Christmas Hound

Now regular readers of the blog may see the Hound as an unstoppable quizzing juggernaut steamrollering all in its path, rarely getting a question wrong. Well, by way of a counter view some of the wrong answers this week included:

- Mistaking various types of nut for types of jellyfish
- Entering Bruce Forsyth as an answer, the correct one being the King of Thailand
- Mistaking a picture of Mother Teresa for Lenny Henry

How did all this happen? Were the questions tougher, or us more pissed? Let's rewind.

I was bit late, Southern Rail had claimed Steve as a victim but I wasn't going to miss the last quiz of the year. Already in situ, Kevster, Daren and Graham were discussing the fiendishly difficult GCHQ Christmas quiz, what do they get up to down in Cheltenham?

Additionally Leeds were at Wolves on the telly and already 1-0 down.

First up and to make it more difficult all the faces were dressed as Santa with rather full white beards and Christmassy hats. Other than the aforementioned, we nearly mistook Cheggers for Bill Clinton, and we did mistake Donny Osmond for Ben Whishaw, probably not for the last time. Equaliser for Leeds!

We did ok on the current affairs and I think even question-spotted a couple. Next up was a brain teaser round featuring logical type questions. We actually spent more time debating the phrasing of the answers than actually arriving at them, I give you:

"Why can't you take a picture of a man with a wooden leg in British Columbia"?

Now "you can't take a picture with a wooden leg" restates the question rather than the concise "you need a camera"

Wolves 1 Leeds 3!

Connections and the randomness pointed us towards birthdays and with Graham having one, we'd be shot for not getting Christmas birthdays, multiple Brit award winner Annie Lennox sealing it.

Ten pointers were bagged, Patty and Selma being Marge's sisters, Sunderland not playing in claret and blue and various cocktails being non alcoholic. Half time assessment, the ten pointers nudging us in front but the Santas not helping.

Next up, now I don't know if Siobhan had backsolved this but how appropriate that the letter themed round would be Z for the last quiz of the year. Notes get a bit shaky here, zoology, zirconium, Zucchini and Zambia may or may not have been answers.

Final score, Wolves 2 Leeds 3!

Then we came to the meat of things with the jeopardy. Box was jellyfish, clout was jellyfish, or was it cloud? We went with it anyway. Where was Eric Liddell born? It looked like a banana skin, it smelt like a banana skin. We went Scotland anyway.

The way the results came out we would have had to nail the jeopardy to win, I.e. put down all our right answers and none of the wrong ones, something we've struggled with recently. Hey ho. Not sure we answered the original question, just call it a bad day at the office, something there's been fewer of recently.

So there we have it. Another year's quizzing. Or is it? Stop press, The Oval on the 30th for red wine, Xmas jumpers and a chance to exercise the brain one more time, like I won't spend much of Xmas day playing quiz up anyway.

The Strange Case of Hound and the Mammoth Jugs

Mr. Robson Holmes, who was usually very late in the evenings, save upon those not infrequent occasions when he was up all night, was seated at the usual table. I stood at the bar and picked up my pint which  was engraved with the date "1664." It was just such a pint as the old-fashioned family practitioner used to carry -- dignified, solid, and reassuring. 

"Well, Daren, what do you make of it?" 

Holmes was sitting with his back to me, and I had given him no sign of my occupation. 

"How did you know what I was doing? I believe you have eyes in the back of your head." 

"I have, at least, a well-polished, silver-plated Samsung Tablet in front of me," said he. "But, tell me, Daren, what do you make of this week’s picture quiz? Since we have been so unfortunate as to be landed with ‘Visual puns’ and have no notion of the answer to most of them. This fiendish opening round becomes of importance. Let me hear you answer by an examination of it." 

"I think," said I, following as far as I could the methods of my companion, "that number 7 is a is a pair of tea cups with mammoth’s heads and tusks for handles”. 

"Good!" said Holmes. "Excellent!" And so begun ‘the Strange Case of Hound and the Mammoth Jugs’.

Back in the real world, Kevster, G-Force, Steve, Robson and I pored over the 12 ‘Visual Pun’ pictures with some consternation. Most of them were so blurred that it was difficult to discern anything visual let alone decipher the punnerry

Pre quiz agenda items had consisted of the troublesome trysts of Kevster and the venue and format of this year’s Hound Xmas do. Robson, revealing his wild side, also offered to hold his house warming party on a Tuesday morning at 11.00. 

The visual puns troubled us for most of the first half of the quiz, especially the elephantine mugs and we finally settled on Tea Trunk as being marginally better than no answer at all. When the actual answer of ‘Mammoth Jugs’ was given, Kevster was apoplectic and audibly deflated all at the same time.

The rest of the first half of the quiz followed the usual format – Current affairs, History and then Connections. The connection caused a few more problems than usual: What links Ham, gate, jersey, port. Graham got that one by question 5 which is a bit slow for us.

Unfortunately the 10 pointers got the better of us – the origins of Masala Wine and the tube line Tuffnell Park is on proving elusive.

Having undertaken some market research during the half time interval it was obvious that some of the other teams had got the 10 pointers so this meant we would have to go for the full ten on the jeopardy round, always a risky strategy but Hound is as Hound does.

This week’s round 5 was brought to us by the letter Y. Fairly easy given there are only 14 words in the English dictionary that start with the letter Y as far as I’m aware and Yo Yo is 2 of them. Yogi Bear and Yootha Joyce made welcome appearances here.

And so into the valley of jeopardy rode the 5 (half a point and half a point more)

Unfortunately the designer of the VW and the club that Bruce Grobelaar scored for were to be our downfall (Porsche and Crewe Alexander)

And so the music became incidental. Fortunately we didn’t recognise the squealing f**kpig that is Justin Beaver but I imagine that we got most of the others.

Come the scores and our 10 pointer and Jeopordy failures cost us dear, finishing 2^nd last (oh the shame) although only 16 points off of first,so one of the 10 pointers and not answering Hitler and Southampton in the jeopardy round would have given us victory. All if’s, buts and maybe’s I know.

And so dear reader, this is where we leave The Hound for another week but look out for the next instalment – coming soon