betwHOUNDeener

.... it's raining cats and dogs as I step off a 412 in Central Croydon. Might have been a good idea to check before boarding the bus, as it turns out that Daren and Robson are comfortably ensconced in the Foxley Hatch. A quick phone call and a rendezvous at the Oval Tavern is agreed.

After trudging through the ever increasing puddles, I uphold my part of the bargain by finding a table before the other two arrive by taxi. A particularly small table with no accompanying seatage,but a table nevertheless. The pub is surprisingly full of both diners and quizzers. A kind couple close by offer a spare stool, and two fold up chairs more suitable for outdoors are eventually found. Just in time for the start of the quiz, a table of diners gets up to leave and we are in there like Flint (remember him?).  




Played by James Coburn, but never really rivalled Bond in the popularity or longevity stakes.

Our only previous experience of this quiz was very positive, and despite the lack of birthday celebrating lovelies this proved to be the case again. They get through the questions quickly for a start, leaving plenty of time for chat and general carousing.

Round 1 didn't tax anyone much, general knowledge with the ten answers starting with the respective letters of "Oval Tavern". We avoided the Henry VIII bear trap and scored a full house.

Round 2 is sport and the first hint of controversy. We went for Jochen Rindt as the first german to win the F1 championship (and btw the first to win it posthumously), but turns out he was born in Germany but represented Austria. Everybody else just put Schumacher, and they got it right according to the answer given. 9 out of 10 still a great return, including two ice hockey questions and to my approval 3 Scottish ones.

Round3 was guess/name the Year with 3 choices each time. Hound has excelled at ths kind of thing in the past, and it was once more thus, 9 out of 10. We fell down on the year that included the banning of CFCs by the EU/the freeing of the Guildford 4 and certain films released (can't recall which ones). We put 1990 but it was 1992. I think we all know which CFC I wold like to ban, 

The mid-quiz break was taken up by Round 4: 20 dingbats to solve for a point each (see also blog title). Turned out that the second page was much harder than the first which made me look good for a moment that soon passed. The worst one that we didn't get was

ROSE
DAFFODIL
TULIP
DAISY

which was merely a bunch of flowers, doesn't work for me, no suggestion of 'a bunch' anywhere.

The one that we almost got and quite a good one was..

BUV-1LL which was abominable (a bomb in a bull). We couldn't get past V-1 being a rocket.

Hardest one was BOY (right facing arrow) YOB which is apparently 'Altar Boy'.

There were two other q's where our answers were 'good but not right' making 15 out of 20.

.... ok time for a picture of a festive pig...

Round 5 was a wipeout round (aka jeopardy round in Hound parlance) with a cats/dogs theme. We left out 4 answers, at least two of which we would have got wrong. We didn't know that a puggle is a cross between a beagle and a pug, but there was a dog lover somewhere in the house.

Round 6: Song intros, we got 7 out of 10 (14 points) which I think was pretty good, annoyed personally at missing The Ramones - 'I wanna be sedated', but there you go. A grand total of 63 points for Hound (papers switched with another team to mark, again saves time).

The reading of the results in reverse order was as suspenseful as it has ever been. Starting in 13th place with 39 points. There were actually 15 teams as those level on points were given equal billing, without adjusting the places.  4th place - 59 points, 3rd place - 62 points and realisation that it was second place for us. The winners.... the kindly couple who had earlier offered me their spare stool (that now sounds bad), they nailed the cats/dogs round earning the extra 10 points to give then 73. in other words we would have won if there had just been 1 q in that round that they didn't know. But they knew them all - so well done them. Most teams had 6 or so players, so quite amusing that a pair and a trio took up the first two places.

Plenty of time then remained for various virtual parlour games, with both Robson and I now tableted up.  This include a crushing victory against the Eggheads where all 5 hounds made the final before crushing Judith Keppel, oh what might have been! A few more drinks and booted out at 11.30 on the dot.

Definitely one for the occasional future trip, though if we were to make it our regular quiz funds in hand might suffer. Here's to Hound in 2016. For info see our full answer sheet below, the 15 points are the separate dingbats.

G-Force