Daren legless (or can't walk or something). Others unsure, just me and Robson on the day again. It's catching, only two of Johnny & the Moondogs and a few Busters around the bar join us. With no Kronenberg sales likely to offset the prize money, and one team that is at least 50% teetotal, Management calls off the quiz. With hindsight we probably should have offered to play for no reward.
But no, I have a much better idea (sic). Would the Moondogs (Terry and Steve) like to join us and make up a team at the Jolly Farmers for their quiz. So, quick bus trip and we are back on familiar old territory, more familiar to Robson as he was here on Saturday night watching Bowie etc. cover band The Diamond Dogs/Hounds. The quiz has started and we have missed the first round. But Theo, for it is still he, has a perfect solution, he will default us to the lowest score for the round and don't worry there are only 3 points covering all teams. He suggested we just put a couple of quid in the glass instead of the usual £1.50 per head, the first of many indicators that we weren't likely to win the quiz tonight or I suspect anytime soon.
Which wouldn't haven't been that galling, except that we got nearly everything correct and finished 4 points behind the winners. A page of celebrity pictures (all died in 2014, largely film/TV), long and pretty easy music round and more film/1981 history/entertainment q's. The Moontwins know their stuff and Theo is playing to all of their many strengths, I overheard one of them saying earlier that he had competed in a quiz event at the weekend where his team came up against Chasers and Eggheads. It was slightly disturbing that all 4 of us seems to get Sinita - So Macho on the first couple of bars. though McFly did elude all of us.
Some things never change, Theo spoilt his best questions by offering two possible answers where one could be eliminated by anyone who has the capacity to reason. Don't use your mobile phones "The teams don't like it". No chance of a table after 8.30, standing room only. A namecheck from Theo for old friends returning (like a sick dog to it's own vomit if you ask me). Everybody gets points for the league table. 2 customers get the chance to "Play their cards right" for £800/400. The first draws the Jack of Clubs, goes lower and gets a Queen. The second one draws the Jack of Spades, goes lower and gets a King. Will be worth £1,000+ next week!
A few other teams were familiar, including Gugnuncs and Fivers I think. Her that had a plaster cast on her foot for about 2 years was there. The Guinness is better than the Purley Arms but not much else.
My biggest regret of the evening? We didn't get the damn anagram. See what you can do with BANALITIES, give yourself no longer than 5 minutes.
Saturday 29 October 2016
Monday 24 October 2016
12 Hounds Of Christmas
As promised I've researched a possible London/Croydon pub crawl that would feature the 12 Days of Christmas "theme". I've planned it broadly West to East with a train back to Croydon then finishing up at Purley. Half these pubs are probably closed so just feasibility at this stage:
The Dove - Hammersmith
The Swan - Hammersmith
The Blackbird - Earls Court
The Cock & Hen - Fulham
The Crusting Pipe - Covent Garden
Lady Offaline - Holburn
The Ring - Southwark
Lord Clyde - Borough
Blue Eyed Maid - Borough
Then a train from London Bridge
Drum and Monkey - Croydon (Shut?) Or some adjacent spelling
Goose On The Market - Croydon
The Pear Tree - Purley
Requires some mobility but that's largely front loaded. Around a pub an hour of achievable logistically I'd say. D2, appreciate depends on your walking ability by then, Graham and myself are available for bicycle rickshaw.
Any thoughts team?
Friday 14 October 2016
World turned upside down Hound.
Had to get up early to take the kids to school this morning. They usually walk, but clowns in the vicinity and the possibility of a police presence today. Didn't see diddley squat in the end, but the school is taking the clown threat very seriously.
Lifts to our doorsteps from Kevster much appreciated, though I think that Robson thought he was being kidnapped. Newsnight depicts outpourings of grief in Thailand, and novelist Margaret Atwood claims that Bob Dylan's nobel prize for literatureis a political decision intended to give a message to the US electorate. I know, that's what I thought.
A win by 11 points, comfortable considering we missed a ten pointer. Importantly, we all got solo answers, the numbers made a difference. Easy full marks for the music round, all nailed on first listen.
Jeopardy round successfully negotiated. We left out four. A couple of theme tune questions. Robson correctly thought Tina Turner for 'Goldeneye', but could have been Bassey. Daren correctly thought Coronation Street for Eric Spier, but not 100%. Maklamore & Edgerton started up Burger King in 1954, and Who's Sorry Now? was the autobiography of Connie Francis, not Helen Shapiro or Cilla. Kevster on his game here with Hussein as Obama's middle name.
Full marks on the link-ups, Robson pulling out Shirley Heights as the 1978 derby winner ridden by Greville Starkey, but unable to cap it with a prediction of Kapil Dev for question ten despite looking very good at one stage. Another US president middle name question, it's James Earl Carter.
QVC = Quality, Value, Convenience. Didn't know it, but we got the other two ten pointers, sapper and Captain Cook.
