ShmoopTube

00:00

[ musical flourish ]

00:03

And here's your Shmoop du jour, brought to you by con artists.

00:06

That prince who emailed you about his money troubles?

00:09

Eh, probably not legit. Yeah.

00:11

King of Nairobi's nephew really doesn't want you to wire him money.

00:14

All right, check out the following sentence.

00:16

The elderly often fall victim to con artists' nefarious schemes.

00:22

All right, the word nefarious most nearly means what?

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And here are the potential answers. [ mumbles ]

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[ meow ]

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Aww, poor old people. I'm one of them.

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When they aren't dealing with broken hips or young people,

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[ old person voice ] "You whippersnappers, you."

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or young people breaking their hips - Ow. Yeah. -

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well, they're getting swindled by con artists.

00:42

So how might we describe such schemes?

00:45

Well, A - insatiable means we can't get satisfied.

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[ hums ]

00:51

Rolling Stones song. Ask your parents. It was great.

00:54

It's the feeling we get after a hard workout

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when we wanna eat everything.

00:58

But it's not a word we'd use for a con artist's scheme.

01:01

And B - arduous means difficult.

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Now, a scheme can be difficult,

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just look at any of the Ocean's Eleven movies.

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But we're talking about crooks swindling the elderly,

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not planning Vegas heists.

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And D - fallow means uncultivated or unused,

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like when you leave the ground fallow for a few years

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to let it heal so you can plant more corn.

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Clearly, the con artists are using schemes,

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or they wouldn't be scheming. More like hypotheses.

01:27

Yeah. Instead, better words to describe the plot to steal

01:31

sweet Uncle Joe's retirement savings might be, uh,

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and we're just spit-ballin' here... mean,

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evil, dirty, wicked.

01:38

Oh, there we go. Wicked.

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So C is the best answer.

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Follow-up question: How do all these grandparents get

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conned into buying nothing but butterscotch candies?

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We've always wondered about that.

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Where's the chocolate?

01:53

Rolling Stones song. Ask your parents. It was great.

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