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