There are three kinds of falsehood...

... lies, damned lies and statistics...

(click all images to enlarge)

The overall view;

Most read posts;

Overall audience;

Audience in the last month;



... make of them what you will!

(Frankly I'm concerned by the disproportionate level of current attention from our Septic cousins over the pond.  *taps nose conspiratorially and slips into the shadows*)

(Bah) Humbug Hound

Thursday 18th December
Purley Arms

We lost.

It was terrible.

It was Christmas themed, it was terrible and The Hound was fifth out of seven with the winning score being a meagre 135.

I've lost G-Force's notes (having ripped up my own in disgust at something half way through and flung them to the floor), I can't remember very much of any use, it was terrible and we lost.

The Hound was reduced to a barely quorate three-ball with Hounds, Robson & Green away doing something festively office related that presumably wasn't terrible and didn't involve losing.

The only remotely worthwhile thing I can recall is that with astounding foresight the Green one had, earlier that very afternoon, emailed round the answer to the 'box-of-chocolates' question - this lead to us pretty much having already written it down before the question was finished and then leering at the rest of the pub as they stared at us wondering how the hell we'd added up the number of gifts in the 12 Days of Xmas so damned quickly.  Having said that I can't remember what the sweets were and I've no recollection of having any of them.

Other than that it was terrible.  And we lost.

One last 'quick one', staggering, bus, kebab (epic, natch), sofa, sleep.  Waking after a couple of hours, more kebab, bed.

Terrible.  And we lost.

Belated Hound

Some things are lost and some things are found and some things are meant to remain hidden.

These words sprang to mind when I finally had time to revisit the scribbled notes from the Quiz that took place on 20th November and tried to discern their meaning

I guess I am feeling somewhat akin to how Howard Carter and his fellow Egyptologists must have felt when trying to decipher the the hieroglyphics at Tooting Common

I have in front of me 4 sheets (well 3 3/4ers to be more accurate) of unadultarated, scribbled madness.

Sheet 1 has a large ragged chunk missing but contains the following cryptic entries,
A picture of a 3 eyed dog 
The letters F-A-B-A-C-E-A-E
 the word "Paramaribo".

Sheet 2 is just as intriguing but written in a different ink. In the centre it contains a large £1150 in a box with an arrow . Above this is written the inscription "Alfred Hitchcock's belly-button". Down the right hand side are written the following clues;
Julie's Jewish dogs, in the canteen
Robson's German Fixation
Groove coverage
Lots of Hamsters = Ched Evans
Road Signs

Sheet 3 is less obscure but just as perplexing consisting of T's, F's and X's down the right hand side and ten 4's and nine 2's down the left with an H = 164 underlined in a heavy hand

The Final sheet which may or may not hold the clue to unlocking this devious cipher contains the following:

On one side in large capitals is written the word TWINS whilst on the other is a drawing of a prostrate duck witth the numbers 9 and 10 and the word Rochester written inside it.

I can confidently recall that the Hounnd won that particular quiz and that Steve and Pete were missing, but the rest of it is unfathomable from the materials at hand. Unfortunately, over a week has passed since these events unfolded soI have no chance of dredging any more details up from the murky mists of my febrile mind so we will just have to leave it at that I'm afraid.  

Houndless Opportunities

Purley Arms
Thursday 27th November

Opportunities not taken. No Robson this week. An own goal and a missed sitter deservedly conspired to let in 'Busters' by 3 points. We managed to collectively (a) mishear 'Jane Eyre' as 'Wuthering Heights' worth 10 points, and (b) wrongly recall the German Flag to deny us 14 points in the Jeopardy round having successfully dodged 3 much harder q's. The middle stripe is NOT yellow. I was going to refer to these as schoolboy errors, but to be truthful the schoolboy in question would have to have been at least as drunk as we were.  

Not for the first time being in the Purley Arms felt like being in a parallel universe, one where hoards of females descend drinking large quantities of wine and being intimidatingly loud. It might have been this that prompted Daren to say "My dough has risen", I'm not sure, but it is a matter of record that he did say it. It later transpired that it was scouse Chris's birthday and she decided to celebrate by getting the girls together to do the PA quiz. Fair enough I guess.

It also emerged on the night that a tricky dilemma has presented itself to the Kevster, one that might involve him going on the lash with the Hound, pissing into small receptacles on the M25, not going to the cinema in Nottingham and persuading his Mum to pick him up in a drunken state from one of Surrey's many fine pubs, not necessarily in that order.

 

Scottish flavour to the picture round (it being St Andrew's day at the weekend). Full marks ensued, good get of Rhona Cameron by the Kevster, the other difficult one being correctly guessed as John Logie Baird which I think came up previously in Commonwealth Games week.

Current Affairs handled pretty well considering we all claimed to have being working too hard to look at the News, all right not ALL. Underestimated the auction price of Dooley Wilson's piano from Casablanca, and failed to get something to do with Steff McGovern's accent.

Rd. 3 was on nicknames, including the now mandatory Chelsea question (Chopper Harris), good job it wasn't Rolf Harris, might have got some colourful answers. 10 out of 10 a decent haul.

Connections was varieties of plums/damsons. Definitely a case of plumbing the depths. Had only heard of Victoria so not a lot to go on. I somewhat doubt whether the Hermann Goering variety is a best seller, especially in Germany but there you go. We went for Wagner's ring (Fnaar!).

20 points out of 30 in the next round, see also above. Top Ten was again replaced by True/False round. 16 points for this one. Not much to say about T/F questions.

The Bear traps avoided in the Jeopardy round included the number of yards in a mile, our closest guess was 1756, the answer 1760, (note to Kevster, therefore making the old 440 yds a 1/4 mile and the old hurdles race 1/16th mile). 7 lions on the Royal Standard was another, we would probably have gone lower. 

17 or 18 points on the music round but the damage already done. Debbie seemed very please that we had lost, last time we donate prize money to her causes. 

We have to be more ruthless, or not.

Graham 

Dib, dib, dib - flop, flop, flop...

Saturday 1st November 2014
The same Scout Hut as six months ago - South Croydon

Almost exactly six months since The Hound victoriously disgraced itself for charity in a Scout Hall in Croydon we were, incredulously, welcomed back for a second punt.

All in all the evening in question was considerably lower key than it's forerunner had been - and rightly, properly and thankfully so.

G-Force, Robson and I gathered briefly in the Purley Arms and left in good time to, this time, go directly to the Scout Hut - pausing only to purchase alcohol and savoury snacks from an off license en route.  We arrived in advance of kick-off and settled in to self-serve booze and fake Wotsits and Frazzles...

In a strange turn of events we were quite possibly the youngest participating team and certainly not the most inebriated - that mantle belonging to one of the only other two regular teams in attendance from the Purley Arms - specifically the one with 'what's-her-name' in it - she was proper trollied...

Anyway, Siobahn (?) eventually got her wiring sorted out and we were off and underway with the questions...

There was a round of 'Dingbats' that served just as a warm-up and not towards the final scores, a joker to play on any round as seen fit and answer sheets sufficient for the first four rounds - Art & Literature, Geography, History & Sport.

We decided against our joker on any/all of these and blundered through as best we could - which wasn't brilliant to be honest (see scoreboard below).  Half time arrived and time for Cub food - we were promised chicken & ham pie with new potatoes, vegetables and gravy - no surprise then that the queue formed rapidly and boisterously...

... see how boisterous that queue is...  The pie/spuds/veg/gravy were followed by spotted dick and custard - not for me though - my body is a temple...


Second half of the quiz was, Food & Drink, TV & Film, General Knowledge and then Music.  Can't remember any of the specifics other than we reserved our Joker for the Gen. Knowl. - the scoreboard below tells the story of our progress much better than I ever could.  We 'jokered' on the General Knowledge round but to no avail.  Salt was then rubbed in Hound wounds with a more or less complete failure to win anything on any of the billions of purchased raffle tickets - hey-ho...

