A game of skill which requires the bettor to guess under which of three small cups (or thimbles) a pea-sized object has been placed after the party operating the game rapidly rearranges them, providing opportunity for sleight-of-hand trickery; a shell game.
He’ll muddle away the Begum’s fortune at thimble-rig, be caught picking pockets, and finish on board the hulks.1848 November – 1850 December, William Makepeace Thackeray, chapter 45, in The History of Pendennis. […], volume (please specify |volume=I or II), London: Bradbury and Evans, […], published 1849–1850, →OCLC:
‘Great Barnums?’ says I. ‘You're a ringer for a circus thimblerig man.’1908, O. Henry [pseudonym; William Sydney Porter], “Modern Rural Sports”, in The Gentle Grafter, New York, N.Y.: The McClure Company, →OCLC:
Old Pratt is a different kind of crook—a psalm-singing, pussyfooted old buccaneer, teaching a Bible class on Sundays and thimblerigging in Wall Street on week days.1916, Irvin S. Cobb, “Enter the villain”, in Local Color:
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Ambitransitive, Figuratively To cheat (someone) by trickery.
The favor is to you. I do not permit any man to thimblerig his debts to me into my debts to him.1905, David Graham Phillips, The Plum Tree: