A smile and a wink, say, from crooked economist (9)

I believe the answer is:

emoticons

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'a smile and a wink say' is the definition.
I know nothing about this answer so I can't tell whether this works.

'crooked economist' is the wordplay.
'crooked' indicates anagramming the letters (a crooked or disrupted version of the letters).
'economist' anagrammed gives 'EMOTICONS'.

'from' is the link.

Can you help me to learn more?

(Other definitions for emoticons that I've seen before include "facial expressions" , "symbols" .)

I've seen this clue in The Guardian.

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