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.