Wrong but Romantic

[steepholm]

I occasionally watch Richard Osman's House of Games with my dinner. The other day they were doing a round where one contestant has to fill in clues (as best they can) to help another contestant guess a thing, person, event, etc.

In this case the answer was a person, and the clues were:

He was born in the ... century

Comments

[nightspore]

Hamilton? Checking....

[nightspore]

Oops -- Franklin was my second guess. But if you hadn't told me all clues were wrong I'd have been completely flummoxed.

[steepholm]

Hamilton's a pretty good guess, though. Did he invent anything?

[heliopausa]

I didn't guess right at all, even with the non-clues.
Was it the word "invented" which led people to the right answer?

[steepholm]

Well, the person in the studio didn't get it, to be fair, but I'm pretty sure that's what narrowed it down for me. If you squint at those answers, like a Magic Eye picture, you see "American who invented something and is somehow associated with presidents and banknotes." Admittedly the nineteenth century is a bit of a red herring, but many people are terrible at dates, so it was easy to ignore.