I don't think that casting a range of bits as some other arbitrary type "is a bug nobody sees coming".
C++ compilers also warn you that this is likely an issue and will fail to compile if configured to do so. But it will let you do it if you really want to.
That's why I love C++
Clever as in elegantly and readable or clever as in a hack that abuses a bug/feature and you need to understand the intricacies to understand half of it?
Honestly, also the latter. If you are using hundreds of thousands of cores for over 100h, every single second counts.