There was an interesting exchange on the panel game Pointless recently. For those who do not know it, the object of the show is for the panellist to answer questions correctly but with answers that 100 members of the public do not know. The more obscure the correct answer, the lower the number of points, the object being to amass as few points as possible. It makes sense when you watch it.
The edition I saw was a “celebrity” version, and the panellists were all journalists. In the opening round, they had to come up with “words ending in –ord”. Toby Young of The Spectator offered “fjord”, which 19 members of the public polled had also suggested. Tony Parsons, the novelist and Sun columnist, offered “broadsword”. Only six members of the public had thought of that.

The winner, though, was Frank Gardner, the BBC’s security correspondent. He came up with “misericord”, which only one member of the public supplied. If no one at all had come up with it, Gardner would have won a special bonus. Host Alexander Armstrong declared that he too would have chosen that word, and said it meant “organ”. Gardner, though, was on firmer ground. “I think it’s a small medieval knife, isn’t it?”