Green’s Dictionary of Slang

1. (also bamboozing) a hoax, a deception.

1702		Cibber She Would and She Would Not IV i: I’ll have a Touch of the Bamboozle with him.
1751		in ‘Bumper Allnight. Esquire’ Honest Fellow (1790) 138: The dark lanthorn’s drifts, / Bamboozings and shifts.
1796		Sporting Mag. Feb. VII 284/1: A little short-beak’d heath-bred oozle, / A cock indeed, a flat bamboozle!
1894		Truth (Sydney) 11 Nov. 5/6: He at once inaugurated a scheme of booze and bamboozle for the purpose of nobbling the press.
1906		E. Hubbard Love, Life and Work 🌐 The only way they can hope for heaven is through a belief in a barbaric blood bamboozle.

2. a nickname for a trickster.

1803		C.K. Sharpe Correspondence (1888) I 15: Billy Bamboozle, a quizzer and wit – At least he thinks; but he’s damnably bit. Alas poor Bamboozle!
1804		T.G. Fessenden ‘New-England Country-Dance’ Poems 59: Benny Bamboozle cuts the drollest capers, / Just like a camel, or a hippopot’mos.