a coined variation of there goes the ballgame. A shell
game is a gambling
game in which a person places a small pellet the size of a pea under one of three half-walnut shells or cups and speedily shuffles the shells around while spectators try to
watch where the shell moves and
bet on the
final location of the pellet. The
game is so often played dishonestly, by such tricks as secretly removing the original pellet and placing another pellet under a
different shell, that the
term shell
game has become a
symbol of trickery.