A Day for the Underhounds

Today’s title comes from some on-line quiz game that Graham was playing. Graham (level 10) had just beaten someone on Level 273 and was rewarded with the message “This truly is a day for the underdogs”. I saw this as a good omen.

Pre match ‘bantz’ was the usual smattering of gibberish, righteous indignation, slanderous innuendo and non-sequiturs. My personal favourite was Kevin having trouble “swiping his finger over Robson’s crack”

The only point properly covered was the venue of this year’s Maundy Thursday Hound jaunt. I won’t give away too many details here so as not to spoil the Maundy Thursday blog which, Dear Reader, should be a right rip-snorter.

On with the quiz. Quite a lively crowd were in; There were some Pointless people, some Northern monkeys some Mum’s on a night out, some ladies and quite a  few tramps and a couple of other teams whose name I didn’t catch and of course 5, non poisoned Hounds.

Round 1 was pictures of Logo’s. Pretty easy Kodak, Bic etc but we did get one wrong which we said was Switch but apparently was the wrong colour.

Round 2 was current affairs and we got ourselves in a right pickle over London’s most popular visitor attraction with Madame Tussaud ending up in a 3 way with Stone Henge and the Tower of London. We needn’t have fretted, it was the British Museum.

Kevster fretted over not remembering that Alan Partridge was the subject of an on-line petition to replace Jeremy Clarkson on Top Gear. (Back of the net)

Round 3 was ‘Irish authors’ in recognition of St Patrick’s day.  Hound caused disquiet amongst the other teams by admitting to recognising Lemuel as being the main protagonist in Swift’s Gulliver’s Travels. We also pulled Maeve Binchy out of the hat, which is no mean feat given she’s over 6 foot tall, apparently.

Connections – Pilots, got within 3 questions

10 Pointers: 2 out of 3 but we couldn’t quite dredge out the name for the bit at the end of a shoelace (clue: It’s not a shoe)

The Second half was upon us like a whirlwind. The Top 10 this week was replaced by Film characters. I think we struggled with Jack Torrance (Here’s Johnny) but otherwise did what hounds do (without having our noses rubbed in it).

The Jeopardy round was played tactically; we swerved the drink launched as ‘Brad’s Drink’ which turned out to be wise as it was Pepsi but inexplicably also swerved ‘What colour is the spirit Galliano?’ Now, anyone who knows me will also know how partial I am to a Freddy Fudpucker in the summer and I have a bottle of said liqueur in the drinks cabinet at home for the express purpose. Graham also knew it was yellow and that gallo is something like the Italian for yellow (Giallo).  Crazy stuff. Not to worry we got the remaining 8 right thanks to Steve dredging up John McCain (Don't worry we quickly buried him again)

Music round kicked off with ‘Don’t rock the boat’ and I concentrated so much on not rocking it (don’t tip the boat over) that I don’t remember much after this point.

Final scores ranged from 92 to 143 with The Hound coming out victorious, if somewhat bleary eyed and over refreshed.

An "aglet" (sometimes spelt "aiglet") is the name given to the plastic or metal tip on the end of a shoelace. Despite their simplicity, aglets perform several functions: They stop the ends of the shoelaces from unravelling; They make it easier to hold the ends of the shoelaces when lacing; They cause Hounds to drop 10 points at quizzes

Onwards and upwards

Spawny Hound

A full pack of six hounds for the first time since the old king died. Some of us keeping powder dry for the following day's Cheltenham watching, but most treating it as a warm-up.


Pre match banter included England's relegation to cricketing minnow status, Annie Power falling at the last hurdle and Carlton effing Cole.


Picture round kicked in with distorted pictures of celebs. Consensus was that we probably had too long to answer these chucking out at least one correct answer (Meat Loaf in favour of Piers Morgan, well they were distorted). Julie Goodyear and Graham Gooch also proved beyond us.


Full marks on the Current affairs, not sure if this has been achieved by Hound before, but it certainly has now.


A round on Kings requiring little historical knowledge. King Kong, Billie Jean King, Don King, Midas etc. We couldn't remember Peter Wyngarde who played 'Jason King' on TV in the early seventies, but got the rest.


We got the connections (types of bread), having first considered potatoes, paper and terms for hard-ons. Much more interesting was a tangential discussion about Ligers. How big are they! And why? At least Seven Seas of Rhye was acknowledged as Queen's first top 10 single, a fact that was once ridden roughshod over in Theo's quiz.   


Got all of the 10 pointers, although it took a bit of a Eureka! moment to realise the monsters Inc characters.


The Top 10 round is now but a distant memory. Characters from classic novels this week all of which we recognised except for Bathsheba Everdene (Far From The Madding Crowd). 20% were Dickens related questions, which I understand is the standard European minimum for any literary based quiz rounds.


