5 in Five - Chapter Five - Let Sleeping Hounds Lie...

Thursday 12th February 2015
The Purley Arms, Croydon
(written by Steve and posted on his behalf)

As a preamble to the main event, having had a long and arduous week of quizzing the majority of the Hound were, to use a word “jaded”, 60% of us had been in for the 5 day long haul with D2 and myself only managing 3 of 5 due to other commitments.

We all assembled at the usual Thursday night haunt of the Purley Arms with an enthusiasm that can only be described as functional. However the usual pre-match libations perked most, if not all, into game mode.

Round 1

Rather than the usual picture round it was a Dingbats type round, of which 9 out of the possible 12 were dispatched with ease. Two more were added with lateral thinking from both G-Force and Daren. Down to the last, which pictured a bull, and the words “Rip Van Winkle”. After numerous shouts of Bull ….. (write your own answer) and an almost conceding Bull Sh#t!, Daren piped up with Bulldozer, RVW being a very tired man!

Round aced and onto..

Round 2 – British Isles

An eclectic mix of longest river, longest motorway, railway station in Bristol and various Island based questions, the only stumper was the prison upon which the Old Bailey is now sited. Various shouts of “I know it’s not right but Highgate”, “Aldgate” led us to the path of Newgate. Again, another clean sweep of points.

Round 3 – Valentines

Oh valentines, what a week to choose to do a 5 in 5. If we collectively hear another question with the word love in it, it will be too soon.

Various love based questions, which to be fair, were far more diverse than the previous offerings this week. The only one which didn’t have full support from the team was the question: who wrote the poem with the line “My love is like a red, red rose” Daren touted Robert Burns and was overruled by majority rule to Shakespeare. Of course he was correct and 9 out of 10 in that round.

Round 4 – Connections

This round started with the name of the world’s highest waterfall, which is Angel Falls. The Hound as usual tried to pre-empt the connection after one and various answers including footballers ensued. Second question was who wrote Trainspotting, being Irvine Welsh (I knew I was right with the spelling of his first name!) the penny started to drop. Confirmation was achieved with the third question which was the alternative name of the flying fox (fruit bat) which affirmed our belief that they were all cakes. Dundee, Sponge(bob) Squarepants, Marble just added fuel to our own personal fire. The only answer missed was the Northumbrian dish layered with chees potatoes and onion which, apparently is a Pan Haggerty!? 9 out of 10 again then.

3 pointers

The questions were: What vehicle made it’s first channel crossing in 1959, the largest castle in Britain, and who played Philo Beddoe in two films.

The first was easy enough, however debate ensued around the castle whilst I slipped into archive mode for the third.

Caernarvon was put with Windsor being the right answer and my caveat of a very famous actor but the best I have is Robert De Niro, was incorrect as I’m sure Clyde the orang-utan would vouch as not his co-star.

So 20 points dropped with half the quiz to play, which maybe started to make some of the Hound twitchy.

A half time conversation as to why Koreans etc shouldn’t farm and eat cats and dogs ensued which pulled in the Japanese and their predilection of hunted most sea born fish / mammals. We swiftly moved round to thoughts of the week and the over-riding memory was Monday and Duncan. Oh Duncan! His north Norfolk radio style self-promoting pre-recorded messages and his effing desk bell will live long in the memory.

Round 6 – Who’s backing group

A fairly abstract 10 questions to which Graham had all the answers. A couple even predicted in advance by the remaining Hounds. 10 out of 10

Round 7 – Jeopardy

And now to the contentious round;

The first 9 questions were answered with 100% surety and Daren even remarked that “I’d forgotten it was the jeopardy round” so sure were we of all the answers. And then came the final bombshell question: The first name of Colonel Sanders.

Not having the foggiest, Daren and myself were keen to swerve this one and hopefully take the 18 points from the answers we had put on which we were confident. Perhaps blasé after a war of attrition with various quizmasters and the feeling that we had to play catch up given the 20 points dropped earlier, our views were overruled and Franklyn was put. In my own mind on count-back, I thought we could survive with just the 18 but as we always do, majority rules.

Sure enough we got 9 but Harland David Sanders can go do one!

Round 8 and the music round.

Traditionally and as far as I can pretty much remember, the Hound normally get 85% from this round, however again we nailed every answer.

The chocolate question? I haven’t the foggiest as I was seeing a man about a dog! Ladies and the Tramp were victorious though.

So to the scores, the winning score was 153, we scored 148 and were third. On revisiting we only actually got 5 questions wrong in the whole quiz, but the winning or losing is around the relative position tipping point.

The week's prize money from all quizzes, £9 from Sunday and £19.50 from Tuesday, was donated to the local Scouts.  Sorry we couldn't have treble that pot.  Like Rip Van Winkel I think that the collective Hound will be sleeping for a very lengthy period.