Whilst The Hound is away the hounds fiddle as metaphors burn...

The Purley Arms
17th July 2014

In the absence of The actual Hound, the collective Hound gathered once again to uphold his absent end and mount another raid on the prize fund to boost the canine coffers...

One thing that has happened in The Hound's absence and which must, in your correspondent's opinion, be addressed immediately is the changing of our table of choice from a nice roomy oblong one to a piddly little, squashed, round one - by the time we're several rounds and a packet of Wotsits into it there is no room left for anything else - back to the traditional tables asap please...

And it is this justification that I am tenuously clinging to for the relative paucity of this week's report - by the time Dirren had the pen, G-Dog had his notes, and half a dozen glasses were in varying stages of being drained there was simply no room left for me to concentrate on what was going on, let alone take notes that may subsequently help me write something worthwhile...

And so;
- there was a picture round - famous people with July birthdays - we absolutely romped it - 10/10
- there was a current affairs round during which I was mildly upset to learn that apparently Jeremy Kyle is a West Ham United supporter - 6/10
- can't quite recall, even with G-Dog's 'notes', the gist of round three but we were damn good at it - 10/10 (might've been 'food and drink')
- we got most of the individual answers in the connections round but can't for the life of me remember what the connection was or whether we got it...
- and we got all three of the ten point bonus questions, apparently

In the second half;
- we bossed the round on opening lyrics to songs 10/10
- did quite well in whatever was next and
- bossed the music round

I seem to remember that our 'estimate for the box of chocolates' was dreadful - although that could've been the previous week - and when all was said and done we'd got a total of 152 and a comfortable victory.

Yay for the collective Hound and thrice times yay again - The actual Hound is now back amongst us and so we continue...

Hound of the Butler –Sloss’

 

No Robson, Pete or Steve this week due to various encumbrances so it was down to a bare 3 of me, Graham and Kevster.

 

Pre match ruminations centred on the World Cup and David Luis in particular with agreement that he plays football ‘like a puppy chasing a paper bag on a windy day’.

 

When trying to identify possible current affairs questions Kevster came up with “and of course don’t forget Baroness Butler-Sloss”

 

There then followed the opening round of pictures of Tom’s in films. Well, 6 Tom Hanks and 4 Tom Cruise, which was a bit random but fairly routine.

 

Then, onto the aforementioned ‘Current Affairs’ round which contained questions about aeroplane near misses in Barcelona, Justin Bieber being naughty with eggs and Duncan Bannantyne leaving Dragon’s Den.

 

Then the question of “who is due to lead the Parliamentary inquiry into Paedophiles?” dropped into our laps

 

“Schloss –Brown?”

“Saxe Coburg?”

“Blox Schloss?”

“I don’t think she was a Baroness you know”

 

Despite it being less than an hour since Kevster clearly instructed us not to forget her name – we had!

 

Round 3 was on Europe and the bone of contention in this round was which City, before London, has hosted the modern Olympics 3 times. This made Graham so mad he determined there and then to write out all the host cities since 1896. What we didn’t know was that there was an unofficial Olympic games held in Athens in 1906. Remember that, it will make a good quiz question.

 

The connections round was, amongst others, Arthur Lowe, Mrs Beeton, Gerry Adams and Craig David giving the somewhat surprising answer of ‘Darts players’, which we recognised.

 

The 3 Ten pointers this week were fairly easy; St Swithin’s day is in July, Baldrick from Blackadder and a London Bridge that is also a make of car being Vauxhall.

 

The second half of the quiz is more of a blur but I remember we got 9 out of 10 for the Jeopardy round and doing well to avoid the bear trap on the question of ‘what is the longest river in Europe?’ The answer is the Volga. We also got near perfect marks for the last lines of books only failing to recognise '"Don't ever tell anybody anything. If you do, you start missing everybody." *

 

The music was fine and for once we were fairly confident that we’d be up there, having only slipped up on the Butler Sloss, a couple of Tom Films, 1 Book, the Volga and Athens questions, so it was a surprise to be beaten into second place 161 – 155.

 

Oh well, onto next week

 

* Catcher in the Rye

 

 

Dark and stormy hound

Well, as they say, if the mountain won't come to Muhammed, Muhammad must go to the mountain. In other words, do something about it. To place things, I'd watched a German annihilation of Brazil only marginally less complete than the fixture against Poland in 1939, the night was still young, and an exiled Hound on a small island far far away needed action. There had been precious few status reports since my departure, various excuses had been presented, the most ludicrous being the need to preserve Kevster's sanity. Well, you hardly need me to say it but that ship has long since sailed sister. So, in the absence of news, create your own.

As such, I took myself off to the weekly Tuesday night quiz at the Robin Hood, you all know it. I entered there tout seule, uncharacteristically though for a quiz in my experience, it all started on time. A team of 3 near me were doing the quiz, I tossed over a couple of answers, e.g. what event did the Duke of Kent (to later becomes George VI) take part in 1926 (answer at the end). Luckily it was right and their confidence was won. So welcome Hounds for the night Judy, David and David. The resulting team comprising two pharmacists and two actuaries. A potion for success? We would see.

I didn't take notes as such, so my memory might be fading but the blog must go on. It was general knowledge evening and all fairly routine by way of quiz format, no audio, no jeopardy, no pictures. What we did get though is a fair few USA themed things though so I give you, the name of the "Show Me" state, 2014 Stanley Cup winners, who plays in "The Game", what is a very dextrous omnivore and which president was offered terms for the Chicago Penguins, or something like that. Thankfully David knew all these, must have been like shelling peas for him. There were plenty of questions I could contribute on though, and the trans atlantic knowledge bases slotted in well. An inspired last round where we nailed all ten sealed it and "Brazil Nuts" - I couldn't persuade them to change their name for the night, romped home by 5.