The Jeopardy round had more bear traps than you could shake a stick at this week. Just as well, as different teams blew up on different questions, we got two wrong for good measure but were not forced to pay. Suffice to say that Belfast is on the River Lagan. The other wrong answer was in respect of a slightly perplexing question about Russian leaders. Our man Boris Yeltsin was the first president of the Russian federation, but apparently the question was subtly different from this. Can't even remember the answer, may have been Gorbachev. Others mixed up their boy bands or failed to name Boston as being the city with the longest standing marathon race. All of this playing into our hands.


Nothing too difficult in the music round, we got the wrong Lighthouse Family song, and couldn't remember the name of one of Holly Johnson's solo efforts.


Nobody was more surprised than us as the usual reverse order announcement of the results failed to mention us until after |"and winning the quiz this week....". 139 points,

Charity Hound - SHHiRT night

Saturday 7th March
Purley Bury Tennis Club, Purley

A colleague of several of the Hounds had invited The Hound to attend a benefit evening for a cause close to her heart and given that all it takes to arouse The Hound's interest is a cheap bar and a few questions there were three of us happy to commit and attend.  The colleague, Wendy, was made an honourable Hound for the evening and our team of four was complete.

The venue was the club-house and bar of the Purley Bury Tennis Club and it is genuinely impossible to envisage how better use could've been made of the space available - to say we were 'snug' would be a mild understatement and ventures out of one's seat to the bar and/or toilet required some planning and the goodwill of all who blocked your route.  Logistics aside a couple of rounds of drinks were safely navigated from the bar to the table, introductions were made, the evening's cause was explained* and applauded and we cracked on with the quiz...

Round 1 - pictures of celebrities - never a Hound strength, 6/10
Round 2 - Back To School - one question per school subject, maths, geography, chemistry, etc 7/10
Round 3 - Sport - tame showing from the Hound on some obscure questions, 6/10
Round 4 - Art & Literature - we hummed and hahhed about playing our Joker, decided against it and to no great surprise regretted that decision.  It will be of specific interest to regular readers that "iRobot" written by Isaac Asimov in 1950 has been read by G-Force but that he didn't like it, and I quote, "AT ALL". 9/10
Round 5 - Music - usually a collective Hound strength but we struggled with a couple - I took responsibility for naming the band who recorded the album, "Chocolate Starfish and the Hot Dog Flavoured Water", I knew it was one of those American 'skater-metal' type outfits - Blink 182, Linkin Park or Limp Bizkit - but I plumped for the wrong one**...  16/20

Half-time interval saw the precarious delivery and consumption of the evening's food - two fish and chips and two sausage, one battered, and chips and more manoeuvrings to empty bladders and start the process of refilling them.  We settled down again and the half-way scores were announced - we sat in joint second on 42, five points behind the interim leaders.

Round 6 - Film posters - we were initially full of dread, this being just about as bad as it gets for The Hound, but then began chipping away at them until we had ten answers which we were mildly happy with.  Such confidence as it was though was massively misplaced and we were right to have dreaded it. 3/10
Round 7 - Pub Quiz - we played our joker here expecting/hoping for a kind of general knowledge round - it transpired to be a round about alcohol which on the surface should've suited us but cocktails and the like aren't our normal quaff so we struggled a bit... I've failed to note our specific score but it wasn't great.
Round 8 - Movies - hopeless, that's all I've got written down, "Hopeless"
Round 9 - True or False - this round has long been the scourge of The Hound thanks to the dim and distant 'Theo', but that's another story - suffice to say we would've done better to pick either 'True' or 'False' and answer that for all the questions rather than trying to earnestly come up with the correct answer... 3/10

Thus we ended proceedings with 71 points which was good enough for 5th but a fair way off the winning total of 83.

The evening's most amusing team name was apparently, "We Killed Lucy Beale", and between the four of us it was only the evening's honourary Hound who won anything on the raffle.  None of which was the point of the evening though and it was a pleasure to have participated and, if only in a tiny way, contributed to a very worthwhile cause.



*
SHHiRT is the official Harlequin Ichthyosis Charity.
Harlequin Ichthyosis is a very rare genetic disease that causes an infant's skin to grow abnormally fast both before and after birth.  The skin thickens into armour-like plates over the baby's face and body and many sufferers don't survive beyond a few hours.

**
Limp Bizkit is the correct answer

Astounding Hound

Taking the form of a post quiz interview this week.

"Clive" - Well Robson, cracking performance from the Hound this week.

RH - Thanks, couldn't ask any more from the team this week. Felt we got it right in all departments.

C - It was important that you made a good start out there.

RH - Yes and we did that on the picture round, a posse of Welshies to celebrate St David's Day. So we had the likes of Professional Welsh people Shirley Bassey, Giggsy, Ruth Madoc etc. Only one that stumped us was a camp looking blond fella, we went Aled Jones, sometime between now and " Walking in the Air". Turned out to be Rhydian from the X Factor. Not sure if he has another name.

C - You were missing a few regulars but it didn't seem to matter?