Third place - a thoroughly pleasant evening and most importantly a goodly amount contributed from The Hound towards a worthy cause.  (We were collectively and effusively thanked earlier in the evening for our donation of £50 from the previous week's pub quiz winnings - which was nice.)

We congratulated the winners, supped up our literal beers, collected our metaphorical fags and headed off for our individual 'rows near Slough'.

Adi Dazzling Hound

Thursday 13th November 2014
Purley Arms

Towards the end of your average football season you'll struggle to keep count of the number of times a commentator or pundit ponders aloud as to whether the point(s) from the late snatched draw or win will prove crucial in avoiding relegation and you'll hear almost continual speculation as to whether the goal just scored/conceded could be the goal that wins/loses the Title.  All of which superficial hyperbole is generally taken with suitable amounts of pinched salt and precious little consideration - generally people realise that the equalising goal that earned the point in the third game of the season is just as significant in the season's overall outcome as the penalty save that ensured the win that avoids relegation in the season's last game.

But is it?!  Logically, yes, of course it is.  But can there ever exist circumstances in which the scoring of a specific goal, the achievement of a specific point, are such that its importance becomes of greater significance than logic alone allows?  Hmmmmm...

Towards the end of, what most who were present reported as, another generic week, The Hound gathered to be about its business with sore wounds from last week's most drawn out of sudden death defeats still being collectively nursed.  The Green One's presence was missed and Lord Peterkins was fondly recalled whilst the normal pre match routines were observed.  Regular readers will be aroused to note that pre-quiz conversation topics included;
- D2 being generally out of control on London's tube network and on the floor of a specific tube train, as he wended his sotted way home from Manchester,
- G-Force's young lad being enrolled into The Eagles group within his local Cub Pack (Eagles being deemed preferable to Wolves I think - although I might have remembered that 100% incorrectly...),
- unseemly ablutions being performed decades ago in the back garden of Windsor Davies' house...
- potential songs for inclusion on Robson Hound's latest musical project - a high-tempo, not in anyway 'camp' at all, oh-no-Siree-Bob, Spotify playlist suitable for accompanying him during sweat-soaked, lung-busting, muscle-shredding, gym work-outs...
- the arrival of The Hamsters, foes of old, and ensuing discussions based on Thailand travel
- the brief appearance, as spotted from afar, of a toxic-blue looking drink on the bar *ahem*, AND
- some esoterically fascinating discussion about word oddities - more of which later...***

And then the quiz kicked off.

Round 1 - Dingbats - becoming irritating frankly but nonetheless seen off for a ten out of ten...

Round 2 - Current Affairs - usual frothy tosh - came out of it with 7.5 out of ten which is just about par...

Round 3 - Science & Nature - massively irritating one this - 'the London structure designed as an observancy for the heavens' - at least three of us pondered whether it was the Monument but, having stood at the foot of the Monument only 72 hours earlier - reading the full inscription at its base - I confidently ventured that it was NOT the Monument.  It was.  Of course.  Nine out of ten.

Round 4 - Connection - we knew the answers to the first nine questions - Rita Ora, Gazelle, Franz Beckenbauer, Tobacco, Superstars, Stan Smith, Dragon, Pharrell Williams & Tiger - but what was the connection...?

Round 5 - the three 10 Point questions - we knew who wrote 'The Railway Children' but we didn't know the name of Dustin Hoffman's character in Tootsie OR the country in which Ted Dexter was born...*****

Round 6 - Top Ten - polite words only barely exist to express our collective frustration with this most irritating of rounds.  This week's 'topic' was "Top Ten Car Models of 2014"?!?  As per usual we wrote down more than a dozen options, argued about almost all of them, crossed out at least two that would've eventually scored us points and settled for what we hoped/assumed would be our traditional seven out of ten...  The other frustrating element of this round is the rapidity with which the correct answers are eventually disclosed - they're rattled off and none of us are ever really sure what we got right and what we didn't.  I've Googled around it and it seems like the 'definitive' ten is; Fiesta, Focus, Corsa, Golf, Astra, Qashqui, Polo, (Audi) A3, (Fiat) 500 and (BMW) 3 series.  In D2's defence he had said A3 and 3 Series and, to be similarly fair to myself, I had said Polo and 'that Nissan with the daft name that looks like a small 4x4'...  Pfffff - whatever - we got something around six out of ten.

Round 7 - Jeopardy - we knew that one wrong answer would completely do for us but we also felt that we needed the extra points available for getting them all right - as the individual questions rolled by we were increasingly confident and, rightly or wrongly, we decided to submit answers for all ten...

Round 8 - Music - 'standard' but not quite 'textbook' - lack of familiarity with the works of Sam Smith and Tommy Edwards let us down specifically - things are a bit vague by now but something like 17 out of 20...

The evening's quotient of controversy was then added to with the always strangely important 'first-correct-answer-wins' question for the bag of sweets/chocolates.  This week's was for a bag of Minstrels and the question was 'St. Helier is the capital of which country?'  Robson Hound had positioned himself advantageously for speedy submission of our answer but then we fatally dithered - St Helier is the capital of Jersey but Jersey isn't a country - PANIC - submit the answer 'Jersey' anyway and find that whilst (allegedly) correct we got it in too late...  Pffffffff...

And so to the results...

After last week's dead-heat and subsequent tie-breaker disappointment The Hound was mighty relieved to have won it by one point - we got 148, the runners-up therefore 147.

And so back to my opening theme...

Last week was lost on a tie-breaker question - or was it actually lost on an incorrect answer to a much less superficially significant, earlier, question?  And this week was won by a single point - begging the question, were any of the single points we scored more important than the others?  I still say that logically, nope, none of our answers were more important than the other but, BUT, when the only person in the ENTIRE PUB who knows that the connection to all the answers of round 4 is that they're all Adidas Trainer brands and he (D2) is on your side then, given the absolute obscurity of that knowledge gem, I have to conclude that sometimes some answers/points are more significant than others.


*** - 'word oddities'; (answers to be given in the comments section)
- what are the longest words that can be played on a musical instrument?
- what is the longest word whose letters are arranged in reverse alphabetical order?
- what is the longest word whose letters are alternating consonants and vowels?
- what is the shortest word to feature all five vowels in alphabetical order?
- what is the longest word to feature only one vowel?
- what is the only English word with four consecutive pairs of double letters?
- which two words (18 letters long) are the longest examples of anagrams of each other?!

All the answers to the above, and plenty more, can be found here;
http://www.rinkworks.com/words/oddities.shtml



***** - Dustin Hoffman's character - Dorothy and Ted Dexter was born in Italy

postscript
As ever, the traditional, EPIC, kebab was procured en route home and enjoyed immediately upon arrival...

Tie-Break Hound

So it came down to this. The Anoraks 147, The Hound 147. An impasse had been reached after two hard hours of quizzing and it would be decided by one question. The pub had been offered the choice of whether the money should be split but they wanted a tie-break. One question would decide our destiny, one question to rule them all.

Earlier in the evening such an outcome had seemed so unlikely. Daren, Kevster, Graham and myself had assembled and as usual, the weighty topics of the day were under discussion. As such, had anyone actually seen George, the Purley Arms ghost? Why does asparagus make piss smell so bad and are McBusted really the ultimate supergroup? Why, even is there a name for a surely impossible 6 under par on a golf hole (a phoenix) when the far more common, in my experience, two over is a prosaic double-bogey?

We were pondering such imponderables when in walked Pete! Maybe it would be one of those nights?

So the key question was, which was the first band to make 50 TOTP appearances?. The Stones had their supporters but were maybe too global by 1967. Taking the Purley factor into account, we plumped for Status Quo. It was in Siobhan's hands now.

The quiz itself had taken an unfamiliar start, we were initially presented with a sheet of company and organisational logos. Most were simple but we failed on a very odd thing, though we were told we'd probably get the marks anyway. How strange. Round 2, the usual current affairs, we'd done our homework and were only flummoxed by a seemingly extinct fruit found in South America. Round 3 was World War 1. I enjoyed this round and we performed well, failing only to pinpoint a monument in Belgium.

