Obfuscating Stupidity / Discworld

• In Maskerade, Nanny Ogg is described as having "a mind like a buzz saw behind a face like an elderly apple". Her "genial old biddy" facade is every bit as formidable as Granny Weatherwax and it's not until you see Nanny Ogg get serious that you realize how she manages to keep up with Granny. In Thief of Time she showed some of her real genius by keeping up with even Susan Sto Helit.
• After Death is fired in Reaper Man, he moves out into the country where his unerring skill at darts earns him the dislike of the other villagers. He quickly uses his exceptional skill to play "badly" – for example, bouncing the dart off a post and hitting the hat of the man behind him – thus winning everyone over.
• Captain Carrot of the Ankh-Morpork City Watch. While usually portrayed as a genuinely uncomplicated character who takes everything at face value, it is observed that "someone has to be very complex indeed to be as simple as Carrot". You can almost see the transition of Captain Carrot from Crouching Moron, Hidden Badass to this trope in Men at Arms. He goes from a person unable to detect irony and having trouble with metaphors to reaching "agreements" with Vetinari and deception. Angua notes in Thud! that

  that was Carrot at work. He could sound so innocent, so friendly, so... stupid, in a puppy-dog kind of way, and then he suddenly become this big block of steel and you walked right into it.

  • In Night Watch he manages to figure out that Commander Vimes has traveled through both time and space, scant seconds after being given a lot of very big words from a Ponder Stibbons, resident Rocket Wizard. This upsets Stibbons because he never expected someone who wasn't a wizard, much less a watchman, to catch on that quickly.
• Although Rincewind really is an incompetent coward, some characters are convinced that he's faking it since he has survived multiple situations where, by all rights, he should be dead. If he saw it as something to do as a routine and not a survival tactic, his penchant for running would probably mean he'd get on well with the Archchancellor, who is quite fond of morning jogs.
  • Though it's unlikely the Archchancellor would appreciate losing a race to him....
  • He is smart and rational, and his cowardice comes from jaded world-weariness and a sensible fear of the unknown. He's fantastic at improvising his way out of a situation.
• Detritus the troll. His basic reasoning may be tied to the ambient temperature (trolls, having silicon-based brains, run hot away from their mountain homes - and Detritus, seen as stupid even by troll standards, is implied to be particularly heat sensitive) that puts him squarely in Crouching Moron, Hidden Badass in low temps but he has developed more than a little guile over the course of several books. So much guile that he has been known to remind people of the stereotypes they are supposed to expect from him: No worry I are just der big dumb troll nevermind dis here notepad I am just countin' ma toes. It also helps that he's Too Dumb to Fool to the point that most people don't even try pulling something over on him since a confused Detritus is likely as not to just hit you as a compromise.
  • Ankh-Morpork's most famous "Legitimate Businessman", Chrysophrase, is also smarter than your average troll, and while he does show off this fact, he has been known to disguise just how much smarter he is, such as intentionally using Hulk Speak when he's fully capable of speaking normally. According to Vimes, he's managed to outthink and outmaneuver all of Ankh-Morpork's native crime lords, holding off the Thieves Guild with one hand, even when not sitting in a pile of snow.
• Camels are the most intelligent creatures on the Disc, or at least the most gifted mathematicians (long desert travel being good for producing such), and smart enough to not show it to humans. How do you think they can spit so accurately?
• Lu Tze, aka "The Sweeper", a superlatively multi-talented member of the Monks of History who goes everywhere and sees everything as an apparently brainless old floor sweeper. In places like Ankh-Morpork where people of his ethnicity are uncommon, he and his fellow Monks also ramp up the Funny Foreigner, encouraging further dismissal. He makes a blink-and-you'll-miss-it cameo in several books, in places where something big is about to go down (such as the Temple of Offler in Going Postal). He's also faced down innumerable men with swords, Trolls, Susan Sto Helit, and the Auditors. Remember Rule 1.
• For someone who is loud and boisterous, oblivious and thick as a brick, Mustrum Ridcully is a remarkably skilled wizard who somehow manages to make Unseen University run despite keeping wizards under control being akin to herding radioactive cats. It has been noted several times by other characters (and the narrator) that he has managed to be the head wizard of a place where killing your boss in order to get a promotion is socially acceptable for a very long time (the entire series before he got the job, in fact). In many cases he seems to let other people think out loud for him while he works out the solution and is frequently Crazy-Prepared. He also uses his apparent block-headedness to avoid pointless conversations. He doesn't start listening to someone for the first few minutes, with the reasoning that if they're still trying to explain something after all that time, it must be important. Also his personality radically shifts to a quiet, polite and mature gentleman wizard when encountering Susan Sto-Helit (who's put on the back foot by how smooth he is), and when he gets to spend personal time with Granny Weatherwax.
  • He manages to point out in The Last Continent that going back in time to tread on ants is perfectly fine because in a linear universe history 'relies' on you having already done it, which shows that under all that obfuscation there is indeed a powerful intellect.
• Otto Chriek, the vampire photographer, plays the Funny Foreigner aspect of stereotypical Uberwaldian vampires to the hilt in order to make humans forget the fact that, if so inclined, he could easily rip them limb from limb.
• Lord Vetinari's razor-sharp mind is known and feared throughout Ankh-Morpork, but as soon as someone starts underestimating him he plays into it for everything it's worth.
  • This was his primary weapon in his youth, before he had his reputation and the government behind him, but he isn't above using it even in the present.
  • To the point of pretending not to have solved the case of his own poisoning in Feet of Clay and is later shown to even attend meetings of secret conspiracies against him.
  • In another instance, he uses a particularly forgetful and naïve act in Going Postal while questioning the board of the Grand Trunk Company, and pretends to mix up the term "the glass ceiling" with "the Agatean wall". Mr Slant, a centuries-old zombie lawyer, is onto him though:

