Hound Goes To Cambridge

Have checked trains and prices as follows:

Hoping this comes out ok but DIY otherwise.

The would seem the most cost efficient way of doing things.

Hence if everyone can tap their way to East Croydon ready to go by 9.31am next week, 31st July that sounds the way to go. We have approx. £135 of Hound funds so that can cover the train fares which I'll buy if everyone confirms. Probably going to be Platform 2 but these things can change. Activities for the day can be decided en route, the forecast looks decent.

I also have a CamCard which offers various discounts on the cultural stuff.

Any questions?

Summer Hound

Such a nice day last Thursday that Graham, Daren and myself took it out into the pub "garden" before the quiz. Well, yard the noise of the air conditioning unit and smell from next door's curry house. But still a mighty fine evening.


We're up to P in the list of celeb pictures and things. Good spot to pick out this geezer.

A considerably younger and with more hair version of Patrick Stewart. Plenty of them evaded us, think maybe we stretched it to about 6.

The story that caught my eye on the current affairs round was the Lewis chesspiece sold for £735,000! A single chess piece! Not much use without the other 31; if only they knew a reproduction set was available on Amazon for £145. Some people will just buy anything.

£735,000 please.

Round 3 was Wimbledon based, fairly standard stuff, think we only failed on the name of the ladies ingles trophy, the Venus rosewater dish. Round 4 was on this week in history and we marked the 91st anniversary of sliced bread first being marketed in Chillicothe Missouri. But what else could it be?

Ten pointers, ah here controversy reigned.

Ok, we didn't know the 2nd event in the decathlon, though thinking it through maybe I should have done as I saw some of the decathlon at the 2012 Olympics. But controversially, what was the sportswear firm set up by Herr Dassler in the 1930s?

https://fortune.com/2013/03/22/the-hatred-and-bitterness-behind-two-of-the-worlds-most-popular-brands/

Quite the story and while I can't remember the exact question wording, I think either of Adidas and Puma would have been correct answers. The given answer was Adidas though, we had Puma.

Onto the old chain letters round this has got decidedly more trixie recently; all good but we lost the thread somewhere around Endive and didn't get it back until Slash. The guitarist that is.

Jeopardy and we had 8 good answers. I figured Ellen de Generes' partner was Portia something but where will the 2022 Winter Olympics be? Japan was probably the best guess but we settled for 8, just as well as Beijing will host.

Well too much to do with the slightly controversial answer and it was third in a tight finish.

Right, I'm away next week and in 2 weeks, The Hound will host so get yourselves all down there. Until then...

4 becomes 3 Hound

No win for a while, early match tension dispelled by a clean sweep on the pictures. All starting with M....

Current Affairs all good too until last 2 Q’s. Muirfield finally accepting women as members and Spinach mooted to join nandrolone and co on the banned substances list for athletics etc.

Good to have Steve on board for the Films round but still let 2 go. Near miss on identity of actor playing Rooster Cogburn in the 2010 remake of True Grit. Jeff Bridges not Josh Brolin who was also in the film. Not sure how I didn’t manage to even consider the following as the country music legend who was the subject of the biopic I Saw The Light. Hank Williams of course.

Tough This Week in History round, we mixed all of the following...

Robert the Bruce/William Wallace

Roy Rogers/Hopalong Cassidy

Jamaica/Republic of Ireland

Martin Luther King/Malcolm the Tenth.

I know what you are thinking. How?

A stinker in the 10 pointers. Who immediately followed Stalin as the leader of the Soviet Union in 1953.

Georgy Malenkov for a couple of hours. Ok nine days. Don ‘t think anyone got it.

One better in the Chain Letters round this week, it is becoming more challenging, which is good. We had first and last letters for both misses. Rhinestone is a synthetic diamond substitute, and persimmon is also known as the Sharon Fruit. After an area where it is prevalent in Israel, not an Essex Girl.

Looks good enough to eat doesn’t it.

Intelligence received indicates we are well behind Les Anoraks so Old School performance required in the Jeopardy round and we didn’t disappoint.

Steve Rogers is also known as Captain America in the Marvel world and more surprisingly Mark Spitz’ golden location were enough to stop the enemy and Robson’s recollection of  the following Shakespearean character’s occupation the toughest for us.