A good connections round only fully solved as Gin at Question 8. A bit of licence spelling wise e.g. Hendrix/Hendricks but no matter. James Watt and Michael Boulton are on the back of the £50 note, all that stopped a clean sweep.
Round 3 was an extra music round, questions rather than tunes. We only missed the musical that 'I Could Have Danced All Night' came from, My Fair Lady not The King and I. Lulu played Adrian Mole's mum on TV, and the Sheffield 80's scene featured somewhat coincidentally as we had discussed this at length earlier. A timely arrival by Kevster around this point, to back fill 'Woman's Hour' for the current affairs round (Radio 4 show celebrating 70th anniversary).
Creditable 14 for the current affairs round, not overly obscure this week.
I don't have the pictures to upload, but they turned out to be celebrities starting with the letter F. Knowing this inspired some great guesswork, especially Nigel's call of Frankie Valli, and whoever first said Flo-Rida for number 10. Only missed Frances Farmer Cobain, no doubt Seattle will suffer for this at some point.
Pre match banter topics included Human League et al., a whistle-stop guided tour of the Periodic table, and whale watching/hunting in the Faroes. Daren now knows a little more about both Chemistry and Bridge than he previously did. Cue bad jokes about Ah! the element of surprise, and dummies.
To round off, an extra curricular quizzing event is planned for this Sunday, 16 October at the Wattenden Arms, soon to become Big D's local. All are welcome. Subject to D getting the required passout, the plan is to gather at his current gaff and take a taxi from there. Not sure re starting time, anybody know?
Lifts to our doorsteps from Kevster much appreciated, though I think that Robson thought he was being kidnapped. Newsnight depicts outpourings of grief in Thailand, and novelist Margaret Atwood claims that Bob Dylan's nobel prize for literatureis a political decision intended to give a message to the US electorate. I know, that's what I thought.
A win by 11 points, comfortable considering we missed a ten pointer. Importantly, we all got solo answers, the numbers made a difference. Easy full marks for the music round, all nailed on first listen.
Jeopardy round successfully negotiated. We left out four. A couple of theme tune questions. Robson correctly thought Tina Turner for 'Goldeneye', but could have been Bassey. Daren correctly thought Coronation Street for Eric Spier, but not 100%. Maklamore & Edgerton started up Burger King in 1954, and Who's Sorry Now? was the autobiography of Connie Francis, not Helen Shapiro or Cilla. Kevster on his game here with Hussein as Obama's middle name.
Full marks on the link-ups, Robson pulling out Shirley Heights as the 1978 derby winner ridden by Greville Starkey, but unable to cap it with a prediction of Kapil Dev for question ten despite looking very good at one stage. Another US president middle name question, it's James Earl Carter.
QVC = Quality, Value, Convenience. Didn't know it, but we got the other two ten pointers, sapper and Captain Cook.
A good connections round only fully solved as Gin at Question 8. A bit of licence spelling wise e.g. Hendrix/Hendricks but no matter. James Watt and Michael Boulton are on the back of the £50 note, all that stopped a clean sweep.
Round 3 was an extra music round, questions rather than tunes. We only missed the musical that 'I Could Have Danced All Night' came from, My Fair Lady not The King and I. Lulu played Adrian Mole's mum on TV, and the Sheffield 80's scene featured somewhat coincidentally as we had discussed this at length earlier. A timely arrival by Kevster around this point, to back fill 'Woman's Hour' for the current affairs round (Radio 4 show celebrating 70th anniversary).
Creditable 14 for the current affairs round, not overly obscure this week.
I don't have the pictures to upload, but they turned out to be celebrities starting with the letter F. Knowing this inspired some great guesswork, especially Nigel's call of Frankie Valli, and whoever first said Flo-Rida for number 10. Only missed Frances Farmer Cobain, no doubt Seattle will suffer for this at some point.
Pre match banter topics included Human League et al., a whistle-stop guided tour of the Periodic table, and whale watching/hunting in the Faroes. Daren now knows a little more about both Chemistry and Bridge than he previously did. Cue bad jokes about Ah! the element of surprise, and dummies.
To round off, an extra curricular quizzing event is planned for this Sunday, 16 October at the Wattenden Arms, soon to become Big D's local. All are welcome. Subject to D getting the required passout, the plan is to gather at his current gaff and take a taxi from there. Not sure re starting time, anybody know?
Saturday 8 October 2016
7D9CAF928C (all upper case) Hounds
In the week that Melvin Odoom was knocked out of Strictly, there was some great quizzing to be had.
Pre fight talk was sporadic but a couple of points of interest were;
> Possible driving bans
> Venues for the 'Hound 12 days of Christmas' pub crawl
Also, one in three hounds were presented with a Tom Odell t-shirt in a Barcelona FC club shop bag. You couldn't make it up and quite frankly, why would you want to?
