The curious incident of the Hound on Monday night

in reverse order;
Aaron 5
Grey Cells 11.5
Beavis and Butthead 16.5
Two's Company 21
You Can't Teach That 22.5
Hound 35.5

As you can probably tell from the team names and scores, there wasn't much competition for the 3 Hounds that made the trip to the Foxley Hatch as the rest of the country watched Sutton United take on the Arse'.

Apparently one of the founders of Costa coffee resides in Purley, but can you guess how many Costa outlets there are in Purley? Graham and I pondered this whilst awaiting Robson's arrival from a CPD event.

Our gangly young quiz master rattled of 4 rounds of 10 questions. The fact that we got 35.5 out of 40 gives you an indication of  how taxing the questions were.

General Knowledge, Sports, TV and dingbats.

Apparently it's a prophet who is not recognised in his own land. Apart from that, there were some other near misses where we plumped for the wrong option out of 2 possibles.

We celebrated late into the night with shots of Irish Whisky and Drambuie and Robson was pictured eating a pasty. An inquiry will follow.

Probably no quiz this Thursday due to lack of numbers post- Brexit.

Peace out and love to all.

Laissez le Hound voir le lapin.

Henri Leconte, Valery Giscard d'Estaing, Dominic Rocheteau, Robespierre, Madame Curie, Sebastien Chabal, Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec, Brigitte Bardot, Daft Punk, Emile Zola, Johnny Halliday, Obelix, Juliette Binoche, Blaise Pascal, Gustave Eiffel, Auguste Renoir, D'Artagnan, Olivier Dacourt, Andre the Giant, Edith Piaf, Bixente Lizarazu, Charles de Gaulle, Henri Becquerel, Vanessa Paradis, Honore de Balzac.

Just some of my favourite des Francais in tribute to our bourgeoning French following, reputed to be outnumbering other nations cumulatively by 2 to 1 currently. My ancestors and les Francais go all the way back to the Auld Alliance anyway, so Vive La France!. Chemin de Fer, Rodney, Chemin de Fer.

Cracking on. 3 Hounds present, Robin, Steve, My good self. Wait a minute though, Suicidal Mike makes one too many Lady & the Tramps who are boosted by a couple of  Antipodean guests, so Mike makes 4 for us. To be fair a much more upbeat Mike today, his love life back on track. Appropriately, a vaguely Valentines related Pictures Round ensues.

 

 

Questions as follows; 1. Name the Sweets 2. Name the Play 3. Name the Sculptor 4. Name the Birds. 5. Name required 6. When? 7. Name both Characters. 8. Name both. 9. Name the Film (slogan says 'love means never having to say you're sorry') 10. Where?

 

We got all bar 6. and 10. continuing our recent appalling run on Royal questions. I am trying to improve this by swotting up but only limited success so far. Current Affairs definitely improving though, another 8 out of 10. Steve pulled Asda out of the (5p) bag as the lowest rated supermarket,  good get by Robson for Miranda Hart leaving 'Call the Mid Wife' for a West End stage debut. Couldn't name the Californian dam that has been in the news, nor guess that a 1943 Philippe Patek watch had sold for £9m.

 

New governor is in the house, and free sandwiches materialise, cheese & onion, egg mayo or chicken roll, all very nice!

 

Art + lit. 8 out of 10 again. Good gets for the Little Mermaid (Steve again), Tintin and Botticelli (mine). Didn't get the writer of The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie writer - Muriel Spark, or the year of death of Agatha Christie - 1976. Modesty prevents me from saying who got the Connection based only on the first question (no it doesn't, it was I). Robert Downey Jr has done chokey, and so have all of the other 8. We only dropped points trying to recognise who said 'If god didn't exist it would be necessary to invent him'. Voltaire, not Descartes. I had never heard of Martha Stewart, so fair play to Robson for that one.

 

 

  

 

 

 

 

 

Some mugshots, what about that James Brown photo! Wesley Snipes is in character in the film 'Undisputed' in the above photo, and Macca's photo was used for an album cover.

All teams got the ten pointers, useful corroboration from Mike on the Matteus Rose question.

We missed a 3-link chain in the chain letters round... LateX-XeniA-AlcopoP-  . This despite having 3 clues for Xenia, a character in Goldeneye, sister of Czar Nicholas II and Greek term for friendship. Got the rest.



Jeopardy Round, we are considering going all in on the Jeopardy Round, but that perennial Bear Trap the Harvey Wallbanger has reared it's ugly head again. I fondly half remember a lively discussion with Daren where it was established that Vodka and Orange is a screwdriver, with Grenadine added to make a HW. Robson remembers it slightly differently suggesting Galliano not Grenadine. He's right and the best bit of work we did all night was to swerve this one. 9 correct and no-one else got all 10. Anoraks claim to have only missed out on Donkey Kong as the video game originally featuring Super Mario. Miss is good as a mile in the J Round and we romp home first of six by fifteen points. Good effort by the unfamiliar Selwyn Chicks in second place. £12.50 to Mike and the rest goes into the Hound kitty. Only missed one in the music round can't remember what it was.

This was a day for being one out numerically, the Queen married in 1947 not 1948, Agatha died in 1976 not 1977, and Westlife had 14 number ones not 13. However, much closer than anyone else on this latter one, worth a bag of Maltesers and a first Domestic Double for a little while.

No Robson for the next 2 weeks. Possible in-betweener at the Foxley Hatch this coming Monday.

G-Force

Marine Hound

So someone has two kids, and you are told one of them is a boy. What is the probability the other is a girl?

