Draw a BlankA Tudor lottery explains your memory lapses.

From the show

History of Phrases

Queen Elizabeth I's 1567 national lottery introduced a surprising linguistic legacy. Participants hoping for riches faced terrible odds, with most prize urn tickets consisting of completely empty slips of paper. Today, pulling one of those empty slips perfectly captures the frustration of a forgotten name or an empty mind. The literal act of losing a 400-year-old royal raffle gave us our modern expression for cognitive failure.