Round 4 and we'd all had a punt at the connection. Maybe lasting longest was Graham with Dickens characters but we got to the end and didn't have a darn clue. The fictional Marty McFly seemed the key but we weren't getting it. Turned out we got two wrong which didn't help at all, it was paper.

Ten pointers are where it can be won and lost and we acquitted ourselves well. Daren proffered "fear of one's self" for auto phobia and Pete confidently provided "Annie Get Your Gun" for the film featuring There's No Business Like Show Business. Always found Pete's encyclopaedic knowledge of musicals a bit odd frankly. The third was a simple question on Canadian provinces and we reached half time in good shape.

So, awaiting the answer and there was good news and bad news. The good news, it was the Quo! Bad, The Anoraks knew it as well and there would be another question, a nearest the pin. Hoping for a mathematical one, we had our wish with "how many sides has an enneadecagon"? Not so good, none of us knew it. Graham offered the only solution, 11 and we awaited our fate.

After the oranges and we were greeted with a top ten of the highest earning women in music. Now being mature quizzers we eschewed the obvious double entendres so comments like "we have to have Rihanna", "there's got to be room for Katy Perry" and "I fancy Nicole Scherzinger" were nowhere to be heard. There were different approaches to strategy though. Kevster favoured mature artists with substantial back catalogues, Madonna, Bush etc. while Graham went more for the teen options, Swift, Trainor and the like. My own preference was for the Latinos, J Lo, Shakira et al, Pete was strangely silent. It made no difference though and the usual 7 resulted.

Jeopardy and a confident start was derailed by which year premium bonds were introduced. All thoughts of going for the max were over but we still collected 8 swerving only the war including the Battle of Edge Hill. Probably English Civil and was English Civil.

Music, can't remember and we won the chocolates but I don't know how, lifts in the Empire State. It would surely take a good score to live with the Hound this week.

And so it proved, we had gone 7 rounds toe to toe with The Anoraks and the judges couldn't split us. The enneadecagon, it had 19 sides and the Anoraks had got it. The Hound had given everything but met it's match.

At this point the tiebreaker had meant we'd missed last orders so I was off.

Lilly livered liberal Hound...

Purley Arms
30th October 2014
*posted by 'me' but written by G Hound*

My cryptic note for the pre-quiz discussion simply says 'Race Debate'. I'm pretty sure this related to a race that Kevin never ran when he was a cub, but nevertheless received a badge for. That must be it, what else could it mean?

 

Best first round for some time. No pictures of reality TV favourites or kitchen implements. Instead, film anagrams. All well-known films, all gettable eventually but made us work hard.

No notes for a lacklustre current affairs round, all I remember is that we weren't asked about the tree of the year, but we were asked about a baseball match where Kansas City lost in the final.

Halloween round, fairly routine except note for future reference;

31 October - Halloween

1 November - All Saints day or All Hallows     

2 November - All Souls day.

Great shout by Steve on the Dennis Wheatley question as well.

Connections - We got there eventually, all people/bands who have their own brand of perfume/after shave. We only missed some French bloke who makes things out of car hoods. So what.

A certain amount of confusion between Mickey Mouse and the Pope led to only 20 from the ten-pointers. 

Top 10 largest cities in the USA by population. After starting with New York you only need to name any city that you know in California or Texas to do well.

Most successful Jeopardy round for some time, answered and got right 7 out of 10. We dodged ornithophobia which turned out to be a fear of the things that ornithologists study. A bear trap if ever there was one. Apparently Ingmar Bergman, Scarlet Johannsson and Niall from One Direction all are/were ornithophobes.. Also dodged and didn't have a clue about Tonto's horse (Scout) or smallest US state by population (Wyoming).

The Jeopardy round also threw up a highlight when the quizmaster had to attend a call of nature JoLu (as I am now calling her) took over and what a sexy delivery she hass. Long distance flirting ensued until normal order was regrettably restored. No offence intended to Siobhan.

Romped home in the music for a routine victory overall.

To round off, a few of my cryptic notes that I never used this week;

Aitch not Haitch

Tabloid Sh**e

Jack the Lad Swinging

Charlton

Dean Farley

Cr*p Larry's Band 

Teenage cr*p

Most of the asterisks seemed oi stem from Robson's pre-quiz snifters at the KA. None of it offensive though.

Onto Saturday night when it is hoped that a Hound quorum will attend and behave reasonably at a quiz in the Scout Hut..... 

G-Hound

Wired For Hound

Hounds present this week, Graham, Kevster, Daren and myself. Questions for the day:

1. What's going on at the Purley Arms?

There seemed to be a general change of ambience, plus a clearing out of the bar staff. Frankly some of the other lot were damn miserable so we didn't dwell too long on this one.

2. Were our actions of last week justified?

Can't quite remember our logic here but we came to a unanimous conclusion of "yes".

3. What is an arthropod? How does it differ from a gastropod? Or a cephalopod?

Daren looked to derive it from the Greek, we knew pod was foot, what we didn't know was arthron was joint. After a while we gave up and wikied it. An inverterbrate with an exoskeleton, segmented body and jointed limbs apparently. So includes insects, spiders etc.

4. Do giraffes swim?

Firstly we thought this question might be slightly moot, they're not the shortest characters and their natural habitat isn't known for being that watery. Turns out they not only swim but dive! Witness http://m.youtube.com/watch?v=nPrWo5pEvyk or just google diving giraffes.

Impressive tuck positions for such tall creatures but had to mark one down for slight over-rotation prior to entry.

The world being put to rights we welcomed old adversaries from the Jolly Farmers, The Hamsters! How would we compare without the comfort blanket of Theo's marking system. Quite a few others as well, the pub was busy tonight.

First round, dingbats. Not a personal favourite but a team effort saw us get all but one, a collection of small i's in the top left.

Next round, current affairs. The only point collectively remembered was the motorcycle in Easy Rider. It went for a lot.

Connections, we thought this was difficult at the time and in retrospect, it was. The theme was Cagney and Lacey. The only thing I remember is one of them was called Mary-Beth. I don't think that came up.

Geography and a Hound favourite, if we had a joker, we'd have played it here. The only one that really vexed us was the country with most active volcanoes? "Active" in this context can be tenuous and we went USA but the more logical answer of Indonesia prevailed.

Ten pointers, anthophobia definitely featured, we got this, fear of flowers. (I mean really, who out there is afraid of flowers? And if you were, would you own up to it?) We also got the first televised sporting event in 1931. Having circled around in a bit, it was the Derby. Didn't get the other one, maybe it was the volcanoes?

Took the predictions to the top 10 and Fifa top 10, UK banks by profit, flavours of jelly and Enid Blyton books were postulated. None of the sort, turned out to be most recognisable actors. In true Hound style we crossed out at least two right answers, failing to get even the usual 7.

The jeopardy and we correctly swerved something about miosis. We failed to swerve "fastest goal in the FA cup final", something Louis Saha didn't as it was he. Boom, second cup final jeopardy question blown.

Music and my notes are getting really scratchy here, I've got "Nev", "Bazza" and "Christopher Cross (Jump Jump)".

For the chocolate question I've got "The Color Purple" but that might have been my jumper.

No reprieve this time, Robbie Di Matteo was wrong and we knew it; everyone knew it. Imagine then our amazement when a jeopardy-less 114 was enough to win! Go Hound!. With slightly less reason for sheepishness this week we hung around a bit longer. Cash pot up. Somewhere along the way there was a badger.

Lucky, lucky, LUCKY Hound...

- apologies all round for my late posting of this -

Thursday 16th October 2014
Purley Arms

Sometimes when a team is struggling for form and results it'll take anything it can get and grasp it as a totem of changed 'luck' - a football team will readily take a penalty wrongly awarded that enable them to scramble a one nil win - an out of form batsman will happily stay put in his crease knowing he's nicked an edge but not been given and then greedily go on to maximise that fortune with a match-winning, and season changing, knock.