Ding ding- Round One
There should be a picture of the 10 caricatures that constituted the picture round but I can't upload it for some reason so I'll have to describe it,
Number 1 vexed us the most, a side on view of someone with a potato for a head, wearing a monocle and a black, leather, military coat and brandishing a Kalashnikov. Our first answer was Goebels, which was changed to Samuel L Jackson and turned out to be Lawrence Fishburne. Number 4 could have been Bono but, thankfully Robin had a revelation that it was actually Carrie Ann Moss and Nigel Farage turned out to be Colin Powell, who knew?
We all agreed that the problem here was down to quality of the caricature as much as it was our ability to identify the subject. 7/10
Round 2 - current affairs - although the answers are a pretty rum bunch;
Article 50, Hurricane Matthew, Gordon Ramsey, Diane James, Scouse Cod, Rob Bradley, Rodrigo Duterte etc.
Round 3 - TV and films (accompanied with Graham's constant mantra of "if only Steve was here") As it turned out,it was a pretty straightforward round with the only question requiring any serious discourse being 'who won the Oscar for Godfather II'? We all knew it was RdN but nevertheless we felt it worthwhile to argue about for a while (Graham claiming not to have heard the 2 bit).
Connections - this pretty much came down the fact that I knew the old saying 'half a pint of peas and half a pint more'. We had the answers Alaska, snowfall, Lincoln etc suggesting it was some sort of fruit or vegetable so the answer to 'what imperial measurement is equal to 232 mils proved to be the key.
10 pointers we got them all, Kirsty Young, Hamlet and Status Quo being this week'"s unlikely combination.
So, we felt we were sitting fairly pretty going into the second round (insert majestic, crescendo building music here)
Link up - Genesis, Smallville, Erwin, Napa, Abel, Lesotho, Osaka, Apricot, Tetras, Spelunking
A clean sweep for hound and we could hear that other teams had struggled at the Napa Valley question. Great knowledge from G-Force on his spelunking.
Jeopardy
Who won the boxing gold medal at the '68 olympics was to prove to be the knock out blow for Hound. Having managed to get Gerrymandering from our collective Blakadder knowledge we were confident with 9 answers. Was it Frazier or Foreman?
Music round was pretty straightforward so it was just a wait for the answers and scores.
If we had got the full jeopardy round we would finish in first place with 174 points. If the'68 Gold medal had been won by Foreman, we would finish 4th on 134 points and King Kong Balls would win with 168.
The End
Pre fight talk was sporadic but a couple of points of interest were;
> Possible driving bans
> Venues for the 'Hound 12 days of Christmas' pub crawl
Also, one in three hounds were presented with a Tom Odell t-shirt in a Barcelona FC club shop bag. You couldn't make it up and quite frankly, why would you want to?
Ding ding- Round One
There should be a picture of the 10 caricatures that constituted the picture round but I can't upload it for some reason so I'll have to describe it,
Number 1 vexed us the most, a side on view of someone with a potato for a head, wearing a monocle and a black, leather, military coat and brandishing a Kalashnikov. Our first answer was Goebels, which was changed to Samuel L Jackson and turned out to be Lawrence Fishburne. Number 4 could have been Bono but, thankfully Robin had a revelation that it was actually Carrie Ann Moss and Nigel Farage turned out to be Colin Powell, who knew?
We all agreed that the problem here was down to quality of the caricature as much as it was our ability to identify the subject. 7/10
Round 2 - current affairs - although the answers are a pretty rum bunch;
Article 50, Hurricane Matthew, Gordon Ramsey, Diane James, Scouse Cod, Rob Bradley, Rodrigo Duterte etc.
Round 3 - TV and films (accompanied with Graham's constant mantra of "if only Steve was here") As it turned out,it was a pretty straightforward round with the only question requiring any serious discourse being 'who won the Oscar for Godfather II'? We all knew it was RdN but nevertheless we felt it worthwhile to argue about for a while (Graham claiming not to have heard the 2 bit).
Connections - this pretty much came down the fact that I knew the old saying 'half a pint of peas and half a pint more'. We had the answers Alaska, snowfall, Lincoln etc suggesting it was some sort of fruit or vegetable so the answer to 'what imperial measurement is equal to 232 mils proved to be the key.
10 pointers we got them all, Kirsty Young, Hamlet and Status Quo being this week'"s unlikely combination.
So, we felt we were sitting fairly pretty going into the second round (insert majestic, crescendo building music here)
Link up - Genesis, Smallville, Erwin, Napa, Abel, Lesotho, Osaka, Apricot, Tetras, Spelunking
A clean sweep for hound and we could hear that other teams had struggled at the Napa Valley question. Great knowledge from G-Force on his spelunking.
Jeopardy
Who won the boxing gold medal at the '68 olympics was to prove to be the knock out blow for Hound. Having managed to get Gerrymandering from our collective Blakadder knowledge we were confident with 9 answers. Was it Frazier or Foreman?
Music round was pretty straightforward so it was just a wait for the answers and scores.
If we had got the full jeopardy round we would finish in first place with 174 points. If the'68 Gold medal had been won by Foreman, we would finish 4th on 134 points and King Kong Balls would win with 168.
The End
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