Towering Infernal Hound

A slightly odd one this week. Having arrived first at the pub I was ostracised for the first twenty minutes or so. Hopefully this was because the usual Hound table was occupied, thankfully at around 8pm it was freed up and normal service resumed. The same could not be said of the table behind us, The Lady and the Tramp and The Anoraks arrived at around the same time and an almighty fight broke out. Missing Debbie though, TLATT were disadvantaged and skulked off to a dark corner.

Onto the quiz then, missing Kevster, carousing with brother, and Daren, dead from the waist down (an improvement on last time frankly), we were a tight threesome. Pictures were sports personalities:

We got all those, question answering being stronger than photography.

Round 2 - current affairs. Despite two of us having as much time and we'd like to keep abreast of things we didn't know an RAF uniform would cause offense in hospital, Hugh Jackman fancies George Clooney, Jaywick is a sh**hole and the Palestinian flag was just raised over the UN building ( 0 for 2 on flag questions.)

However what the heck we did know about was numbers or rather numerical answers. Actually, not quite true, the psalm number of "Lord is my Shepherd", wives of Charlie Chaplin, number of "gentle breeze" on Beaufort scale and Clinton's auguration year also escaped us (see below). We more than made up for it though by demonstrating the cube root of 8 is not a single number and has 3 solutions, albeit 2 of them imaginary.

Connections and no excuses from the individual questions as we bagged them all. We completely failed to string them into types of "ant", the absence of "army" as an answer eliminating any hope I had.

10 pointers and we wrestled with the film Heaven 17 had taken their name from. An answer was dashed in, along with Eugene Cernan and Harrison Schmitt's claim to fame and the Margaret Mitchell novel.

Steve played the D2 role at halftime and established there was no clear water and Jeopardy would have to played on its merits. First would be the "P" round ( yes, Graham did say it). Other than a baffling mix up between North Korean and Cambodian capitals, we arrived relatively unscathed, maybe one day we'll arrive scathed?.

Seven answers were more or less 100% (coughs), leaving us with the birthplace of Stollen, location of the largest malt whisky distillery in the world and components of bronze. We surveyed the room, we had plausible answers for all 3 but none were 100%. What to do?

Solution - defer the decision and let the music play, which was one of the song titles we didn't get, along with some One Direction thing. Graham though was ready for Bruno, shame it didn't come up this week.

Right, answers of Germany, Japan, copper and tin and a pathetic effort at the steps on the Leaning Tower of Pisa were handed in and the Hound crossed its paws.

Rather what we actually did was google those answers we weren't sure of and the afore mentioned 3 were all correct! Being cautious sorts though, we checked others, yes, John Lowe was Stoneface, yes Monet did paint the Water Lilies, no, Paul Newman wasn't the fire chief in the Towering Inferno.

Disaster and we awaited the results with dread. Apparently 4 teams had bagged the Jeopardy so at least our decision to go for it was right. The scores climbed, 145, 147 but no Hound? 153, 158, still no Hound, what was going on? Then Siobhan announced, winners on 166, Hound!

This couldn't be right. We looked at each other, we couldn't be having this and asked Siobhan to check our jeopardy round. Quick recalculation, winners on 158, The Busters! Blushes spared and collective sighs. The Busters generously bought Graham and myself a pint each and we talked the evening events over. Until next time.

Appendices

24, 4, 3 and 1993

A Clockwork Orange, the last men to walk on the moon and Gone With The Wind

Possible trips to Wimbledon dogs, 7th November and 5th December. Check diaries and report back.

Vast quantities of sloes near Warlingham RFC. Unless our vast readership gets there first.