Thing is as well, they're a bit like us and accumulate cash from their occasional wins for the odd night out together. I refused any share, grateful to be part of the glory. Hope to take them on with a work team and no football distractions next week otherwise they may have to put up with me again.

Answers

Wimbledon - think he played in The King's Speech?
Maryland - I asked David why, can't remember the response
LA Kings - hockey apparently
Harvard v Yale, equivalent of ou Boat Race I guess
Raccoon - well, well
Gerald Ford - about the only thing he's remembered for

Also 7-1. Did that really happen?

Football's Coming Hound

7.15 - Steve and myself arrived semi-directly from work, via the KA, oddly enough to find Kevster and Graham in the pub garden. Whether this was to avoid another ear bleeding attack from death metal or take in the pleasant evening wasn't clear but we made ourselves comfortable. "Garden" is maybe a slightly flattering term for it, not being an enthusiastic smoker, I hadn't really been out back before, it's more of a yard, with a noisy vibrating thing and a strong smell of curry. Still, it was undoubtedly a pleasant evening and a happy hour or so was whiled away.

Naturally the conversation turned to the world cup and the one question for me that hasn't been answered, following the total domination of the last world cup in South Africa by Paul, the psychic octopus, which predictive cephalopod is going to come to the table this time? Will we get Sammy, the psychic squid or Colin the cognitive cuttlefish? Either could probably do better than me, Spain to win indeed.

No Daren this week, he was discharging responsibilities, and let's hope that's all so it was down to the four of us to get on with it. First up was flags of world cup countries and this was right up Graham's alley. Bafflingly though a collective blind spot left us failing to get Spain, think we got the rest though. Current affairs wasn't memorable, by me anyway, and surely the connections round had to be one of names of stadia, world cup captains, breeds of dog or types of cheese? Nope, it was flies, may, crane, dragon etc. bagged by Steve after 3 I think.

Films featured somewhere and on the 10 pointers, we got Michelle Mcmanus rose to "fame" (anyone remember Geraldine McQueen?) but a slight case of over thinking led us away from Kenneth Williams on most carry on films, can't remember who we did go for but we entered half time maybe slightly behind. An ongoing sweep on the time of the next goal in the Brazil game devised by Kevster was keeping us amused in the interim.

Suitably refreshed with beer and wotsits, we tackled the second half. Top 10 was a rather easy, name 10 world cup finalists and onto the business end of the wipeout. Key question here, which action figures were named after a film starring Robert Mitchum? Turned out to be GI Joe, though we did have some justification of our answer of Action Man as research shows that was what they were marketed as in the Uk. The film was the story of GI Joe though so fine answers such as Lonely Street, Tittle and Alfred Nobel were rendered moot.

Decent music though "Everybody's Talking" by Neilson evaded us. Having wiped out a win was out of the question, think we scraped second. No quiz next week as it's England v Uruguay and I guess future ones are dependant on the progress England make so Thursday 26th it is.

Thursday's Hound is thin of hair...

Stardate 5 June 2014: 7:15 p.m. - What is this abomination coming from the speakers in the Purley Arms, volume cranked up to 11? Daren was not impressed, and with the possible exception of one AC/DC number it was easy to see why.

Onto the questions... all you need to know is;

Blue Moon = 2nd full moon in any calendar month

Harvest Moon = nearest full moon to the Autumnal Equinox in the Northern hemisphere, usually occurring in September.

Jeopardy round blown and along with it our last chance of winning. We were also poor on the picture round (disney villains) and Top 10 boys name with Oscar and Ethan being amongst those that we missed. A question that often comes in different guises and always causes trouble is the biggest etc. mediterranean island by area. For future reference the top 5 in order are Sicily, Sardinia, Cyprus, Corsica, Crete. No doubt we will be asked for the sixth largest next time.

The box of Maltesers was however ours, for being nearest on a question regarding passenger traffic through Heathrow.

What we have learned from this week's trip to the PA apart from the above...

Fabregas may as well not bother coming back to the PL, his style of play doesn't suit any of the teams therein.

Any Bermudan visitors to this blog may well meet a hound in person before long. Ditto x up to 6 for those in Northern Cyprus.  

Angelo Matthews is in with a chance of both the nobel peace prize and BBC overseas sportsman of the year.

Tony Yeboah scored more than one blinding goal in that year.

Kevster has 5 million in his sights on 2048 8x8 version.

There was also a small amount of debate regarding a playlist of songs with days of the week in their title. A survey based on my own itunes library (sample size 50,000, cover versions counted separately but not alternative versions of a song by the same artist) gave the following results;

Monday 31

Tuesday 13

Wednesday 9

Thursday 5 (0.01%)

Friday 22

Saturday 61

Sunday 54

Thus confirming Daren's comment re Thursday. The 5 Thursday songs for the record are Holy Thursday (David Axelrod), Thursday (The Futureheads), Sweet Thursday (Icicle Works), Thursday (Pet Shop Boys feat,Example), and Thursday's Child (Tansads). Others available on application. Special mentions for Big Country (Monday Tuesday Girl) and The Levellers (Saturday to Sunday) for fitting two weekdays into one song title.

Confusion reigns as to whether or not the World Cup opener will thwart next week's quiz. The England game the week after almost certainly will so it could be 3 weeks until the next blog.

Graham Hound