Q: Meaning of "ringer"?

[N2life4]

One phrase I have heard is 'dead ringer' meaning that
something - or someone - was exactly like the other one.
"She was a "dead ringer" for Palin" (meaning Fey)

In another example, a mistake is deliberately made to see if
anyone is paying attention. A place where I once worked
routinely put additional inexpensive items in a random
customers order to test for #1 attention to details and #2
for honesty. The explantion was that they had "threw a
ringer in to see if anyone would catch it. "
J

----- Original Message -----
From: "Joel S. Berson" <Berson at ATT.NET

Can anyone help me understand the meaning and derivation of
"ringer"
below?  (And is it in the OED?)

About a series of email messages on an odd question but one
which
caught the fancy of several persons, person A wrote
>This is like the best of those great weird ringers in old
>19th-c.
>issues of 'Notes & Queries.'

I asked what "ringer" meant, wondering about the game of
horseshoes.

A replied:
>The real answer is that I'm probably misusing it, but I
>always
>associate it with pub trivia contests in which nobody knows
>the
>answer, and in the silence the announcer says, "Okay, that
>was a ringer."

So I now wonder, does "ringer" mean "A question [e.g., query
in
_Notes and Queries_] that is extremely esoteric and perhaps
will
achieve no answer"?

Joel

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