And so it was that the miserably out of form Hound were gifted one small answer in last week's quiz that had a disproportionate impact - but first the background...

We were gathered as a team of five Hounds - without a win in over a month and frankly quizzing like a team of stumbling newly born puppies as opposed to the trained, sleek, *ahem* winning Hounds we had become used to being.  We warmed up in the usual manner - certainly if there was to be a change in our performance and result this week it wasn't going to come as a consequence of us changing our routines...

We despatched a strangely easy opening picture round for a full ten points (famous buildings and/or landmarks - Alcatraz, Sydney Opera House, Mount Rushmore, etc) but had to settle for seven out of ten in the current affairs (not knowing the $ price per barrel that oil had fallen to, the name of the then incoming hurricane and the name of a film banned at the Cannes film festival).

Round 3 was Food & Drink - another solid but unspectacular set of answers - two wrong (apparently it's grape skins that give the purple colouration used in meat stamps and the name of a paella cooking pan is, somewhat disappointingly, a paella...).

Predictions across the team as to what the connection would be in the traditional fourth round were; Dad's Army (Robin), Belgium (Graham), Parts of a castle (Daren), Steven Spielberg films (Steve) and Walkers Crisps flavours (my bad self).  Thankfully no points are actually at stake for this daft predictions as, somewhat unsurprisingly we got nowhere close - the actual connection was 'record labels' which we successfully identified along with all nine of the clues.

And so we rounded out the first half of the quiz with two of the ten pointers correct - we didn't know the name of Linda Blair's character in The Exorcist (Regan).

The general feeling over the half-time refreshment was that we, again, hadn't covered ourselves in glory in the first half and needed something BIG in the second half to secure the much desired win - and so to the pivotal Jeopardy round...

The questions passed quickly and we were increasingly confident in our answers - so we bit the bullet and went with all ten of our first answers, knowing that just one of them being wrong would ruin us for another week - and sure enough, we got one wrong...  In answer to the question, 'Which Shakespeare play featured the line, 'A horse, a horse my kingdom for a horse...'?' we had supplied the answer Henry V - it is actually, of course Richard III.  Hey-ho...  Another week another loss.

The Top Ten round was Supermarkets - we got our traditional 'most of them but not all of them'.  And we got a couple of artists and one song title wrong across the musical round.

And so to the marking - we didn't come last, or second last - in fact we didn't feature at all as the list of entered teams was read out.  Until the end.  Right at the end.  '... and winning the quiz this week with a score of 166 - the only team to get all ten of the Jeopardy round right - it's The Hound...'

Cue some very embarrassed looks at our totally undeserved fortune and some very rapid and sheepish drinking up and departing with 50 totally undeserved £s clutched tightly in sweating palms.

Did we deserve it?  Nope.
Did we own up?  Nope.
Did we hang around debating the morals of the situation?  Nope.
Are we all going to hell?  Tune in next week to find out...

Go fourth Hound and multiply

(DN: I asked for suggestions last night as to the style that I should write this week’s TQSR in and the answers I received were: a Poem, Sports Journal in the Style of Alan Partridge, a Rap and a Foreign Office Travel warning – Obviously this is no easy task on a Friday morning with a hang over but here goes……)

It was an Autumnal Thursday night in Purley

And 5 hounds gathered for the quiz, quite early

Robson, Kevster, Daren and Steve Green

Graham too but ‘Pig’ & Pete were not to be seen

So onto the picture round, this as always is round one

10 photos of Kitchen Implements which promised much fun;

I wandered lonely as an egg whisk

If you can keep your Fish slice when all about you are losing theirs and blaming you

How do I love thee? Let me count the melon ballers.

In Xanadu did Kubla Khan a stately Garlic Press decree

Come friendly colanders and fall on Slough

And so on…………

On to Round 2, this was current affairs

There were lots of people sitting on chairs

9 out of 10 is the score we got

But Clacton on Sea had Graham quite hot

*****************************************************************

You join me now in the helicopter as we look down on these Quiz Teams, who look like cattle in a mad way—but cattle doing a quiz.

The next round is Science and Nature – Surely a chance for Robson to flex his intellectual organ and leave it out there for all to see.

Dry Ice – textbook

Lactose – back of the net

Fetlock – kiss my face

Twat! That was liquid quizzing

Round 4 is connections

The atmosphere here hangs heavy, like a big smell. The smell of men together. The smell of cats' musk.

All 10 answered correctly including the connection which was; all items mentioned in ‘We Didn’t start the Fire’, Billy Joel’s ode to Pyromaniacs.

Eat my answers! The quiz mistress has got Hound pie all over her shirt

10 pointers?  2 out of 3, Like a rabid, raging, nuclear hound on heat, who’s gone to a quiz and done quite well, at half time.

As I sit through the round they call the top ten
I take a look at my answer sheet and realize we’ve 7 again
'Coz I've been answerin' and laughin' so long, that
Even my team thinks that my mind is gone

But I ain't never crossed an answer that didn't deserve it
Me be treated like a Hound you know that's unheard of
You better watch how you're talkin', and where you're walkin'
and answer what the Top 10 Spielberg films be by grossin’

Jeopardy

May I have your attention please?
I'm not afraid (I'm not afraid)
of writers cramp (of writers cramp)
Everybody (everybody)
Come take my Penalty (come take my Penalty)
We'll walk through Purley Arms together, through the storm
Whatever weather, cold or warm

His Korean war was sweaty, legs rough, toilets are smelly
There's food on his table already, Mr Benn's wotsits
He's nervous, but on the surface he looks calm and ready to get writers cramp,
But he keeps on forgetting what he wrote down,

And I am, the Merchant of Venice
If I wasn't, then why would I say I am?
In the paper, the news everyday I am
Radio won't even play my jam
'Cause I am, the Merchant of Venice
If I wasn't, then why would I say I am?
In the paper, the news everyday I am
I don't know it's just the way I am

So lets go back
Follow the  Pope’s plane as we go on another quiz
Journey with me as I take you through Purley Arms
I once used to call home sweet home

Well, gotta go, I'm almost at Trinidad now

And when I'm gone, its just writers cramp, don't mourn
Rejoice every time you hear the sound of my sweaty Korean war
Just know that I'm looking down on you and drink
And I didn't feel a thing, So baby don't feel no pain
Just talk rubbish

*********************************************************************

Music

Over 9 Hit records were played twice. Most tracks and artists were identified trouble-free, but incidents of uncertainty (sometimes violent) were witnessed. The FCO is aware of an error on at least 2 questions involving a certain Mr Barry White and a song containing advice to ‘Runaway’.  British nationals on 2^nd October 2014 were advised to do their best and have a guess where they weren’t sure, however The Foreign and Commonwealth Office (FCO) advise against all but correct answers.

At approximately 22:27 GMT The Hound were
advised of a score 18/20. A number of media outlets were taken off air and some internet sites were blocked.

Despite an apparently high number of well considered answers the Hound were deemed to have scored a relatively paltry 125 points placing them 4th in the table when compared against other teams.It’s illegal to criticise the Quiz Mistress and you should be wary of questioning the scoring in public.

You should monitor this Blog, local news and social media for developments.

The One With The Hound

This week and it was the pleasure and privilege of the Hound to wecome special guest Ashleigh - Kevster's daughter into the team. This caused a certain amount of puzzlement and consternation amongst the other regulars, I think most of them thought we'd kidnapped her, but it certainly added diversity to our number. Music post around 1995 and celebrity fluff would hold no fears this week.

Pre quiz fun largely consisted of crisp/Wotsit challenges between the two Sullivans; Ashleigh's bag opening and savoury snack presentation were superior but her use of the empty packet let her down badly and frankly wasn't of the standard required at this level. Other quizzers were Graham, Daren and myself.

