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: 
I am not really sure what the "proper use of a dog" is, and how exactly it is improper to train it to hold the newspaper.

Russian has *лайфхак* which is a loanword from English.

Russian also has *смекалка* ("practical wit, ability to think outside the box and find unorthodox solutions to everyday problems by using available resources")

I would also note that it's not a common trope in Russian memes to provide fake dictionary articles, complete with pronunciation.

It's much more common to use the first letter of a word, similar to the way they do this in the children's books: *Л — лайфхак*, *С — смекалка* etc., as if the picture were an illustration of the word starting with this letter.
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.