • Disquiet spreads through me at this cryptic remark.†   (source)
  • …go back on foot, locate Mr. Gray under his real name or an alias, shoot him three times in the viscera for maximum pain, clear the weapon of prints, place the weapon in the victim's staticky hand, find a crayon or lipstick tube and scrawl a cryptic suicide note on the full-length mirror, take the victim's supply of Dylar tablets, slip back to the car, proceed to the expressway entrance, head east toward Blacksmith, get off at the old river road, park Stover's car in Old Man Treadwell's…†   (source)
  • Brief, cryptic, to the point.†   (source)
  • The Codex was full of cryptic phrases and incomprehensible sayings.†   (source)
  • Mack wasn't at all sure about what he was supposed to understand by her cryptic remark and said the only thing that came to mind.†   (source)
  • This one was more cryptic than the others, but I was sure I had it right.†   (source)
  • Moreover, both of them were sealed with his monogram in wax and written in the cryptic scrawl that Fermina Daza already recognized as a physician's handwriting.†   (source)
  • Wells tried for what he hoped was a cryptic smile.†   (source)
  • San Piedro lived and breathed by the salmon, and the cryptic places where they ran at night were the subject of perpetual conversation.†   (source)
  • He had dropped so many cryptic hints in his cards from Lebanon.†   (source)
  • He told me, cryptically, that he had been depressed at various times in his life.†   (source)
  • Blomkvist leaned back and pretended to be insulted, but he frowned when Berger made some cryptic remarks that might allude to his failings as a journalist but might also have applied to sexual prowess.†   (source)
  • I'd read them several times already, but they were cryptic and confusing—much like a maths textbook.†   (source)
  • Ruth Gogan suddenly shouted with cryptic glee, and then burst into a shriek of laughter.†   (source)
  • His cryptic warnings, hissed between his teeth.†   (source)
  • He had a great many notebooks, all of them filled with trees and houses and monsters and entirely cryptic anecdotes.†   (source)
  • He then remarked rather cryptically, "As long as you don't make trouble, you'll get everything you want."†   (source)
  • Another cryptic circling of the whip, and Midnight bows, going down on the knee of one foreleg with the other extended.†   (source)
  • It was a cryptic message to the human race that came out of the primate soul.†   (source)
  • There was a yellow legal pad on the desk by the phone, full of cryptic notes: Call Jan before 8:00 reschedule; Tim's not sure; the delivery, before I 0:00.†   (source)
  • But Kehaar denied this and, when pressed, replied cryptically that Fiver was one who had traveled a good deal further than he had himself.†   (source)
  • After sampling his own wares and grunting cryptically, he gave each man a slice.†   (source)
  • They remained cryptic about strategy.†   (source)
  • No young cloaked men issuing cryptic warnings.†   (source)
  • "High-level band stuff," he said cryptically.†   (source)
  • After every breakfast, Claire comes in to examine me, tinker with my meds, and make cryptic remarks like, You better start feeling better.†   (source)
  • Cryptic, much?†   (source)
  • He brooded in ponderous speculation over the cryptic message he had just received.†   (source)
  • The only reference to this in her textbook was a statement so cryptic, more so after she memorized it, that she'd begun to think it was put there to antagonize her: Sound Nursing Sense is more important than knowledge, though knowledge only enhances it.†   (source)
  • And the lyrics on the new record, also very cryptic.†   (source)
  • I studied them closely until they left the train, their shoulders rocking, their heavy heel plates clicking remote, cryptic messages in the brief silence of the train's stop.†   (source)
  • With these cryptic words Conklin abruptly hung up.†   (source)
  • "He is as he was," Adams noted cryptically.†   (source)
  • The E-mail note was just a jokey one he'd sent as he was about to leave for JFK, written in some cryptic language he and Grace called cyberspeak which Annie only half understood.†   (source)
  • "Not if you can only work uninterrupted," the Thief said cryptically as he closed his door.†   (source)
  • Max ignored David's cryptic comment and watched as David opened his backpack and started putting the books inside.†   (source)