Onto the main event and we kicked off with pictures. Generally these were toothsome actors/actresses and barring ER fella (Noah Wyle) and big-haired 80s type (Kathleen Turner) we got them but what was the connection? Turns out they'd all guest starred in Friends. In retrospect, odd we didn't get that but celebrating the 20th anniversary this would be a Friends themed quiz. This got me thinking, six in the show, six in the core Hound collective. So in no particular order and in the theme of those irksome "which Friend are you?" type quizzes that pop up we have:

Robson - Ross

Pete - Phoebe

Graham - Joey

Kevster - Rachel

Steve - Chandler

Daren - Monica

Just try not to imagine any of the couplings that have taken place over the years.

Next up, current affairs, haven't made any notes here, then the actual Friends round. Now given this show started before Ashleigh was even a twinkle in Rachel's eye you wouldn't expect this to be her strong suit but as we generally looked blankly at each other, she proceeded to hit it out the park. The names of Graham's chair, my monkey, Pete's alter ego and Kevster's daughter were all reeled off, the only gap being she only knew one of Daren's children. Trust she gave herself a stern talking to.

Connections, the only note I have here is "Barry from Eastenders", so fill in the blanks yourselves folks.

10 pointers, yikes, we didn't cover ourselves in glory here. What does an arctophile collect? We had competing answers from Joey and Monica of Teddy Bears and dolls respectively. Dolls won out but only as our answer, it was teddy bears. What do all the playing card queens hold? I'll take the rap for this one, having spent more time than most looking at them. The best I could offer was sceptre (spades only). We went with mirror but it turned out to be flowers.

Top 10 was EU countries by population. An ideal opportunity for the usual 7 and so it proved, with much debate around Holland, Turkey and Austria along the way.

Sometime around now, Monica's pint was spilled. Ross may have been responsible, hard to tell.

Onto the jeopardy and a few short pitched ones outside off stump warmed us up until along came "In which country was Demis Roussos born?". This was plainly a wolf in wolf's clothing and we naturally sidestepped it (the right answer was Egypt). Maybe slightly off our guard then followed the capital of Brazil prior to 1960 odd, i.e. Brasilia I'm paraphrasing here. Joey supplied Sao Paolo which was accepted without a murmur but Kaboom! It was Rio so nul points there.

Music and thankfully it was mainly pre 1995, it usually is, but with jeopardy blown and ten pointers mangled, our chances were not high. Weirdly we still managed second, without Emma G-G's contribution we would have been way out with the washing. Joey gave the Gellers a lift back to Purley and Rachel and Emma went for a kebab in Sutton. Happy days!

(As it turns out - Not at all...) Straightforward Hound...

Thursday 11th September 2014
Purley Arms

With D2 away on holiday the four gathered hounds were delighted to have their number swollen to five with Lord Peterkins of Fatherhood making a welcome and gorgeous appearance just before kick off. Thereafter though the evening's sport was relatively straightforward, bordering on perfunctory...

The picture round - just bog-standard celebs in black and white photos - Sara Cox, Ronnie Ancona, Ross Kemp, Dave Gorman, Richard E Grant - you get the idea... 8/10

Round 2 - History - 7/10 - we got wrong the year in which women over 21 were given the vote (1928), the year construction started on the Berlin Wall (October '61) and something about South America where I distinctly remember saying 'INCA?' but everyone ignored me and we got it wrong but guess what the answer was...

Round 3 - Connections - one round earlier than usual I think (isn't it usually the fourth round?) - we got all nine AND the connection so for those that weren't there see if you can connect these answers; Brian, The Spanish Inquisition, Holy Grail, John Parrot, Albatross, Nudge, Liberty Bell, Spam & lumberjacks...

Round 4 - Food & Drink - 7/10 again (I think) - we got wrong; something about rotten Chinese eggs (?!?), the meaning of the term 'liaison' in cooking (something to do with sauce thickening) and something to do with a 'Green Fairy' cocktail...?!?

Bonus ten pointers - 2/3 - mistakenly thought that Billie Jean King had the most Grand Slam (tennis) titles - it's actually Margaret Court...

Round 6 - TV catchphrases/programmes - 10/10 - all far, FAR, too easy

Round 7 - Jeopardy - 6/10 - played this quite well - swerved four questions and rightly so as it turned out - a couple that tempted us (the four blood groups? - how many universities make up The Ivy League?) we maybe knew but weren't 100% so hedged bets... Special shout to Robson for knowing that the footballer named in the Only Fools And Horses theme tune is Trevor Francis.

Round 8 - music - 18/20 - all very straightforward - think we missed out on a 'Miracle of Joey Ramone' by U2, and that was it.

Second place scored 134 - the Hound pulled a smooooooth 145.*

(* In actuality, and only after an eloquent pointing out, from G-Force, of my utterly inexplicable brainstorm, it was the Hound who came second on 134 and thereby lost by 11 points - although apparently we took some small consolation in winning the sweets for the second week running...)

Nothing else to say other than my notes have 'Daren out - Pig in' written in very large letters on the only, otherwise, blank page - any ideas anyone?!

K

Hounds Of Lust

Thursday 4th September 2014
Purley Arms

4 hounds gathered (packed?) from the off, more about our late arrivee later. Good to see Daren back and raring to go.

Ten pictures of book covers for Rd 1. 10 out of 10 scored with only The Mousetrap (which had a picture of a mousetrap on it)  and The Hobbit (which had a picture of a hobbit on it) stretching us much. 

A question about the elfin Kate Bush in the Current Affairs round led to the conjuring up of an enduring image of the bewitching songstress cavorting on a stage in Hammersmith clad only in white lycra some 25 years ago. Enough said. We then signally failed to know how much the first Range Rover might or might not sell for at some future date, A bit remiss of us in our divination skills. Get of the day went to Kev who knew that Bungay Town were offering punnets of mushrooms to anyone attending their next home fixture. Tangential to the questions was the surprising revelation that Tony Blair collects stamps and an unexpected picture of  a tank and a Harrier jump jet on the 18th fairway at Celtic Manor. I haven't mentioned Q1 which was something to do with Boris Johnson as Kev seemed to be the only person on the team who even understood the question. 

Near full marks on Rd 3. TV/Films, letting ourselves down on the age old conundrum of whether Indiana Jones was a teacher who dabbled in archaeology, or an archaeologist who taught in his spare time.

It's fair to say that we were slow on the uptake in the connections round, the penny finally dropping in Q7 somewhat fortuitously due to a feeble Jackie/Bobby Charlton jibe only made to pass the time. All of the other correct answers had famous siblings too. I personally own up to 2 wrong answers in this round. Not sure how I managed to name the wrong Laudrup brother ( a touch of irony, might have got the connection sooner if I had realised), and also not sure how anybody took my word for it on a film question. The slightest demurring of my Jessica Lange suggestion and I'm sure that I would have said that I actually meant Shirley McLaine (Oscar for Terms of Endearment, and sister of Warren Beatty).  

3 ten pointers successfully negotiated, with the hound himself arriving just in time to fetch Ethan Hunt's surname out of the ether where Steve was chasing it down to no avail.

Top Ten round was replaced by film quotes. We could have done better missing out on 3, dismissing the correct answer by a large majority in the case of Fatal Attraction. It seems that the Glenn Close character was a nascent puppy boiler as well as rabbits. Most obscure quote came from the Marathon Man, the bit where Dirk Bogarde (I think) finds himself in the dentist's chair, a singularly less pleasant experience than that portrayed at Wembley in 1996 by Gazza, Sheringham et al. Further proof if it was needed was also given to the fact that there is little funnier than grown up (are we middle aged?) men quoting classic python (or other cult comedy) lines. 

Didn't need to stick our necks out in the Jeopardy round and didn't do so crossing out 2 perfectly correct answers to be sure. The one we genuinely didn't know only appears in my scribbled notes as "W", answers on a postcard to the usual address. 

Completely missed Toni Braxton and got the wrong Carpenters song on our way to 17 out of 20 in the music round, despite the usual technical hitches that go hand in hand with this becoming rather tired round.

A win then by a margin considerably vaster than that by which MK Dons beat Man Utd. All that was left was a routine domestic double gained by answering a question that boiled down to calculating (n/2) x (n+1) x 4, where n =  10. Simples.

