Harwich Hound

Kicking off with some of the wrong answers this week:

Hound Correct

6 weeks - 20 years
Taylor Swift. The London Gay Men's Choir.
Vibrators - Las Vegas Casinos
Suffolk. Essex

Some more plausible than others to be fair.

Daren, Graham and myself formed the team. The atmosphere had been heavy and humid all day, a portent of things to come? I arrived by Ghost Train (not showing on departure boards but turned up anyway). The first quiz challenge to greet us was this:

The caption says it all, usual 7 I think.

On to world events. Now, apparently an elephant has been wandering around Zimbabwe for six weeks with a bullet in its head. We didn't think this newsworthy enough, hence the answer above. All the pub agreed that the elephant would know.

Take That are also to be rejoined by Robbie for the 25th anniversary tour. Graham asked whether they were back for good? Honestly, they just keep on coming.

Also "Bridge Over Troubled Water" is to be remade as an Orlando bombing charity single. Which publicity hungry celebrity would that be then? Or so we thought.

Next up "Flying". A diverse round with Flying in the question or answer. The name of Astaire and Rogers first film vexed us the longest,

Then came connections, answers like Paris, Luxor, New York New York could only mean one thing, in Graham's view, we actually went for the less controversial answer of fragrances. Equally wrong.

Thanks to Daren knowing the colour of Custard was pink, ten pointers were despatched. The Link Ups round just held us up while we confirmed Eric Cantona was the first overseas captain to lift the FA Cup and it was on to jeopardy.

Where was Pope Francis born? Countries of birth are fraught with danger but we were confident enough with Argentina.

Aussie who retired in 2007 with around 560 wickets, clearly pointing to Warne but we picked out McGrath.

In which county is Harwich? Again, alarm bells were raised but a member of the team was 100% on this one. Weirdly, for a while we were right, the question was written as A but Siobhan read out the wrong port. A hurried remark later and it had cost us. Hound second.

In other news, corn tortillas are apparently great, it's sunny out there and all hell is breaking loose in the markets this morning. One of those "Where were you?" days.

Let Sleeping Hounds Lie

 A marathon effort started around midday. All converging on the cavernous Robson Towers. D most definitely had a head start, but all became convivial quite quickly anyway. Buckfast tonic wine, and one of D's fierce chillis really got the party going. Which is more than England did, almost total domination of the match, 0-1 at half time. Joe Hart's pre match posturing in the tunnel suddenly looked less clever. Mention should be made at this stage of the rather impressive 55 inch screen nano-pixellated tv, one of 3 big ones lying about R's pad. K's Ascot treble barely got out of the traps, Robson still in line for a small fortune should England level the thing by the end of the match.

Hodgson made himself marginally more popular by replacing the woeful Sterling at half-time. England then duly levelled the thing in the 56th min. The rest is history, Robson hung on to his bet amidst conflicting advice from those present, eschewing even the chance to cash in for almost the whole sum immediately before Sturridge took matters into his own hands.

 Anyway, it's only money and he won't starve. Time for a victory dance or two, with a roaring (mainly) eighties soundtrack that continued well into the second game. Great performance in that one by the Northern Irish rousing my own gaelic passion more than I expected that it would.

Inevitably, the remainder of the day is a bit more hazy, more so for some than others I would say. D and K made their excuses, G, S & R headed to the Purley Arms for a bit of quizzing. R by now starting to become slightly unpredictable, managed to remember his house keys but not his wallet. Barely managed to change his slippers for some more appropriate footwear. 

Lulling us in to a false sense of security, the first round was pictures of famous footballers, meat and drink. By the time we got to current affairs, R was in a lights on but nobody home scenario. Safe to say that the other two of us knew b**ger all in this round. Followed by a perfunctory 1980's round, I think that a now fast asleep R may have woken long enough to offer Neil Kinnock in response to one question, otherwise we are now a duo for the remainder of the quiz. Connections round was people who have less than the usual number of 5 digits on at least one hand. Included were, Matthew Perry, Jerry Garcia, Christian Bale, Telly Savalas, Buster Keaton, Frodo Baggins and James Doohan, but not Dave Allen.

Think I lost it a bit at this stage. For ten points we couldn't even remember the name of the captain of  England's rugby world cup winning team of 2003. I think that we did name about half of the squad, and Steve dredged up Martin, but Johnson wouldn't come (intentional double entendre). To little avail I resorted to slapping R's face with a wet haddock, knowing that the answer was in there somewhere. I am also sorry to say that an innocent enquiry from the Anoraks as to our performance vis-a-vis the ten pointers met with a less than polite response from me.

No choice but to go for the Jeopardy now, we scored 7 of 10, a fairly valiant effort. It would have been 8, if I had listened to R more closely. He awoke briefly from his coma to offer an answer to the question "What was Helen Duncan the last women in the UK to be convicted for in 1946". We put espionage, but incredibly R's answer of witchcraft was indeed correct. We were only 1 out on the number of stars on the European flag (there are 12), and failed to recall that Joseph Paxton designed Crystal Palace in 1851 (I said Houses of Parliament for which the date was pretty much correct, but sadly not the architect).

In a now long established routine, we covered the music round except for the obligatory Bruno Mars number. The Anoraks won with a frankly mediocre score, we were 3rd of 6.

And in a "Would you believe it" further development, Robson and I went on to Purley and somehow found ourselves drinking in Elliotts! Had to loan R my Oyster card for the bus/train trip home. A fine day, and so to bed.

G-Force  


 

Two Few Hounds

Just me and Daren this week. Louis asking the questions, and Siobhan competing as part of the Busters. A good turn out with 8 teams, mostly with 4,5 or 6 members. Including a new team of even youngersters, I would have seriously checked their ID if serving them beer. One of our team labelled them 'The Nerds', a bit unfair on reflection, but they did seem disappointed that the 'Anoraks' moniker had already been taken.

