UKC

A month or so ago at Millstone Edge I saw a guy bend the wires of his nut over and stuck it backwards into one of the bore holes. I didn't quite hear what he said, but it sounded like he called it a "baby bopper" or something like that. I imagine it works a lot like a tricam.

What's this called and how sketchy is it? 

Are you sure it was a standard wired nut  and not a wired camming nut - which have been made by some manufacturers - possibly kong?

Kouba make wired tri cams called the Abalak.

I've done this at millstone. #9 wallnuts used to work well. I would expect them to hold if you fell on them, but the wire would be trashed and need replacing.

Yeah I'm pretty sure they were wallnuts, but those Abalak do look interesting.

I found the climb Jealous Pensioner (E4 5c), and the log on the day says

So maybe I heard "bent back wire" as "baby bopper".

I've done similar, a right pain to remove though.

It mentions doing this in my copy of Eastern Grit so must be fairly commonplace

If I ever have to use or refer to this technique, I’ll be calling it a baby bopper.  

The birth of a climbing term. Exciting!

This is fairly common practice on routes with boreholes, which are hard to protect with anything else from a standard rack. I've done this a fair bit in Avon over the years.