No open top bus rides to celebrate this one then, but for some of the participants on to Fontwell Sunday.....

Graham 

Thousand Pound Hound

Right, bit late arriving at the pub, delayed by that pesky thing called work. Still, when I got there Tottenham were thrashing some unpronounceable team on the telly and Steve was about to tuck into his third pint so all was well. Or so I thought, turned out Daren was detained in hospital for a follow up to his recent procedure. Wasn't sure of all the details but he muttered something about "Tuesday night" and "trauma". Didn't catch the rest but I assume all is well.

The counter bonus was we were joined by Pete who's been enjoying a week off. Mainly spent going to Littlehampton (don't bother it's sh!t) and tackling some of Chipstead's toughest climbs walking (I can vouch for those). Graham made up the foursome and was quickly into his stride with a map of Africa to dissect for the picture round. The only things that foxed him was the apparent remerger of Ethiopia and Eritrea (bucking recent trends) and which country Lake Victoria was. Incidental to the questions in hand and we were confidently away with 10.

Onto current affairs and missing our resident expert we were worried about our lack of prep but collectively delivered with answers like $3.2m and Sherlock, price of a Superman comic and winner of some Emmys respectively. The next round was "Brothers" and Graham continued to see it like a football with a stupendous answer about Terry Scott, maybe it's the Purley connection. Other fine answers on the brothers Dassler, Ferrari and Brenninkmeijer (my favourite) were also supplied though I made it 1-0 on the prediction stakes with Kemp.

Connections followed and with the first answer of Will Carling, "blokes who've shagged Princess Diana" was virtually written in. Actually, looking at all the answers, maybe Siobhan missed that connection as most are plausible (James Blunt, Keith Floyd, Colonel Gaddafi etc?) Turns out though they've all been in the army or more precisely, as Graham again picked out, trained at Sandhurst. 10 pointers, I haven't written those down but we bagged them, largest landlocked country and catching a crab ring bells.

Half time was reached with confidence until being deflated by the top 10 of "girls names in 2013" - Siobhan admitted later it was a bit of an easy option. Well we've had this before but frankly, who cares? Naturally we turned to Pete with the most recent knowledge and the usual Amy, Amelia, Emily, Jessica etc were reeled out. Don't know how many we got, probably the usual 7 or so.

Jeopardy and we made a fine start with answers on the colour of Dennis the Menace's jumper, author of Canterbury Tales and contents of Pandora's box. The banana skins duly arrived though with actress who played Private Benjamin on TV and occupation of a velologogist (Lorna Patterson and collectors of tax discs apparently, who'd have thought it?) We played it safe from there.

Music and I think we got 19/20 failing only to discern the Lighthouse Family track (they all sound the same, they're all shite and I've already forgotten what it was and what we put). Rantette over, the last task for the chocolates to date the Dartford Bridge, a nice meal, a few drinks, that sort of thing. Tsk, you know, well we failed anyway plumping for 1985, think it was actually 1991.

It seemed like a long wait until the results so a few quotes from the night to fill the time, "sausage in batter with chips", "Kevster in Africa" and "If Daren were here, he'd be trying". Yes, he often is. Did we win? I suspect you already know that.

The Three MuskaHounds (no Dogtanian)

Thursday 21st August 2014 (Posted on behalf of the Green Hound) 2 Hounds (Daren and Steve) lead the charge by arriving at the Purley Arms at the alloted hour of 7pm. A number of conversations involving football, Grand Prix and holidays ensued, only interrupted by the quiz master arriving. Due to unforeseen (sadly) circumstances the usual quiz master team was deputised to a local and not unfamiliar, team who had stepped in before to run the quiz. Glasses raised to the last minute stand in. Approaching 8:30pm, Robson arrived to finalise the trio for tonight's Hound representation, following his earlier cricket endeavours.

So to the quiz: First round, as usual, the picture round. A set of Lord of the Rings characters was thrust under our noses, it took a little chiveying of the quiz masters to determine whether character or actor was required. Needless to say given the breadth of film and Tv knowledge within the team it mattered not. Actors it was and a clean sweep ensued. Round 2: Current affairs The "news" questions as has been the case recently was like football transfer news on deadline day through Harry Redknapp's car window. That is to say it was nothing any person who reads the broadsheets cares to have heard of. That said I think we did OK with a bizarre question regarding Post-Its correctly answered. Round 3: IHGAC (request what this means) A well answered round with questions on Who took an arrow in the eye in 1066, who lead elephants across the alps and Guinevere's lover. Only fail was which SP did Walter Hunt invent in 1847. Safety pin being the answer!? So on to the connections round (round 4) A bizarre round this with our connection being determined after Q2. 1st question - What is the stone representing 55 years of married bliss (Good luck) - Emerald 2nd question - Which detective TV series featured Kate Jackson and Bruce Boxleitner as the main protagonists (Note: the quiz masters probably dont even know that word but let's not be elitist). Answers on a postcard please. We got it right but why should we help you?

Obviously, we derived the connection being the Wizard of Oz, but failed to answer the pirate born in Wales. Dialogue around this threw out Blackbeard (Edward Teach from Bristol) but it was Henry Morgan. 10 pointers What does Regis mean. After some discussion and insistence by Daren that it meant King we put Royal. It was King. My notes are shite for Q2 but we got that. Q3 Who sang Ebeneezer Good which was obv. the Shamen. 2 from 3 then and very ambivalent considering the previous hat-trick of wins it went to the break. Following a number of interval drinks and, even referring to my notes, this is where I will start to be brief. Round 5: Top 10 boys names Again an annoyingly arbitrary round where it depends on when the survery was taken. Did ok with 7 or 8 I fail to remember, James and Charles were in there somewhere. Round 6: Jeopardy Although we dropped 10 in the 10 pointers, decided to play only those we were confident on. Answered 7 comfortably. One for Az, where do the words "Kiosk", "Tulip" and "Caviar" originate. Round 7/8: Music A reasonable show, with 85% answered, no real WTF tunes so just down to misguided answering, Result: Hound finished 3rd by 1 pt with 127 pts from 2nd with 128 pts. 1st were worthy winners with 139 pts. Gloves are off next time as, it would have been bad form to win 4 on the trot, but that sequence has now been broken.

Westward Ho! und

Round one was right up  Steve's street, being a collection of pictures featuring the movies of Streep and Roberts. Unfortunately Steve wasn't there so we muddled through as best as we could getting 8/10

The Current Affairs round was the usual eclectic mix ranging from Halfords new blazing hot Chopper for £250 to someone  taking 25 years to build a replica of the Titanic's dining room. I sometimes look at what I've just written and wonder if I'm making it all up. 6/10

The Geography round was just too easy 10/10

The connections round would have been right up Graham's street featuring answers such as Jackson pollock, Abraham Lincoln, Marco Pierre White, John Denver, Marshall Montgomery and Otto Van Bismark. Unfortunately Graham wasn't there so we had to find the connection on our own which was/is U.S. State capitals. 10/10

The big 10 pointers were who played Ma Larkin and what is Sting's  Christian name.. The one that caught us out was what county is Westward Ho! in? We plumped incorrectly for Dorset. 20/30

The top 10 question should have been right up our collective streets being: name the top 10 premier league scorers. Unfortunately we spent so much time arguing about Ian Wright not being on the list (he's actually number 16 having scored quite a few of his before the premier league started) that  we managed to miss off both Rooney and RVP. Got the rest though for a par score of 8/10

Wipeout round was safely navigated with us avoiding 1 question and getting the remainder correct. 9/10

Music was pretty much there or thereabouts and I made it that we got about 16/20

It was pleasing to come home 4 points ahead of the nearest challengers and with £950 in the kitty  this did lead to some conjecture as to how Steve has been funding his recent holidays.

The evening ended on a deep discussion as to whether Man truly is an Island  -we failed to answer this satisfactorily 0/1

Peter Hound

Straight in this week with subjects ncluding:

Kim Jong Il - No discussion of this fella is complete without mention of his golf prowess which included a low round of 33 on his golfing debut, even better than I've made as Natalie Gulbis on the Wii.