Terrible black and white photos of comedians in the 1st round, we missed Frank Carson (blurred close-up of only part of his face) and Victoria Wood (Louis had to tell all of us that the photo was of a female).

More sport than usual in the Current Affairs round, although this did include having to name the Man of the Match in the Soccer Aid game (Mark Wright), and knowing that Gary Neville was sent out of the England Euros camp to get some prawns. Also included my new favourite question, the upshot of which was that Sainsbury's shares have fallen by 0.8% in the last 3 months. How did I miss that bombshell! Didn't know the one about the 9ft inflatable poo stolen from an unpronounceable (by Louis anyway) Spanish resort either.



TV & Films next, 9 out of 10 scored. Daren pulled a couple out of the bag, notably recognising the character names from 2.4 children, and knowing that Craig Phillips was the first Big Brother winner. I contributed the answer to the Fatty Arbuckle custard pie question. We missed Barry Allen's alter ego which is The Flash. Louis did an almost impeccable impression of Blofeld in Goldfinger during this round (ok I'm lying, it was pants).



We were all over the Connections round, including some classic backfilling. Two sets of 5 with the connections being Penguins and Magic Roundabout. Followed up with all 3 ten pointers, don't think many got the Killer Whale/Orca as the largest species of dolphin, so pretty sure we were in front at the half-way stage. I also felt obliged to correct Louis on one of the questions. My Ding-A-Ling was never  banned by the BBC, though Mary Whitehouse did request that they do this.



20 anagrams of groups/solo artists started the second half, the idea being that we could puzzle over them whilst Louis was marking.  To give a flavour the easiest was perhaps 'TEW TEW TEW', the most difficult for us definitely 'SINGULAR MOTORS'. A bystander told us the answer to that one, the rest we deciphered correctly.



The Jeopardy round was where we fell out of the reckoning, ultimately finishing 4th, ahead of the Anoraks though who like us bombed out here. We only answered nine, two of them wrongly with badly educated guesses. I was all for answering the 10th question as well, but we would have got that wrong too. For the record, Spanish postboxes are yellow, we managed to talk ourselves into a bear trap on this one, crossing out yellow in favour of white. Russell Crowe appeared in 'Neighbours', contrary to my fallible logic that it was probably 'Home and Away', there were really no other possible answers. Neither of us knew that Lada make the 'Samara' model, Toyota was the gut instinct of both of us, but the doubt was sufficient for us to leave it out. We would have needed all 3 to beat Alan's team who got all ten.

20 TV theme tunes for the music round. Our success was patchy, I was happy to get Mad Men, but left most of the rest for Daren who struggled manfully getting a fair few. Jollity was by now firmly in the air, ensuing in a raucous version of the Hawaii 5-0 theme by all present, and I think the A-Team one as well.

At the end, we apologized for our behaviour should we turn up next Thursday. Good to get that in early.

G-Force

Border Hound

On hols up near the England/Wales border and wouldn't you know it? First night there and there's a pub quiz, well it would have been rude not to...

It was one of those quizzes, broadly in the style of the Sun in Carshalton where it's not just a matter of accumulating points, each round is a bit different. Kicking us off with a few anagrams, the football manager ,"BRAVELY ENTERS" detained us longer than it should.

Opposition here was an odd bunch. Wouldn't you just know it, Cortina day was just up the road in Monmouth and the Cortina club had made their annual pilgrimage to the event. Turns at as well, this was the Mark 3 chapter of the club, as if one Cortina club were not enough with people coming from as far afield as Rotherham. Actually, maybe just from Rotherham.

So we were at a clear disadvantage on Cortina based questions and maybe Fords generally, but on everything else, we had a chance.

So types of questions, out of a list of ten, pick the five most common elements in the Sun, name five countries who joined the EU between 1981 and 2000. Let's cut to the Jeopardy though.

Where's the Ashmolean? Elimination took it to Oxford
The Blue Grotto? I had a strong hankering for Capri but let's see where we go.
What W is a traditional gift on your 7th wedding anniversary? Two reasons why I didn't answer this one; a noted area for bear traps, with US ones often differing from other traditions; plus I didn't have any clue anyway? Wood?
Home of the Russian parliament, has to be the Kremlin.
Year Peter Sellers died? A leaning to 1980 but no more.

Last round, five clues to someone and US Actor born in 1961 did it for one team, not sure if successfully. Started in Risky Business in 1983 was all we needed though.

Outcome? Well not bad but big fail on Jeopardy with The White House being the Russian base these days. Who knew? Maybe though, this was a blessing in disguise as we finished up second, creditable with a team of two, but not likely to be driven out of town by pitchfork wielding locals. So a fair performance from the Hound on tour.

The Canoe

The Oaks Hound

Numbers low, various reasons. I joined the youngsters, for fourth out of six. Key questions:

Ten Pointers:

Don Diego De La Vega is also known as what fictional character?
Whose debut album was called "Boy"?
Sir Alfred Gilbert crafted which London sculpture?

Jeopardy:

Which UK haulage company names vehicles after women?
What was the Dutch currency before the Euro?
What road safety feature was invented by Sir Percy Shaw in 1934?
Which actress appeared in most Carry On films?
Whose catchphrase was "Yabba Dabba Do"?
Which station in Brussels is named after a five time Tour De France winner?
What acid is created when milk turns sour?
Which Dr Who actor voiced over "Little Britain"?
Which British shipyard built the Titanic?
What's the chemical symbol for Potassium?

We didn't get them all. Can you?