The Schmilblick is an imaginary object first described in a nonsense prose by the French humorist Pierre Dac during the 1950s.
[citation needed] The aim of the game was to guess the name of an object given some of its characteristics (color, shape, use and so on).
This TV game actually re-uses an idea from an old radio show called Tirlipot created several years before.
Nowadays, this word is occasionally used to refer to some limited help provided by someone to solve a difficult problem.
[3] The idiom is actually faire avancer le schmilblick ("to make the schmilblick move/get ahead", literally) and was used a lot in the TV quiz show where it meant asking another pertinent question that might make it easier to guess the object.