A chamber of the Digital Areopagus
The Norden Bomb Site
Three games of erudite deception, after the fashion of the great BBC panel game
My Word! Separate a true origin from a plausible fraud; manufacture
the fraud yourself and see whether the panel believes it; or tell the shaggy-dog
lie that nobody is meant to believe at all, and land it on a groan.
The Reckoning
Guess the true origin
A famous phrase, three origins — one true, two forged. Pick the truth.
The Bluff
Forge a false definition
A real, obscure word. Invent a definition convincing enough to fool the panel.
The Feghoot
Land the shaggy dog
A famous line. Invent the fraudulent story behind it, ending on a pun that wrecks it.
In honour of Denis Norden (1922–2018), by many accounts the wittiest man in
England, and his co-conspirator Frank Muir. For over thirty years on the BBC's My Word!
the two were handed famous lines and told outrageous, shaggy-dog lies about where they came from —
each story bending toward a final, groaning pun. This chamber steals their thunder, gratefully.
A note on parentage, since we would rather be accurate than tidy. The Reckoning and
The Feghoot descend from My Word! — the first from its false-derivation half,
the second from the story round that closed the programme. The Bluff does not: inventing
false definitions for genuinely obscure words was the whole format of Call My Bluff , on
which Muir sat as a team captain opposite Patrick Campbell. Two programmes, then, and one Muir
running through both.