Bottom from MSND was a (basket) Weaver. Also took some debate to identify Churchill as QEII’s first PM.

Home and Dry. 19 on music round, not sure what we missed.

See elsewhere for a possible Hound outing to Cambridge, punting and all.

The Four Hounds of the Quiz

A quick blogette before the cricket kicks off, Daren, Graham, Pete and myself taking our positions in the corner ready for action.

Names are up to "O" on the connection for the picture round, this fella proving to be the only sticking point.

Johnny Foreigner type who gets killed off in the first half an hour wasn't going to cut it. Om Puri would have done.

Onto news and apparently similies are banned in Bradford schools which must restrict essay writing somewhat. Also Jimmy Dyson gave /315m to his former school and Scholsey has been found out for betting on football, successfully apparently. Yep, slow news week.


Next round and famous "Browns". Rounds like these always offer the opportunity for quizzing bingo and Errol, Capability and Gordon had us well on the way to a call but this fella proved a stumbling block.

The geezer on the left obvs. Frankly the picture doesn't help and if I didn't know I now. Bryan Brown so no full house for us.

This week is history was Round 4. The hotline from Moscow to Washington proved to be rather unimaginatively named the "Moscow-Washington hotline", otherwise we did ok here. And well played to G force for knowing the dog in trap 1 wears a red jacket. Even if red isn't really him.

Link-ups were going well until we were tripped up and sent off course by a shelled gastropod. Still don't know what the answer was but it cost us 3 questions, maybe.

Jeopardy, as it so often does, started well but in what film does Fred Astaire dance on the ceiling? And what is the largest county in Eire. We had possible answers but swerve territory. Here's Freddie.

Royal Wedding it seems. Glad we didn't go for that.

Well, post the music a tie-break resulted but the Hound weren't in it. Bah! Well played though to King Kong Balls. Right, looks like England are going to have a bowl.

Well below par Hound

Just myself and Robin. Quiz relegated to the Pool Table area due to England-Neth game. It’s on our screen as well but about 45 seconds behind which proves useful whenever it becomes apparent that something has occurred.

10 statues to identify first up. We only missed no. 8 with Robson a lot closer than me. Emmeline Pankhurst not Molly Malone. Other answers available on application.

Below par on current affairs, BA have resumed flying to Pakistan not Egypt, tourist boat crash in Venice not Budapest, Sainsbury not Waitrose acting quicker on plastic packaging for fruit & veg, and a couple of others including who won BGT. Passed me by that one.

Round 3 was fictional dogs, although I’m fairly sure Blue Peter was real. Went well at first but finished weakly failing to get The Perishers as the cartoon strip with a dog called Boot and couldn’t remember Wellard as being Robbie Jackson’s dog in Eastenders. Some controversy over what was the second BP dog, she wanted Shep as the answer but Patch had a lot of support as well. Didn’t affect the final result.

No real probs with the this week in history round even getting Chicago as the US city introducing an elevated railroad in 1892.

From here on in we weren’t really in the hunt starting with 10 points dropped here.....

Colin Powell not Madeline Albright was the US Secretary of State immediately prior to Condaleeza Rice. 2 of 4 teams got it right.

Short break as England flail defensively and a close offside call is given after VAR intervention. Cue the hardest Chain Letters round ever bar none. Pretty much all food and drink based we didn’t get...

The second one is a Mexican dish using corn based dough and wrapped in banana leafs called Tamale. The final one apparently stinks to high heaven in its uncooked form, but gives a similar flavour to using garlic or onion. Siobhan suggested that we get both the words fetid and fetish from this condiment which is also known as Devil’s Dung! We also missed cappuccino due to having the wrong first letter and a lack of understanding of coffee in general.

It would have taken an immaculate Jeopardy round to rescue this one and five questions answered even though correct ain’t immaculate. We might have had an outside chance if we had anything on 

Danny Dyer’s character name in Eastenders but we didn’t. I thought that he was a Mitchell but it was Mick Carter, well avoided. We skirted around the correct answers for the others that we skipped and probably wouldn’t have got them all. 

We only missed Alana Morrisette’s song name in the music round, it was Hand in My Pocket.

