This reminds me of a another one of my favorite little triumphs, up there with wielding a bully and a jerk against each other in high school gym class, this one coming in college. It was at a cafeteria table - this was the dining hall in Risley, which is quite nice - anyway, some folks I know were arguing about whether something I didn’t know the first thing about should be considered a shibboleth.

Eventually there was a break in the conversation. I looked up, drawing attention, and spoke.

“Actually,” I said, “it’s pronounced shibbolet.”

Now that’s cute enough but the thing that really makes this is that by saying that, and watching to see who chuckled and who looked confused, I was able to distinguish and sort the people who knew what they were talking about from the people who didn’t.