  • "Baseball," Topher said cryptically.†   (source)
  • With that cryptic message in their possession, the natives paddle away.†   (source)
  • Everything was need-to-know only, and even then you were lucky if you got anything out of him that wasn't all cryptic."†   (source)
  • "Is Africa declining?" he responded cryptically.†   (source)
  • I didn't know anything at the time; Dennis had been as cryptic and evasive as ever, Jack professing nothing.†   (source)
  • Pyat and Xaro had showered Dany with promises from the moment they first glimpsed her dragons, declaring themselves her loyal servants in all things, but from Quaithe she had gotten only the rare cryptic word.†   (source)
  • "Not at this time," replied the secretary cryptically.†   (source)
  • Interesting, but cryptic.†   (source)
  • As he scribbles he lets drop a few disordered and cryptic remarks about the ink he's using, implying it's a very special fluid indeed.†   (source)
  • I made a direct pass at Leslie as soon as we were back inside the front door, insinuating my arm around her waist, but she managed to slip away with a tinkly little laugh and the observation—too cryptic for me to quite get straight—that "haste makes waste."†   (source)
  • Steaks then arrived and a pitcher of beer, so I was temporarily freed from the necessity of making cryptic and general statements for her to ponder as subtle or cagey.†   (source)
  • "I knew," Leamas replied cryptically.†   (source)
  • "Unnecessarily cryptic," said Flora out loud.   (source)
    cryptic = secretive or difficult to understand
  • "So how do they stay in business?"
    "They manage," he said cryptically.   (source)
    cryptically = with meaning that is difficult or impossible to understand
  • Was it a cryptic message?   (source)
  • the new insurance policy is written without cryptic or mysterious terms
  • 'None of you has ever seen a dead donkey,' and the others had to be content with this cryptic answer.   (source)
    cryptic = secretive or difficult to understand
  • Its cryptic text includes references to an ancient portal and an unknown location underground.†   (source)
  • He was not accustomed to cryptic phone calls and secret rendezvous with strangers.†   (source)
  • Things had definitely gotten worse since he first laid eyes on the cryptic words.†   (source)
  • And then Ellis noticed that the first cryptic entry in the hiker's journal read, "Exit Fairbanks.†   (source)
  • Then Sticky whispered, "Boy, when Rhonda said they were going to be cryptic, she meant it."†   (source)
  • Parrish walked over to the statue and ran his palm across the cryptic sea of letters.†   (source)
  • He's always so cryptic," I threw in for his benefit, sighing.†   (source)
  • She talked to a secretary and asked her to pass on a cryptic message.†   (source)
  • Look, I'm sorry, but I'm getting tired of all these cryptic remarks.†   (source)
  • She apparently believed the curator had left her a cryptic postscript telling her to find Langdon.†   (source)
  • The mysterious caller had conveyed his location cryptically, but Langdon had understood.†   (source)
  • You have aroused mine curiosity with these cryptic insinuations.†   (source)
  • And then whom would I exchange cryptic remarks with?†   (source)
  • But among the notes Blomkvist found several cryptic sentences.†   (source)
  • When I offered my congratulations and a hug, Anna responded with a cryptic smile.†   (source)
  • "She doesn't often present me with such a grand opportunity," she answers, cryptically.†   (source)
  • It sounds a little cryptic, but he says you'll know what he means."†   (source)
  • 'You're very big with the cryptics, Bourne.†   (source)
  • He tapped his forehead with cryptic insight.†   (source)
  • It took the form of a cryptic note on a Russian hospital prescription pad.†   (source)
  • And still I haven't deciphered Miss Wyatt's cryptic messages.†   (source)
  • "If you don't stop saying cryptic things, I'm going to slap you," I say, getting to my feet.†   (source)
  • Then, cryptically, he suggested he would have more to say about the matter soon.†   (source)
  • Jose Arcadio Segundo had managed, furthermore, to classify the cryptic letters of the parchments.†   (source)
  • She softened a bit and answered with [Cryptic 2].†   (source)
  • Kartik is at my desk, no doubt leaving me another cryptic warning.†   (source)
