The Talented Mr. Hound

You want the blog?
You want the blog huh?
You can't handle the blog.

We played a flat back four consisting of Robson, myself and Mr Steve Green.
Graham was suffering the effects of female emancipation, Pete was practising with a West End chorus line and Kevster was oiled up and writhing in a pile of DBA clearances. (Author's note: all of the above is TRUE, apart from the bits I made up)

Anyway, back to the quiz. Round 1 was the photos, this time Snooker players.
Robson potted the first nine with no problem but then found himself kissing the pink and staring at the brown on number 10. I still don't know who it was.


Current affairs was the usual nonsense of; which Council is passing legislation allowing a 4 year old to be transgender at school.

Round 3 was 'Lahndan'.
Colour of the Bakerloo line  = Brahn
Oldest Professional football team in Lahndan = Fullem
District named after a medieval hunting  cry = Soho ( not Tooting as we thought)

Connections round was split into 2 lots of 4: Baker, Butcher, Plumber(sic) Goldsmith. .... Cohen, Moore, Peters, Wilson.  Not too difficult I'm sure you'll agree.

Bonus questions were tricksy, I just remembered in time the mulberry bush being the favourite food of silkworms but we fell down on the obverse question. Lepidopterist was dispatched with ease.

There then followed the round where the last letter gives the first letter of the next question. The only interesting thing here was Pristina giving us the Baltimore Oriels

Jeopardy and Robson declared our strategy to be "balls deep or nothing". This approach saw Steve pull out Dan Dare being the enemy of the Mekon but we then threw it away with the question about midnight toast tossing (Rocky Horror apparently - quite glad we didn't know that). Colin Farrell was in Boyzone as well, not Westlife.

The final scores came in true Theo style as 120, 122, 124 with the Hound tumescent with glory.

There then followed a strange taxi drive home. Innocently,  upon entering the taxi I assumed our driver to be of French Colonial descent so greeted him with a friendly "comment allez vous?" This seemed to be taken as some sort of voodoo hex. After dropping Steve and Robson at Purley station I asked him to take me to Cliff End and this was greeted as if I'd asked him to come round and slaughter some chickens. After lots of nervous laughter and sideways glances he finally dropped me home at which point he got out of the car and kissed the road. Very strange.

Two Hounds Are Better than One

One more Hound than last week, but lack of numbers (namely those who drink numbers) does put us up against it from the start. Can't be helped, and important to keep the Hound flag flying in the meantime.



Some early upsets. Liverpool are 2-0 down in just 9 minutes. Robson arrives with a stomach upset and can only manage blackcurrant & soda all night. My first pint of Guinness was also upset, prompting a wag in overalls at the next table to comment that he had never seen anyone quite so clumsy one moment only to react like lightning in order to save his precious I-pad from a dousing, Plenty of collateral damage though. 

Dingbats instead of pictures against this week. Set 4 at the following link, first 10 only. We only missed number 1;

 http://www.quizmasters.biz/DB/Pic/Dingbats/Dingbats.html

5 out of 10 for the current affairs, probably par for the course in the circumstances. To be fair they were mainly proper news items this week, about politicians, airlines, paintings and the like. Oh, and some Welsh Doris was prevented by the courts from calling her newly born twins Preacher and Cyanide.

Entertainment round not too taxing. Kicked myself for not remembering that 'Yes we can!' featured in Bob The Builder. Bear trap caught us out, Nicole Kidman was born in USA (Honolulu), not Australia.

Double connections round, 5 questions each. We got bags (Gladstone, Clutch, Shoulder, Carrier) but not airports (Konrad Adeneur, Louis Armstrong, John Lennon, Charles de Gaulle). We made the question with the answer clutch seem way harder than it actually was.

One film/musical each in the ten pointers, A Few Good Men (Robson) and Paint Your Wagon (me). A good educated guess got Mecca for the third question. Still in the running at half way, with the knowledge that the Anoraks missed one ten pointer.

    

Chain letters round more difficult than usual this week and we missed 3 in the row in the middle due partly to the 'knock-on' effect. Should have been Eiffel toweR, RavenS and StinG, we put Empire State BuildinG, GuardS and S---G. Back on track after that. If anyone is even remotely interested in how the two characters pictured above  featured in the same question, then just ask. Footnote for Robson, shrapnel was in fact correct!

Onto Jeopardy. Pamplona, Countdown, Winnie-the-Pooh, Bird flu, Greece, JR Hartley, Ministry of Sound, Jamboree, Stephen (Morrissey) and Paul Gascoigne, all very gettable. Except nobody else did get them all, the Anoraks for instance crashed and burned on the record label founded in Elephant & Castle. Our full house was good enough to win £50 with no real scares (apart from bird flu).

  
 

Only 15 out of 20 on the music. I dragged out Jimmy Cliff from almost nowhere but wrong song. Taylor Swift - Blank Space anyone? We went for Alanis Morrisette. No wiser abut Zara Larsson - Lush Life.

Exit Robson before even the scores are totted up, his sick bed beckoning. A 9 point gap to the Busters with the Anoraks 21 points further back. Kevster's favourite Anorak seemed peeved that they could have won had they got A Few Good men and Ministry of Sound correct. But they didn't, and simply leaving MoS question blank would still have seen us 2 points ahead.

Enjoyed last Tuesday at Daren's. Look forward to the next gathering of Hounds.

G-Force

Solitary Hound

Here's the dingbats. Who's going to give me 12? Won BTW.

Donald Trump Hound

Given pre quiz activities comprised a wander around Knole Park and an afternoon watching 20-20 cricket, it won't take much working out that it was Graham and myself at the quiz. Our first for two weeks after the Maundy shenanigans, absentees this week included long term rivals The Anoraks and also Siobhan, for whom "King" Louis would deputise. Diet Coke sales spiked though at the Purley Arms as Johnny and the Moondogs took their places.

Ok, first up:

Got that wrong, Kate and heir to Kate. Here we go:

Usual thing, say what you see. We didn't see 4 and 5 so 8/10.

Louis isn't bound by convention so advertising slogans would take the place of the usual current affairs. Good to have the change but a strong suit for neither of us. 6/10.

Food and drink next up. More like home turf though we failed to know a flagon contained two pints that that Germans drink more beer per capita than Czechs. The quizmasters word was final. 8/10.

Back on track with connections for Round 4. About half way in we settled on glasses/drinking vessels being the theme but failed to know who publishes the online English dictionary. 9/10.

Ten pointers, now I think we did well here so in their entirety:

- Ship named after a Scottish short undergarment
- Where would you most often read "standing on the shoulders of giants"
- What does HB stand for in the pencil world?

Back in the game. 3/3

The devastation wreaked on Chipstead by Storm Katie. Stopped me going to the races on Monday which was irksome.

Again, by way of another curve ball, Round 5 would be TV. Crazee. Trying to make up for lost time here (working, that sort of thing) but not easy to get it back. 6/10.

Onto Jeopardy and it would be a case of getting what we could. Some quiz favourites here, busiest single runway airport in world, only playing card King without a tache and the old inverted triangle. We steered a steady course 6/10.

Music would be all 70s. The team of youngsters looked ready to get their coats at this point. Louis did offer to sing them himself at which point we might have got our coats. Played it like Jason Roy against New Zealand. 20/20.

Scores, well we knew we'd be up against it but a decent 156 had us close third to JATM 162 and LATT 160. Old story, one more body and we'd have been there. Them's the breaks. Those 10 pointers:

- Cutty Sark
- £2 coin
- Hard Black

Somehow the photos have come out a bit odd. Hey ho.