It's a question that screws over someone with knowledge. A recent example is this question from the Ilinois state series(EDIT:Actually masonics):NickD wrote: Perhaps you could enlighten me as to what a "hose" is. I think I have figured out what a "pyramidal" question is.
One of the 50 U.S. states was purchased in an agreement that was not popularly supported at the time.In fact, the agreement was widely referred to as Seward’s Folly. *What is the capital city of this “controversial” state?
In this case, someone could reasonably expect that the question is asking for Alaska before the asterix, but they would be negged because the question changes from seeming to look for Alaska(since the first pronoun is state) to looking for Alaska's capital. Hence, someone that knows enough about Alaska to recognize Seward's folly would probably lose the question to the team that's slow enough not to buzz off Seward's folly or does not know enough about U.S. History to know about Seward's folly.