  • Perhaps, after all, Kehaar had not understood his cryptic message that morning?†   (source)
  • The runes were a series of cryptic slashes, and Max knew they would be taken directly to Astaroth.†   (source)
  • Name-calling and Yoda quotes about chess and cryptic elephant stories.†   (source)
  • He's operating from points unknown or unreachable, "You're cryptic, my fine old enemy.†   (source)
  • The reply [Cryptic 2] came a minute later.†   (source)
  • "All is strange these days, Most High," Gorgon answers, cryptic as ever.†   (source)
  • "But so much is within our reach now," Felicity says, cryptically.†   (source)
  • A short time later she created [Cryptic 4].†   (source)
  • She pulls the last petal from the daisy with a cryptic smile.†   (source)
  • "Look within for the answer," Asha replies cryptically.†   (source)
  • So the conversation occasionally lapsed into cryptic silences.†   (source)
  • Only short, cryptic messages on her part, but she has always led me in the right direction.†   (source)
  • He created a new document that he called [Cryptic].†   (source)
  • And finally she was talking to him, although as cryptically as ever.†   (source)
  • "I happened to get hold of a copy," the girl said cryptically.†   (source)
  • Even then she spoke in cryptic terms, but he clearly understood.†   (source)
  • Another baffling item on the cryptic report card his mother toted around in some mental pocket, the report card on which he was always just barely passing.†   (source)
  • She was cryptic, sure, but if you're going to plan your suicide down to the flowers, you probably have a plan as to how you're actually going to die, and Alaska had no way of knowing a police car was going to present itself on 1-65 for the occasion.†   (source)
  • It was the cryptic look, he recognized, that she'd aimed at him fleetingly on the second floor of the courthouse when he'd tried to speak to her before her husband's trial.†   (source)
  • He didn't answer any of my questions and now he's playing his mind games again by giving me cryptic nonanswers.†   (source)
  • A testament to something: blank pages my body's been scrawling on, leaving its cryptic evidence as it slowly but surely turns itself inside out.†   (source)
  • The rest of the note went on to talk about Wells's frustrations with officer training, then ended with a few cryptic allusions to something about Clarke.†   (source)
  • Morrow made cryptic announcements, saying the company was working on an ambitious project that would move them in an entirely new direction.†   (source)
  • A few days later on the message board outside the door of the Brigham's social work department, a cryptic handwritten message appeared.†   (source)
  • On this journey, there were none of Shay's cryptic clues to puzzle through, no brush fires to escape, and no antique Rusty machines descending to scare her to death.†   (source)
  • They would pass by the other campers voicing cryptic, seemingly meaningless life spans: "1769 to 1821," "1770 to 1831."†   (source)
  • Among the bustle that night, Mae ate, feeling unsteady, Kalden's words and cryptic messages still rattling in her head.†   (source)
  • By cryptic I mean vague or mysterious.†   (source)
  • One day, in new tiles all over campus, cryptic messages had appeared: THINK COMPLETION and COMPLETE THE CIRCLE and THE CIRCLE MUST BE WHOLE, and these slogans had stirred up the desired intrigue.†   (source)
  • If he made a cryptic or broad statement, it was best not to challenge him, because then he might grow reticent.†   (source)
  • But the last two months flash before my eyes, and everything about him …. all of his personalities and mood swings and cryptic words come into clear focus.†   (source)
  • Sophie had to read the cryptic sentence in the note to Hilde several times before Alberto went on: "We are not going to be interrupted by sea serpents and the like.†   (source)
  • Now, in his jail cell, he stared into the mirror at the mask he wore, which had been arranged by its wearer to suggest his war and the strength he'd mustered to face its consequences but which instead communicated haughtiness, a cryptic superiority not only to the court but to the prospect of death the court confronted him with.†   (source)
  • When you start to understand the cryptic parables in the Bible, Robert, you realize it's a study of the human mind."†   (source)