Pigs on the battlefield - a more disturbing one this, with one of the questions being whether the pigs were turned out there or collectively found their own ways. This prompted strange Animal Farm images to me of pigs, dressed in overcoats boarding trains, "return to the Somme please", copies of the Times clutched in trotters sitting peacefully before gorging themselves on human flesh. Really?

Hound Acca - we all had a punt at the big five tournaments this football season with potential returns varying from a paltry £7,000 for myself to a net-busting £45,000 for Graham. Kevster took the bets, hopefully if one of us wins he'll tell us but if he shows up at a quiz next May in a load of new clobber, I'm going to be suspicious.

Monty at -1 - nothing much to add other than well played Monty.

Not discussed included the escalation of violence in Gaza, outbreaks of Ebola and the refugee crisis in Northern Iraq. No GFC here.

The world having suitably been put to rights we entered the pub and flexed our cerebral muscles ready for the quiz. Unfortunately the regular quizmistress Siobhan was still away so the sub, I'll call him Tony, handed out the sheets. Sometime around that time, we witnessed a sight slightly rarer than a unicorn being pulled off by a mermaid, Pete showed up! Regular readers may wonder who this character is, and I don't think Daren was entirely sure, but good to have him back. Tony was similarly perplexed and scuttled off to rewrite the quiz.

The quiz, right. Round 1 - superheroes. I didn't even look at this, they all look the same to me anyway. Think Steve got them on his own.

Round 2 - current affairs. This seemed a random collection of obscure stories dragged out of low grade newspapers and websites. We did terribly, didn't really mind.

Round 3 - red or blue. The answers, or questions were red, or blue, or shades of either. Most were red.

Round 4 - connections. It was the England 66 team. Not a difficult connection but a decent round from Tony I thought.

10 pointers - can't remember any of them.

Half time and we took stock, or more accurately Wotsits.

The top 10 was the longest running shows since the war in London. Now taking in a show would hold as much appeal to me as a bout of diarrhoea but we had "King Of Musicals" in our ranks! As such a potentially tough round was comfortably dispatched.

The jeopardy round was too tough to contemplate going for, the music round was fun though. We pretty much smashed it out the park.

Result, Hound win. Possibly a slightly under strength field we were up against but you have to take it. Holiday season coming up for the Hound so could be a barren spell.

Hounds Reunited

Thursday 31st July
Purley Arms

For the first time in what felt like too long all regular Hounds were back on the leash and straining together in more or less the same direction...

And it paid off with a win.

The regular question-mistress was away on holiday - her stand-in provided a decent but subtly different quiz - once again we failed to identify a 'blog Hound' early doors and somehow I ended up with it again and had to pinch someone else's notes to make any sense of it...

Keeping it brief;
- picture round was sitcoms and presented no problems
- the 'current affairs' round was replaced with 'food & drink' questions, which we monstered
- the next round was on collective nouns for animals - slightly random, as were our answers - same for everybody though and we fumbled through with four out of ten
- we monstered the connections round, getting the correct connection early (all were Saints) and getting eight of the nine actual answers as well as the connection
- two out of three on the ten pointers, missing out on the fact that one's 'oxter' is your armpit...

Half-time came and went and then;
- the top ten was highest earning male actors - we fannied around with umpteen names and ended up getting four out ten
- we monstered the jeopardy round - I say 'monstered', the fact is we didn't have a clue on several of them but we chose the right ones to dodge and those that we answered we got right
- and when I say we monstered the music round, we really did - ten on ten...

All that for a total of 148.  We've had higher recently and lost but this was sufficient to get us comfortably home and add more funds to the Hound's coffer(s).

Woof.

Lost and Hound

My second TQSR blog, and I am acutely aware of my schoolboy error the first time around. I never came up with a catchy title, preferably with some Hound based pun. No danger of that this time and the above tells the story, the Hound returned and we lost. Indeed, it seems inevitable that somebody soon will make a connection between his presence and our collective fortunes. The worrying trend hasn't been bucked since as far back as records began. (see * below). It can only be a matter of time, I wonder who will broach it first? For the record it would have been 'Hounding at the Moon' the first time around, you probably won't recall that we lost that week due to failing to distinguish a Harvest from a Hunters Moon (memo to self, blog after a win next time).

 

We began full of optimism, despite a creeping uncertainty about our scribes failure to turn up, based on certain symptoms described last week . It has to be said though that when news filtered through that it was due to what is usually called a heart event these days spirits were more than dampened. I won't say any more here because I still don't know much detail, but best wishes are sent to Daren from all Hounds and other well wishers from the opposing teams. .   . 

Brief synopsis of questions/answers as follows;

- Picture Round: Only Doris Rooney missed (Wayne's wife). 

- Current Affairs: A poor knowledge of pop celebrity litigation let us down (Adele got thousands because someone photographed her baby, and Duran Duran are suing their own American fan club for approx. $2.34). We were 4 out on the Indian boy's 'teeth' 228 v 232, and also managed to miss hilarious incidents involving a US bank robber who wore a t-shirt with his own name on and a swiss teenager whose kentucky chicken burger already had a bite taken out of it when he unwrapped it.These latter two provoked unpleasant memories of Theo's True/False round, a slow week for news indeed.

- Commonwealth Games: Inspired guesswork almost landed us full marks, but we changed number of host countries from 9 to 10 at the last minute on the grounds that we had probably missed one. We hadn't. 

- Connections Round: the answers all included 2 letter words that can be seen on the periodic table. Robin got it on Q3/4, some other teams never managed it all. We missed a Kevin Costner spy film, but managed to come up with a guess that included 2 elements, worth a point surely.  

- 3 x Ten Pointers: All good. Pipistrelle/bat, Slowhand/Eric Clapton, something to do with South Africa I think.

- Top Ten: Making an unwelcome return. The 10 countries with most Commonwealth Gold Medals over the years would you believe. Didn't really pay attention to the answers, but I expect that we got 7 anyway.

- Jeopardy Round: It has just taken me 90 seconds and 4 tries to spell Jaeorperdy correctly. Erred on the side of the caution this week only answering 6, with only 1 not 100% certain (Frisbee = toy first called Pluto Platter when invented in 1958). We swerved C-wealth Games Men's 100m record holder (Ben Johnson 9.88s), Who hit Achilles heel with an arrow (can't remember but not anyone that we considered), a question where the answer was 'Doctor's Orders', and what gift is traditionally given for a 20th wedding anniversary (China). Me and Mrs O reach 16 next week, which I believe is Watermelon.

- Music Round: 20 out of 20, I'm disappointed you even ask.  

We weren't that close, Johnny & The Moondogs got 8 in the jeopardy and one would assume more Current Affairs than us.

It took me a while to remember why my crib sheet had 'Psyche - Goodbye Horses' written in Kev's fair hand on it, but having checked it out I have to say that the 'Immortality Mix' is my favourite. For my part can I recommend a ska tune called Swing It Easy by the Soul Vendors, Johnny Vaughan uses it for background on his Talk Sport show and it's got right in my head. Dub version is pretty good too.   

*(I began recording this phenomonen three weeks ago). 

posted by kevster on behalf of G-Hound

 

 

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

Cerberus

Blessed this week from a report writing viewpoint, Graham was off on hols in Malta so I picked up the role of question writer, a role I think akin to the bloke who sits to the right of the captain in University Challenge. Kevster played the part of the geeky fella who sits on his left, the one who they generally only ask when it's an astrophysics question and the rest of the team don't actually know his name, "nominate er, him". Daren played scribe and from that you'll gather no Steve, he was nursing cycling injuries having left around 40% of his skin on a road in Reigate. Anyway, blessed because as a consequence I have notes of questions etc. so none of the usual waffle.

