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Incorrect comments on If You Were Brilliant When You Were Ten... - Less Wrong
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I think there is a third option. Make yourself seem smart but especially concentrated in particular subjects and thus naive about most other topics.
There are plenty of precedents for this sort of caricature; for example, Sherlock Holmes.
There are of course costs and benefits to this. For example, if you incorporate such an idea into your identity you may avoid learning too much about topics you consider yourself to be naive about.
I don't particularly see why this would lead to winning.
It may make you feel more comfortable asking stupid questions.
Another method with similar effects: being a newcomer, and instead of trying to hide it, using this position to ask lots of stupid questions. In a surprisingly big percentage of the cases, it turns out that the question wasn't that stupid at all, and not even the "established" practicioners of the topic can answer.
A small-scale example: I joined a group of students studying for our Complex Analysis exam next day (they were already studying for a while). As the whole subject was about complex functions, I started with a really stupid question: what are complex functions, anyway? Well, nobody knew for sure, and eventually it was me who explained it for everyone else... (but only after asking further stupid questions, of course.)