Final Scores were Anoraks 120, Hound 125, Lady & Tramp 141, King Kongs Balls 144. Given that Anoraks crashed and burned in the Jeopardy round we definitely flirted with last place. However they did deserve this fate for thinking that Daniel extracted a thorn from a lions paw! 

Wizz Hound

Briefest of blogs this week due to exam marking commitments but to confirm the Hound fund stands at £140.80 after last week's fund. Assuming we're quorate next week there's another £25.50 to fund a couple of rounds after a stunning Hound win. If one question clinched the deal, it was getting Wizz Air being Hungary based not Iceland as put by the Anoraks to complete the Jeopardy. Go Hound!

Winning Hound

Well, a lot to get through this week. The quiz won't take long though as I have no notes and no memory.

Though I do remember this fella turned up in round 1 which was mainly Ds.

Key point though was Hound win, we didn't attempt the jeopardy, settling for 8 but with a gun against our heads we'd have got it so that can't be bad.

Right, onto the Maundy Thursday research that was promised around the A25/Redhill to Guildford trainline. Frankly Friday wasn't the warm sunny day for the cycle ride around the Surrey Hills that I was hoping for. But off I headed regardless. Much of it was new territory for me and the road signs weren't helping.

But I headed off regardless, covered a fair few miles and propose the following:

Kick off with the 11.30 train from Redhill to Shalford. Shalford has 3 pubs all within 0.3m of the station, The Seahorse, The Queen Victoria and The Parrot. Something for everybody. Arrivees from Sutton can intercept at Dorking or go straight there via Guildford.

Other stations with pubs are Chilworth, with the Percy Arms very close and Gomshall with the Compasses and Gomshall Mill both within about 0.2m of the station. Fine places all of them.


Now extending options further, the Number 32 bus follows the route and brings in fine places like Shere and the Drummond at Albury. E.g. from Chilworth.

You'll see they don't run desperately late but have the advantage of depositing us in Dorking to finish rather than the more distant Dorking Deepdene.. More great pubs are further out in the sticks. I tapped the Uber App though when I was out to be greeted with nothing, we ain't in London here. The absolute finest though was one I passed on the bike between Albury and Shere, the William IV. Magnificent.

Something to consider I trust, feedback welcome.

In other news Daren, Graham and myself are chewing over a Hound USA road trip. More to come on this.


Stay frosty.

Vintage Hound

D2 managed to lose the requisite 2 lbs last week so we were 3.

Pictures beginning with E, nowhere to go wrong really.

Only 2 missed in the current affairs round, one about 3 schoolgirls defacing a banknote with the president of Burundi on it, and one about a large ‘donation’ to secure a place at Yale uni.

Heaven or hell round we missed 3. Sean Lock compared ‘TV Heaven, Telly Hell’ on C4, the 3rd Hellraiser film was called ‘Hell on Earth’, and this superhero is called Hellboy.

Full marks on questions about 2008, and thanks to a Lewis Hamilton question D2 bagged the right year. Oh, sorry we missed Usain Bolt setting a 100m world record, we put Maurice Greene.

Hardest ten pointer was nailed, David Bowie and Guy Pearce both played Andy Warhol on screen.

Chain letters no problem except we didn’t know Mrs Doubtfire’s Christian name, Euphegenia!

For the second week in a row we went all in on the Jeopardy, but this time we got it. We weren’t totally sure that eBay uses the slogan buy-it, sell-it, love-it but not many other contenders and it was right. The one that really sealed was identifying ‘Rollercoaster’ as a number one hit for...

 B*witched. Anoraks busted on this one. All bar one in the music round and a win with a score of 174.

A nice bottle of red shared at the end. Maundy Thursday is fast approaching and Robin is the routefinder for a propose A25 crawl ending in Dorking.

Another possible road trip was also raised, to be discussed further.

Pre Cheltenham Hound

Not quite the first quiz for me for a while but I've missed more than I've made recently so great to be back there. Chelsea took the starring role in the pub though so we were all relegated to back round the pool table.

Just Graham and myself so a picture round on film characters was hardly up our alley. Not so tough though and we took a relieved 9, just Charles Xavier, unsurprisingly, escaping us.

Onto current affairs and this got very guessy. So its 2 locks of hair that the British Museum is returning to Ethiopia, Air India who require announcers to hail the Motherland (Jai Hind!) and the new Barbie doll is none of LGBTQ+ but merely Maori. Rather a let down. But we plumped successfully at a few including which sleb is accused of not sending some kids to school.