  • For this reason they must necessarily be cryptic —" "What's cryptic?" cried a shrill voice from the backseat.†   (source)
  • Despite not understanding the meaning of his message, Sophie was certain its cryptic nature was additional proof that the words were intended for her.†   (source)
  • Trish navigated to the "who is" database and ran a search for the IP, hoping to match the cryptic numbers to an actual domain name.†   (source)
  • The verse was cryptic, but Langdon needed to read only as far as the first line to realize that Teabing's plan to come to Britain was going to pay off.†   (source)
  • They had decided to be as brief and cryptic as possible, in case an unseen Executive spied the signals.†   (source)
  • Grail seekers, familiar with the Priory's history of cryptic double-talk, had concluded la clef de voûte was a literal keystone—an architectural wedge—an engraved, encrypted stone, inserted into a vaulted archway in a church.†   (source)
  • "The prophets warn us," Peter continued, "that the language used to share their secret mysteries is a cryptic one.†   (source)
  • "And Sir Francis Bacon," Peter continued, "the luminary hired by King James to literally create the authorized King James Bible, became so utterly convinced that the Bible contained cryptic meaning that he wrote in his own codes, which are still studied today!†   (source)
  • "As I said, it's cryptic."†   (source)
  • Gradually she was getting a good overview, even though it was based on cryptic fragments that she had to piece together from their various documents.†   (source)
  • He was wearing a medal of Our Lady of Help around his bison neck, his arms and chest were completely covered with cryptic tattooing, and on his right wrist was the tight copper bracelet of the ninos-en-cruz amulet.†   (source)
  • He couldn't recall hearing any other stories about killings, even such cryptic stories, during those years of hiking the mountains.†   (source)
  • They quickly decided that their best lead for finding Annabeth was the cryptic advice Bacchus had provided: the Emmanuel Building, whatever that was.†   (source)
  • However, as best he could tell from the cryptic records, most such relationships ended in tragedy, either because the lovers were unable to relate to one another or because the humans aged and died while the elves escaped the ravages of time.†   (source)
  • We push messages under each other's doors, written in the cryptic language of the aliens, which is filled with x's and z's and must be decoded.†   (source)
  • And there was Quaithe of the Shadow, that strange woman in the red lacquer mask with all her cryptic counsel.†   (source)
  • Thus, he knew almost nothing of the process other than Connor's cryptic account that it had been the most terrifying ordeal of his sixteen years.†   (source)
  • 'That's cryptic.'†   (source)
  • When awake, she was miserable company—chewing her lip in silence or muttering hoarse, cryptic replies to Max's many questions.†   (source)
  • Above the decorous walking around me, sounds of footsteps leaving the verandas of far-flung buildings and moving toward the walks and over the walks to the asphalt drives lined with whitewashed stones, those cryptic messages for men and women, boys and girls heading quietly toward where the visitors waited, and we moving not in the mood of worship but of judgment; as though even here in the filtering dusk, here beneath the deep indigo sky, here, alive with looping swifts and darting…†   (source)
  • They watched each other and he stared at Yves' body for a long time before Yves lifted up his arms, with that same sad, cryptic smile, and kissed him.†   (source)
  • Enough with the cryptic, Sunshine!†   (source)
  • "Gray," he answered cryptically.†   (source)
  • You hear a bunch of cryptic stuff from this Jake Blansen about Richard which might or might not mean anything but is definitely a little weird sounding, especially since he wouldn't say any more about it.†   (source)
  • Colonel Cathcart was not superstitious, but he did believe in omens, and he sat right back down behind his desk and made a cryptic notation on his memorandum pad to look into the whole suspicious business of the Yossarians right away.†   (source)
  • Hema's departures in the night came with cryptic phrases, words stranger than "version" tossed over her shoulder: "eclampsia" or "postpartum hemorrhage" or, that most chilling term of all, the "Delayed Afterbird."†   (source)
