Before Jeopardy became simply a formulaic gimmick where you had to append “What is” in front of what was obviously an answer to what was coyly a question, the technique was used to describe somebody who was so well informed that he or she could be strolling thru a cocktail party, overhear what was obviously the answer to a question, and immediately intuit what the question must have been. Example: thing overheard = “29,002”; question inferred = “What was considered to be the height of Mount Everest before 1955?”
Before Jeopardy became simply a formulaic gimmick where you had to append “What is” in front of what was obviously an answer to what was coyly a question, the technique was used to describe somebody who was so well informed that he or she could be strolling thru a cocktail party, overhear what was obviously the answer to a question, and immediately intuit what the question must have been. Example: thing overheard = “29,002”; question inferred = “What was considered to be the height of Mount Everest before 1955?”