Rather unconventionally, music would prove to be round 3. Fairly standard fare, we only really had to get out the guessing trousers for which Spice Girl released an album called Schizophonic. Well, this one.

So next up was guess the year. Having got a good handle on it with when the Rubik's Cube was launched, none of the other questions really helped that much, other than maybe nudging us back so we went with a traditionally one year out approach and 1979. Some tougher questions in there, a theme that continued with the ten pointers. It was Eric Bana who played the Hulk, or rather confusingly, his character of Bruce Banner. Pyrosis is heartburn as well which we may have had before, not literally though.


So halfway and behind the 8 ball, would the link-ups round help? Well we linked them up but probably not really, working out a tomato could be a nightshade plant finally joined the dots.

What a useful plant!

So we needed to nail the Jeopardy, well 3 questions vexed us:

- which is the only World Capital that begins with I?

- what reality programme did Mark from Take That win in 2002?

- Whose oppo includes Sandman and Green Goblin?.

Well, it took a world tour for Graham to arrive in Islamabad but the other two were 50/50 at best so we parked it. Bah.

Some more modern music for a change, Maroon 5, Rita Ora, which probably helped us as much as everyone else and a Hound 2nd resulted, fair play to the team with Pete's brother in law for bagging the jeopardy.

Ok, next week, it all happens.

4 Days of Cheltenham!
No pub quiz! But apparently a really good Irish Band instead
Mansfield away at Crawley!

Not sure I can wait that long.

No Snow Hound

First blog for a while, some quizzes haven’t enjoyed big attendances recently. Hound has had it’s fair share of wins but first place has been spread around.

If you can’t get this week’s pictures then it really is time to give up.

Toxic smog in Bangkok, England to be first country to eliminate HIV by 2030, and staffies are still the UKs favourite dog. Just some of the things that we didn’t know this week. We did know that a kiwi singer has had a tattoo of Harry Styles on her face though!

Rd 3 was an uninspiring multiple choice round. 8 scored.

Guess the Year was 1990. We should have got it but went 1 early. Got all of the 9 q’s correct including prison riots in Strangeways and smoking ban on US cross country.

10 pointers and a hint of controversy but the question masters decision is final. We thought that the following logo had two diamonds, but it was of course Umbro.

Great work by D2 for the other two, Dorothy first meets the scarecrow in the Wizard of Oz, and Prince Andrew dated the actress Koo Stark.

Chain letters aced. Good get for Steve, a hummingbirds heart can beat up to 1000 times a minute.

Onto the Jeopardy round unaware that we had dropped ten for Umbro. The following two caused a lot of problems for all except Lady & the Tramp.

We thought West Ham or Palace for Sam Allardyce’s team immediately before becoming England manager. It was Sunderland. We had anything between 14 and 19 for the number of men on a dead mans chest. We did well to swerve these two with Snakes being good enough for herpetology though it is more correctly all amphibians and reptiles. 

Missed Robson for Taylor Daynes Tell It to my Heart in the music round but did ok. Lady & the Tramp won with us third behind Anoraks.

Steve got some good ones and I just can’t give Daren enough credit for his performance.

G-Force

Hound Of The Year

Different format this week, no current affairs, no jeopardy, link-ups or connections. Just a round of sleb 2018 deaths, 50 questions about the events of 2018 and some music. Would this play to our strengths or would the distraction of Man City v Liverpool be too much?

Think we got 11/12 on the deaths, only the actress who played Alice in the Vicar Of Dibley escaping us. Then working through the year, mainly with some cunningly recycled questions from months gone by.

So these were the mascots but where were the Olympics? And which was that retailer who announced it would be axing 100 stores by 2022. And what was Jurassic Park V called? And who on earth remembers what film won the Best Picture

These questions and many, many more. All the while a long overdue successful in play bet of 2-1 to Man City was starting to unfold. Answers - Emma Chambers, PyongChang, M&S, Fallen Kingdom and the Shape of Water. Has anyone actually watched that by the way.

Music scanned the spectrum from Tho Who to Lady Gaga and don't you know? Hound Win? Only 4 teams so not life-changing winnings but hopefully a beer to kick off next week.