    Mr Slant was a long-time student of the Patrician, and when his subject appeared to be a confused civil servant asking innocent questions it was time to watch him closely.

  • He exploits a physical Obfuscating Disability as well. After an assassination attempt in Men at Arms leaves him with a permanent limp, he never appears in public without a cane, encouraging the perception that he's vulnerable without it. The Truth reveals that he's still capable of snakelike speed and agility when threatened.
• Preston, one of the Baron's guards in I Shall Wear Midnight, spends the first half of the book as a Malaproper who does things like confusing "doctrine" with "doctoring", before the mask comes off; it turns out that he actually collects words, reads about metaphysics in his spare time, and became a guard after being kicked out of the priesthood for asking too many questions like, "Is this really true, or what?"
• Jingo, has 71-Hour Ahmed, the head policeman of Klatch, who acts like a Funny Foreigner in two places. In Ankh-Morpork, he acts absurdly stereotypically Klatchian. In Klatch, he adopts some Ankh-Morpork language and mannerisms he picked up while studying at the Assassins' Guild.
  Vimes: I thought you chewed those damned cloves?
  71-Hour Ahmed: In Ankh-Morpork, yes. Always be a little bit foreign wherever you are, because everyone knows that foreigners are a little bit stupid.
• Granny Weatherwax adopts this trait when playing Cripple Mr Onion (the Disc's equivalent of poker) with the riverboat gamblers in Witches Abroad. She promptly lures them in and cleans them out.
• It's also Sam Vimes' favorite method of dealing with Vetinari when something is going on that he doesn't want the Patrician to find out about just yet. Vetinari finally snaps about it in Jingo: "If you say 'Sir?' again in that stupid voice, Vimes, I swear there will be trouble."
  • There's an inversion in The Fifth Elephant, when he tries to show off his diplomatic skills by speaking Ankh-Morpork street dwarvish to a senior Ubervaldian dwarf (imagine addressing the Queen of England in gangsta rap). Mr Skimmer compliments him on his Obfuscating Stupdity as an oblique way of telling him how stupid that was.
  • Vimes invokes this at one point during Night Watch, taking on the role of the Big and Unshakably Stupid Policeman to arrest a member of the secret police before he can disrupt a secret meeting and start a riot.
• Keith in The Amazing Maurice and His Educated Rodents spends the first chapter of the book being called "the stupid-looking kid" by everyone, including the narration, before suddenly making an insightful remark. As everyone stops and stares at him, he patiently explains this trope.
  Keith: I'm only stupid-looking. I'm not stupid.