Question: I understand that questions that could potentially be answered by using the dictionary are frowned upon however there are multiple words that I see for cheating, which have overlapping meanings because English isn't very precise.

[![enter image description here](https://i.stack.imgur.com/PzyI9m.jpg)](https://i.stack.imgur.com/PzyI9m.jpg)

I've included this picture mostly because this comes from a Russian-English Telegram channel and it doesn't appear to be right. In the video, the man is using the dog to read the newspaper and beneath that, it says, *обманывать*. *обманывать* to my [understanding](https://ru.wiktionary.org/wiki/%D0%BE%D0%B1%D0%BC%D0%B0%D0%BD%D1%8B%D0%B2%D0%B0%D1%82%D1%8C) means to deceive someone through lies. Cheating also can be breaking rules in a game to gain an advantage which seems like *жульничать*.

In English, we may even call this a life-hack. Alternatively, it seems like I could use *изменять* as well. Is this correct?

Answer: 
Maybe they used the word 'обмануть' because the boy in the picture didn't want his meal to be eaten by the dog and gave him a newspaper to gag his mouth) If it's true 'обмануть' is ок, but I would use a synonym 'обхитрить' here. Because 'обмануть' is stronger and has a more negative meaning. Обхитрить is a derivative from хитрый (sly) and closer 'to trick'.
Another word that wasn't mentioned is **мухлевать, мухлёж**, which means "to cheat in games", it mostly applies to card games and such though. Although the format is unusual for Russian meme styles, so Russians seeing the picture and the word together might not immediately get what's going on and who is cheating in what.

A more common way to present this would be with words like *находчивость, смекалка, хитрость*, etc.

Alternatively, if you wrote *читер* there, most people would also immediately understand what you meant. [Читер](https://ru.wiktionary.org/wiki/%D1%87%D0%B8%D1%82%D0%B5%D1%80) is pretty well established term used to refer to people who cheat at computer games and writing it as a caption to that photo would have a similar concept to writing *cheat* or something like *hax* in English.