RH - Well Steve couldn't make it and Daren was out in Cuba, seems like he's been out there months. But the lads made up for it, Kevster made some telling contributions on the TV Quiz and Game Show round and Graham's starting to make the Current Affairs role his own.

C - When did you start to think it could be your night?

RH - You always think the ten pointers are going to be crucial. We gazed at which delivery company

Adrian Dolcey
Larry Hilbroom
Robert Lenn

might have formed until the obvious hit us. Then a team effort on placing Sullom Voe in Shetland gave us the breathing space we needed.

C - What did you say to the boys at half time?

RH- Get the beers in. And make sure there's Wotsits.

C - You really came out fired up for the second half

RH - I thought the team worked really well together on the placing 10 events of the eighties in their respective years. We used the ones we knew to help place the likes of "when seat belts came in" and "the Libyan embassy siege" we had ideas on. Plus we had that little bit of luck you always need on when Wallis Simpson died.

C - Absolutely. You must have been full of confidence at that point?

RH - We were and breezed through the jeopardy. Probably the colours of stars on the Chinese flag being the only one we weren't 100% on. No dissenting voices though, we were going for it this week.

C - The Hound always enjoys the music round.

RH - Yes, and even the odd banana skins like the right Haircut 100 song and Sugar Minott weren't going to trip us up. The only one that failed us was a Musical Youth song other than "Pass The Dutchie". I didn't know there were any.

C - So 185/190. That really sends out a message.

RH - Feet on the ground, one quiz at a time. Usual managerial nonsense.

C - Any final words?

RH - Wotsits up the arse, Pick of the Pops on a Saturday and Kevster goes to Belfast. Or is it Dublin? That just about covers it.

C - The Hound, we salute you!

RH - Of course you do.

Hound Did That Happen...

Thursday 26th February 2015

Purley Arms, Croydon

Beaten unexpectedly by a point by a new team of menopausal (their words not mine) ladies called '5 Shades of Grey'.

 

Not much to report from the pre match banter, the future if it has one of Umbrella Towers was discussed, and lots of Quiz upping. British teams falling like flies in European competition.  

 

The Picture Round was made up of 10 fairly bad pictorial puns intended to suggest various drinks. Or make that 9 fairly bad pictorial puns and one truly atrocious one. A close up of someone smiling with unfeasibly good white teeth was meant to depict 'a pair of teeth' = 'aperitif'. Despite there indisputably being much more than a pair of teeth (pair was two last time I checked), somebody else got it so our alternative suggestion of R Whites never got us anywhere.  

 

Decent Current Affairs round, only failing to recognise a West End play about the early life of Carole King, and the name of some political Doris, a green party leader I think.   

 

Followed by a round of Firsts where we tailed off a bit missing 3 of the last 4.    

 

Then, the connections round which seems to be where we lost the quiz. Siobhan clearly put a lot of work into designing this round herself, but it is fair to say that the Hound just didn't get it even with a few prompters from Siobhan herself. The answers were as follows (with our wrong ones in brackets)...  

 

Dresser  

Grammar (Secondary)

Uneven (Rough)

Banana

Revive

Voodoo

Acidic (Acid)

Potato

Greyer (White)

And the connection. If you take the initial letter away from each word and put it to the end of the word and then read it backwards it gives the same word. Yes really. Fair play to 5 Shades of Grey who got all 9 but not the connection. Fair play to Siobhan for completely fooling us.  

All 3 ten pointers were picked up - Who directed Platoon & JFK/Capital of Guernsey/Italian name for Pasta quills.  

No reason to believe at half-way that we were playing catch-up or would need to be brave in the Jeopardy round.  

'Top 10' was replaced by ten link words e.g. (rubber) band (aid), (times) table (cloth) etc. We got 9 (see also below).  

We got all of the answers correct in the Jeopardy round, but perhaps bearing in mind the recent Colonel Sanders debacle, and because we didn't feel we had to get them all, we left hypno-phobia being a fear of sleep out. At least one team blew out on Tanzania being the location for Mt. Kilimanjaro (rather surprisingly I thought putting Mozambique).   

Not quite last week's full twenty marks in the Music Round but only two points short.  

The Maltesers came our way for being the first to identify that Ian Fleming wrote 'Chitty Chitty Bang Bang'.  

It's always tempting when losing by only one point to think of 'what might have been' and 'if only'. This is of course ultimately fruitless and futile and doesn't even make you feel better. However, if I had of fallen in that trap, I would more than likely have mentioned some or all of the following in addition to the Jeopardy round and 'a pair of fu**ing teeth' as Kevster wrote in huge letters on the copy that I have in font of me now;   

- How come (Sunday) Express (Delivery) is ok but (Sunday) Mail (Delivery) isn't?

- The Van Morrison/Michael Buble mix-up mystery

- Why do certain Lionel Richie songs sound so completely like other Lionel Richie songs?    

That's it. Cheltenham gets ever nearer, and Maundy Thursday can't be far off. Happy hounding.

G-Force