Well a priori the approximate distribution is:

2 boys - 25%
1 of each - 50%
2 girls - 25%
So does that mean the first possibility - 2 boys - is eliminated so the probability of a girl is 50/75 or 2/3rds. Or does it invalidate your a priori assumption and it's basically 50:50? These and other such wondrous stories formed the pre-quiz discussions this week.

8 jobs to disappear by 2030? Lots doing this but I chose:



Look, I'm failing here to insert a link but if anyone's bothered it's here:
www.huffingtonpost.com/gobankingrates/8-jobs-that-will-go-extin_b_8010878.html

Kevster, you won't care but drivers are included. This way underestimates the resourcefulness and abilities to evolve of such characters in my opinion. Actuaries not included, more's the pity.

Also at the start, the new Irish gaffer had brought his posse and a backing of Irish music to the pub. Now in my opinion, there's only actually about 7 Irish folk songs and nothing I heard contradicted that. Still, he bought us a drink last week so more power to him, maybe they'll do Cheltenham?

On with the quiz, I'm not even going to include the picture round, it was food items and really quite easy. The only memorable thing about the current affairs was which 63 year old ... Sports Illustrated etc. It does call for a picture:

Out of the three it wouldn't be the one on the left would it? Maybe she was one of Billy Joel's?

Next round, food and drink. One of Daren's specialities and we didn't leave much out there, triple sec flavouring escaping us.

Onto connections and I'm afraid I sent us down a bit of a blind alley with linking them as colour blind. The actual, rather lame in my opinion, connection was that they all are, or have been teetotal. Never trust anyone who doesn't like a drink, that's what I say.

Ten pointers, we didn't know what a bishop's crook was but D2 may have got close enough to earn the points, actually crosier.

Now at this point in my notes, I've got, "February, the month of mud and cabbages". No idea where that came from but it just about sums it up.

Onto the link-ups. Nothing too elegant this week and we failed to wrap it back to Sudoku.

Jeopardy and it was clearly "balls-deep" this week. The one that tripped us was the medal awarded to US Military wounded in battle? Answer:

Now we've had this the other way, and the Purple Heart is often awarded posthumously. Ummm.

Can't remember the music and the number of teams who've played in the Prem? 47, not 41 and the evening had an empty handed feel to it but it was good to see King Kong Balls emerge with a rare victory.

BTW, we need an opportunity to drink the Hound sloe gin, maybe the Scout quiz on the 11th March or a Cheltenham day offers that.

Laters bitch.

Nifty Fifty Complementary Round Hound

Bridge from noon, female guests, party balloons, cake, massive mastiffs, wine beer and general hilarity. Bridge related tea mugs, and a rock, paper, scissors, lizard, spock t-shirt amongst the gifts.  All this and more at the Ramblers Rest. See facebook etc. for pictorial evidence. Crucially, two regulars unable to attend the early festivities, a master stroke in terms of much needed sobriety later on.



A cab to the PA, one balloon almost escaping to the atmosphere, road traffic accident also narrowly avoided.

A good turn out at the quiz for Robson's 50th, with the balloons doing an excellent job of informing anyone who didn't already know. Siobhan has baked some tasty biscuits, and produces what is now known as The Hound Sloe Gin. Also in the house is the new publican, a genial seeming Irish fella who buys the team one on the house. All ina all, an excellent start.

Picture Round is made up of Aves. A dogged performance by the Birdman of Sutton elucidates that a fair degree of preciseness is required for the answers, at the end of the evening this appeared to have been crucial to our narrow victory (I really need to work at sustaining a bit of suspense throughout the blog, don't I).

 

 

E.g. 'Mute Swan' and 'Barn Owl', not just swan and owl, needed to get the points. I get the impression that Kevster could have detailed their natural habitats, migrating patterns, and the colour of their eggs had it been necessary. Good to see the 'American Coot' getting a look-in, so often a much overlooked bird. FULL MARKS.

 

80% on the current affairs round maintaining recent more impressive performances. A Nigerian man with 86 wives died aged 93, allegedly leaving 203 progeny. We didn't get that, nor did we remember UK's X-factor related Eurovision contender, Lucie Jones. Round 3 is 'Entertainment' and another 80%er. Dr Zhivago's 'Lara's Theme' was composed by Maurice Jarre, and 'Lights' was the 2010 debut album of Ellie Goulding.  

 

 

At some stage in the proceedings, Pete turned up and Daren left. A late cancellation could lead to the latter going under the knife on Friday, hope that went well if it went at all.

 

Got the 9 answers for the connection round correct, but not the connection which was that they have all written books. We said that they were all anti-Trump, not much better than the perennial todays birthdays answer for ones that we don't know, in fact probably worse. 

 

Full marks for the chain letters but had to work a bit hard for some. Nobody was getting the Jeopardy bonus this week, we dodged four. Deglutition means swallowing, Twister has 24 circles, Tory Party had the most 20th Century Prime Ministers, and Geri Halliwell was probably the answer to the Spice Girl's question. We missed something in the music round for a change, but hung on for a 2 point victory over the team whose name I can never remember even when I scribble something down as was the case this time. A truly Ornithological triumph.

 

For completeness, I have safe custody of the Hound Sloe Gin, we should consider when it should be cracked open, and what if anything to mix it with. I also have the quiz winnings, not sure why they didn't get passed to Steve. Events for March include Julie/Debbie's Cub Pack's Saturday quiz, and of course Gold Cup day at The Smugglers.

 

G-Force   

 



We're jammin'... *

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