4th March 2010 - The Ides of March - two weeks too soon?

It is a widely asserted cliché that something is ‘better late than never’. Well, in the case of this TQSR it certainly qualifies as late – whether it is the better for its tardy delivery, as opposed to not having been delivered at all, is for you to decide.

Last week’s quiz was attended only by the Hound’s core team members – Daren, Robson and yours truly – one wore a green and yellow spotted scarf, one a wind-cheater and one a grey coat – if you can bear the excitement I invite you to match the garment to the wearer. And you can potentially double your points if you match the pre-match meal to its consumer – one of us had chilli and rice, one had a chicken Balti and one a ham and broccoli quiche.

Compared to some previous weeks I don’t remember much conversation around the team name – having just entered the month of March we went under the collective name of ‘The Ides of Hound’ – although having subsequently looked it up to find out what it referred to the ‘Ides of March’ (or May, July or October come to that) was a festive day held on the 15th of that particular month – and thus a name somewhat better suited to deployment in two quizzes’ time. But hey-ho, we peaked too early with the name and thus the pattern was set for the evening.**

For reasons that completely escape me now (not just that I can’t remember but that, even after some considerable thought I cannot begin to fathom what I thought I was doing), I spent the evening pretty much writing out the entire quiz verbatim. I am thus is a position to relay every question that we faced, along with the correct answers and, where they differed, the gibberish we offered instead. I can only think that I was reasoning that this would lead to an interesting report. I am now of the opinion that it won’t!

Traditional first round came and went – we missed the made-up American town name (it was Camel’s Hump – not Stinking Feet or Beersville), and we said Charlie Chaplin was a.k.a ‘The King of Hollywood’. Of course, it was actually Clark Gable. We also missed Stephen King’s first novel (Carrie, not The Shining) and for the mystery actor (born 1960 in Hampshire – starred in Shakespeare in Love) we went with Joseph Fiennes and it should’ve been Colin Firth. 26 out of 30 – joint second place one behind the lead.

The musical round was good to us and we ended it joint leaders – our identification abilities spanning, amongst others, Yes, Soft Cell, Black Eyed Peas, Foreigner, The Nolan Sisters, Mica Paris, Pixie Lott, Elkie Brooks, Dame Joan Sutherland, The Pretenders, Katherine Jenkins, La Roux, Sonny & Cher, The Noisettes, Harold Faltermeyer and Tears For Fears.

The last round saw us get 4 out of 5 on films, 3 out of 5 on history, all 5 sports questions and all 5 on entertainment. On the true/false round we went, TTTFT when we should have gone TFTFF. We got 8 out of the final 10 (including the anagram; MONTAGES = ???)

All in all not bad but at least one other team somewhere had done better and we dropped to joint second*. The lead was shared and the tie-break was, ‘how many symphonies did Mozart compose?’ Why I wrote the question down when we weren’t in the tie-break I have no idea. But I then compounded the pointlessness by not writing down the answer. If anyone really wants to know then Google is your friend.

Ahh well, another attendance point towards our final (Ides of May) total, another few glasses emptied and you’ll all be pleased to know that this week I remembered to visit the little boys’ room before consigning myself to the hour long bus-trip home.

Better late than never?

* in a glass-half-empty world this could also be interpreted as joint last...

** oooops - it transpires that we actually went under the name, 'The Hounds of March', rendering most of that paragraph complete nonsense...