  • "It's pretty cryptic."†   (source)
  • Stop being so cryptic.†   (source)
  • She had telephoned late last night, dragging her out of a sleep induced by total exhaustion only to tell her cryptically that several unusual things had happened that could lead to favorable news.†   (source)
  • It's not cryptic at all.†   (source)
  • …in the God of his fathers — would truly have resigned both his calling and his commission and taken his chances as a private in the infantry or field artillery, or even, perhaps, as a corporal in the paratroopers — had it not been for such successive mystic phenomena as the naked man in the tree at that poor sergeant's funeral weeks before and the cryptic, haunting, encouraging promise of the prophet Flume in the forest only that afternoon: 'Tell them I'll be back when winter comes.'†   (source)
  • We kept so many complicated trauma patients alive on ventilators in the ICU, generated so many lab tests and so much paperwork, that the experience was completely different from Missing, where Ghosh or Hema rarely made more than a cryptic entry in the chart, leaving the rest to the nurses.†   (source)
  • She gives me a cryptic smile.†   (source)
  • "No clouds," he said cryptically.†   (source)
  • Only a cryptic formulation: "In view of the events of 3/12/91 the social welfare agency has determined that…"†   (source)
  • He read his email and it took fifteen minutes before he noticed her document and another five minutes before he replied with the document [Cryptic].†   (source)
  • M. Blomkvist had almost given up hope when, nearly fifty minutes later, the file [Cryptic 4] materialized.†   (source)
  • The last page in the book contained some very brief and cryptic notes which had absolutely nothing to do with math, but nevertheless still looked like a formula: (Blond Hulk + Magge) = NEB They were underlined and circled and meant nothing to him.†   (source)
  • He replied with [Cryptic 3].†   (source)
  • He replied with [Cryptic 3].†   (source)
  • He wrote [Cryptic 5].†   (source)
  • Armansky thought of her recent visit to his office in which she had cryptically explained that she had enough money to get by and did not need a job.†   (source)
  • She broke off, indicated Karden with her hand and added cryptically, "This Comrade wants to ask you some questions, not many.†   (source)
  • Old Wargrave made some notes-dry legal cryptic stuff, but quite clear.†   (source)
  • We're getting away from it all," he ended up cryptically.†   (source)
  • "Yes, the truth would have made a better story," he admitted cryptically.†   (source)
  • I worked through the days and tried to hide my resentment under a nervous, cryptic smile.†   (source)
  • Each event spoke with a cryptic tongue.†   (source)
  • But Hightower is not listening; the overalled men watch the shabby, queershaped, not-quite-familiar figure looking with a kind of exultant interest at the walls, the planks, the cryptic machinery whose very being and purpose he could not have understood or even learned.†   (source)
  • Because he (Bon) would be talking now, lazily, almost cryptically, stroking onto the plate himself now the picture which he wanted there; I can imagine how he did it—the calculation, the surgeon's alertness and cold detachment, the exposures brief, so brief as to be cryptic, almost staccato, the plate unaware of what the complete picture would show, scarce-seen yet ineradicable: —a trap, a riding horse standing before a closed and curiously monastic doorway in a neighborhood a little…†   (source)
  • …to have been drawn from the hnknzah nistarah or hidden wisdom of Moses, i. e., a body of esoteric lore first studied by Moses in Egypt, the land of his birth, then pondered by him during his forty years in the wilderness (where he received special instruction from an angel), and finally incorporated cryptically in the first four books of the Pentateuch, from which it can be extracted by a proper understanding and manipulation of the mystical number-values of the Hebrew alphabet.†   (source)
  • Of course, she confessed with a cryptic giggle, were she to insist, she could probably get the same amount of work done in two visits as easily as in four, but she really preferred going there as many times as possible.†   (source)
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