He thought the Roman numeral for 1000 was C and that for 10 was V, so he made up a word with those two letters in it.

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ah, you've edited


It would depend on how lenient/strict they were on official names.
Pointless has it's catchphrase about a member of the UN and presumably they go by the name listed by them.



Would The Gambia be accepted now though?



Can't see The Seychelles being accepted myself.





Ivory Coast is an interesting one.
I think it was Graeme Garden on Pointless who got a pointless answer with Côte d'Ivoire.

Would they be strict enough to not accept Ivory Coast as an answer?

Just in general and not associated with the starting with two consonants question.

Yes, serves me right for trying to be a smartarse but not reading carefully enough.

My subsequent thought was that they'd probably have disregarded "The" as it would have made it too easy to think of loads of answers. No doubt Richard would have explained the criteria though, I didn't see the episode in question.

Odd that the English translation of des reads "of" and not "of the".

There's only a handful, and if they were "easy" you'd want to avoid them anyway.

Heard two gems today:

BBC For What It's Worth ...
Q. Arthur's Seat overlooks which UK city?
A. Cornwall

ITV Tipping Point ...
Q. Which former leader of the Labour party is the father of the MP Stephen Kinnock?
A. Tony Blair

Words simply fail me!

I've just come across this thread and spent some time browsing through some of the dafter answers on here. I'm surprised n one has mentioned a couple of my favourites from Pointless a while back:

In a round where people were asked to name famous spouses, they were given list of people's names, an they had to name the famous person that they were married to. The first guy didn't know any of them, so had to take a guess, which is fair enough, but he then chose Ann Hathaway, and in guessing the name of the famous person she was married to he guessed at Man Hathaway. Was that really his best guess at a famous person?

And in the final, back in the days when the answers all had to come from just one question, two women ( I think they were work colleagues) didn't like the choice of subjects much, but in desperation the younger one said she would be OK with Modern Artists. The older woman seemed surprised at this, but the younger one was so confident that she relented and went for this subject. The question: name any winner of the Turner Prize. The younger woman then said "What's the Turner Prize?" and left the older woman desperately trying to come up with three answers.

Those are crackers!

Perhaps she misunderstood and was expecting recording artists, ie. a music category.

There was a little more to it, the younger woman went on to say she thought they meant "pop artists, I saw that coming as she was the archetypal know everything about celebrity gossip type and anything outside that just didn't register so "artists" was automatically "pop artists".

Oh dear
Thanks for that, guess I didnt read the article properly

The 2nd one is very silly as the surnames are different so they cant be related, but where/what is Arthur's Seat? That doesnt sound like a stupid answer if you dont know UK landmarks.

It's in Edinburgh (and is quite famous), but I guess the main "stupid" aspect was thinking Cornwall is a UK city.

You're not related to anybody with a different surname? I know it's unlikely with fathers and sons, but it doesn't rule it out completely.

Totally predictable! There are so many young airheads these days who know nothing if it's not in Heat magazine or similar!

I read that and was thinking "That's a very obscure one to include"...before realising it wasn't referring to Hollywood actress Anne Hathway!

Off topic but it is a quiz show regular.

Paul Sinha was on Bad Language and his choice for a word/phrase to remove from the language was "It's before my time"

I don't think it's off topic. It fits the thread title perfectly.

Tipping Point just now...

Q: "The surname of Freddie, the lead singer of Queen, shares its name with which Planet?"

A: Mars

Not such a stupid answer if you didn't happen to know who the lead singer of Queen was!

Good point, I hadnt thought of that I have cousins with different surnames

There are certain things I imagine, whether you're interested in them or like them or not, that you'd have to have been living under a rock your entire life to have never once picked up on - knowing who Freddy Mercury and Queen are strikes me as one of these instances.

Plus, of course, there is a fairly well-known modern singer with the surname "Mars".

As well as a rock group with a member also called Mars