What you call the "daft laddie" approach would be how I would handle it, rather than piling on enough sugar to give everyone in the room a toothache. "What are

What you call the "daft laddie" approach would be how I would handle it, rather than piling on enough sugar to give everyone in the room a toothache. "What are the budget and staffing constraints for this project?" I KNOW the project is doomed, but I don't need to be the one to point that out - let the presenter handle it, if they haven't thought about it they can give a vague answer now and figure it out later, or maybe they have thought about it and have a solution I don't suspect. Either way, the focus shifts from "you haven't thought about X" to "what about X?"