astutest

This man, apparently so foolishly good-natured, simple, and absent-minded, could guess all the cunning of a prison wag, unmask the astutest street huzzy, and subdue a scoundrel.

The Commission in Lunacy 2007

This man, apparently so foolishly good-natured, simple, and absent-minded, could guess all the cunning of a prison wag, unmask the astutest street huzzy, and subdue a scoundrel.

The Commission in Lunacy 2007

And to this clique belonged also the distinguished surgeons and physicians of the eastern hill; the bankers, astutest of financiers; with, for spice, the swiftly changing politicians of the moment, here one day, gone the next, with nothing but their ideas or their energy to recommend them, and dragging with them wives married in their working days ... well, the less said of the wives the better.

The Way Home 2003

But even the astutest of them buyeth his wife in a sack.

Thus spake Zarathustra; A book for all and none 2001

Assizes had been agreed to be so disposed of; and he invariably gave the highest satisfaction to both parties -- the counsel before him, in arbitrations both in town and country, finding it necessary to conduct their cases as carefully as if they were before one of the astutest judges on the bench.

Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 61, No. 376, February, 1847 Various

One of the astutest of living critics tells me that he finds a curiously

My Contemporaries In Fiction David Christie Murray

Nature, in her underground laboratory, works in a mysterious way, baffling the astutest students of science to find the process by which she is able to manufacture such beautiful gems as the diamond.

Wealth of the World's Waste Places and Oceania Jewett Castello Gilson

Catherine di Medici (two of the astutest persons of their age) patronised them.

The Superstitions of Witchcraft Howard Williams

He was calling out the astutest and most influential of the Italian refugees then in London.

In Direst Peril David Christie Murray

_Divide et impera_ has been the guiding principle of cunning despots in all ages, and the astutest advisers of Nicholas II must have grinned with Satanic glee when they realized how seriously the forces they were contending against were dividing.

Bolshevism The Enemy of Political and Industrial Democracy John Spargo 1921