So only three but numbers were generally down in the pub, someone mentioned the gap since last payday, don't people know there are companies who'll provide short term loans at very reasonable rates? If only I could remember what they're called. Pre match chit chat was on the gloomy side, mainly about dead women so absolutely no help for the current affairs round.

This week we expanded the popular game "guess the connection" to the rather similar, "guess the pictures" with predictions of "castles and stately homes", "footballers" and "Dereks". Well it proved to be London buildings and landmarks (another bleedin' London round) so I guess Dereks was closest.

On to current affairs and the most interesting question being about which politician would only trust a Muslim to do his shopping (see later 1). Next round, islands with the question that vexed us the most, well vexed Daren, Kevster and myself didn't have a clue, being the name of the inn in Treasure Island.

Connections and with predictions of TV detectives", "the World Cup" (someone isn't trying hard enough here) and "types of tomato" try these first five answers - King, Fiddler on the roof , Blue, Velvet and Oliver Stone? Clue, "types of tomato" was nearest. 10 pointers and some tricky ones, what sport is the Nino Bibbia cup played for and when was the Oscars first televised?

Top 10 was replaced by film tag lines which proved to be enjoyable. Steve would probably have known them all but we had fun trying to work them out. The most fun was with "The last man on earth is not alone". I had Will Smith and a German Shepherd (dog that is) from somewhere so you'd think the hard work was done but our collective memory failed us. Onto wipeout and we knew some half-assed answer like "the Vatican" wouldn't cut in on where popes are elected so we swerved that, Snow White in Latin and the first boxer to win world belts at 5 weights we just didn't know. Music and it reads like a story, Wouldn't it be nice, I can't help falling in love, Need you now, Viva la vida, Will you still love me tomorrow, Embarrassment. We knew most, Kevster agonised over something with Love in it.

The chocolates (Maltesers) round hung on when Walt Disney was born, quite pleased we didn't know that. All in all though it was a quiz where we left it all in the field as it were (not a pretty sight) and were rewarded with a barnstorming win. No reports of post match kebabs but Kevster was coming off a bout of gastroenteritis so maybe discretion prevailed.

Answers
Peter Robinson - Northern Ireland secretary or the like
Admiral Benbow
Crabs
Skeleton bob????
1953 - we got that!
I Am Legend
Sistine chapel
Nivia
Sugar Ray Leonard
1901 - he's younger than you think

"Epic kebab" and a "bacon sarnie in the morning"

Dramatis Personae

Steve -a hound
Kevster - another Hound
Robson - a blonde hound (looking very pleased with himself)
Graham - a hound going on holiday to Malta
Daren - hound and scribe

Preface

An oik at the bar was nearly late for the quiz as he was unable to procure some Yorkshire puddings.

Act 1 Scene 1
Pictures- there were people in them, Bernie Taupin masquerading as David Furnish if you can believe it. There might even have been a sighting of Lord Lucan but he's an elusive cove so we'll probably never know.

Dear,dear Larry.

There was then a round on current affairs, but by the time you read this, they will no longer be either "current" or  strictly speaking "affairs" so I shall move on.

Interval

Act 2 Scene 4
My notes suggest that there was some Moby Dick and a bit of Fanny Bryce in the next round but I suspect Kevster has been scrawling  his inner thoughts whilst I was in the toilet..

The connections round was  Blue Peter animals (don't be so blue Peter). We said tv animals and we didn't mean transvestite, but there's an idea for a future quiz.

Cars- Toyota, BMW, vw, Nissan, ford etc. Good job we weren't Reliant on Robin for this round!

Act  5
If music be the food of love we got most of it. M.O.T.W.Y.W.

The rest of the quiz is just incidental so we may as well get to the denouement now. We came second, largely due to mixing up Tootsie with Kramer versus Kramer. And so the curtain fell on  the final act.

Epilogue
A light rain falls and shadows chase themselves towards the gathering dusk. Against a tumbledown wall a hunched figure in a raincoat lurks. A Hound!

The Hound does Wembley, Wenger, wandering, woggles, Wotsits, wazzocks, wine, women, winning and warbling...

Saturday 17th May
South Croydon

Merely 42 hours after having been asked to leave, The Hound was back in the Purley Arms - bright-eyed, bushy-tailed and in no way whatsoever prepared for the events that were to follow.  D2 and the Green Hound had made their apologies earlier and Lord Peterkins of Fatherhood was fondly remembered and muchly missed.  But three Hounds is enough to form a quorum and thus Robson, G-Force and liddle ol' me were quorus quorate quorsome ready for action.

Initially it was all about the recovering from the shock of Arsenal being two down to Hull inside the first ten minutes of the FA Cup Final - but recover we damn well did and as the ever wily and wiry Wenger tinkered with his tactics to eventually overhaul their early deficit, so we blew away any lingering cobwebs with a pint or three in the somewhat busier than we're used to pub.

With extra-time a fading memory, and Wenger's Arsenal career saved for another 400 years, The Hound left the pub and set off on the 300 metre walk to our next destination - Bynes Road and the HQ of the 6th Croydon Scout Group.  We had been advised to go via an offy so as to equip ourselves with booze for the quiz but this required detour can in no way explain why we walked three quarters of a mile towards Croydon before turning around and, via the gift of GPS, heading back exactly the way we'd come.  So long did we spend wandering that by the time we finally arrived we had entirely missed the pre-amble and the whole of the first round of questions.

No matter - our hosts were endlessly accommodating and, having slunk down the entire length of the scout hut to occupy the spare table furthest from the door The Hound blended quietly into the background, cracked open the Wotsits and got on with the business of playing catch up.  However once G-Force was thoroughly woggled up and halfway through the bottle of wine he'd brought along to entertain himself, our quiet background blending was interrupted as he bellowed a sexual swear-word at the question master during round four.  Hey-ho, no real harm done and, to be fair, the question master was an absolute, 100%, prime-cut wazzock of a man.

The end of round four marked the halfway point in the quiz (kind of...) and was the cue for a thoroughly disconcerting series of events...  Firstly The Wazzock joined us up close and personal and ran us through the ten questions we'd missed in the first round whilst wandering around Croydon.  Simultaneously a small army of incredibly elderly women appeared more or less from thin air fully armed with large trays of sausage meat pie, pots of vegetables, potatoes and jugs of the thickest gravy I have ever encountered.  With The Wazzock having departed, our table naturally then became the option of choice for the crones to gather and eat their fill.  Heaven alone knows what they made of The Hound as Robson and I did our best to remain aloof whilst G-Force kept bellowing sexual swear words at regular intervals.  Seconds of the main course were followed by trifle, more aloofness, more bellowing, a few apologies and being laid siege to by a small army of raffle-ticket and 'lucky-box' sellers.

Rounds five through eight were ab.so.lute.ly right up The Hound's alley - we got three wrong out of 40 and successfully played our Joker on our ten out of ten General Knowledge final round.  I say 'final round' quite wrongly because The Wazzock then dropped in a twenty question musical round.  Which we got 95% right.  From memory.  Because by this stage almost all the offy-sourced alcohol had been consumed and the edges of everything had gone a bit fuzzy.  Thus it was huge bonus that we had a winning raffle ticket that enabled us to choose a bottle of red wine to crack into whilst The Wazzock tallied the final scores.

So we won.  Natch.  Glossing over the margin of victory The Hound sat and bathed in bottles of red prizes whilst all manner of volunteer types tidied up all around us.  Eventually we had to give up our table and were thus forced to abruptly end our sojourn into Scoutland and head south back to the welcoming Arms of Purley.  Wherein we found karaoke in the fullest of full swings and, plomping ourselves front and centre, were serenaded by Elvis Presley, Belinda Carlisle, some dodgy looking old-boy who could actually croon and two Dorises who absolutely plumbed new depths.

G-Force and I were cruelly plucked from this cosy scene by the heartless strictures of the 407 timetable.  I hope he had more luck catching his than I did as I stood there, arm outstretched, whilst the bus driver chatted away on his phone and drove straight past me.  I eventually got home around 0130hrs - for all I know Robson is still clutched in the Arms...