The Only Way Is Hound

Again, a pleasure to report that the peloton was back up to full strength. Steve stormed in first to claim the yellow jersey, I was second while Kevster claimed the four seconds for third. A weary Daren followed in 4th while Graham trailed in some time later to take the lanterne rouge. However we all liked his top and wondered where he got it.

Let's have a stats update.

Still seems to be about 70% French with maybe 20% Russian engagement. No idea why that should be and probably never will. By way of posts:

Looks like "Downward Facing Hound" and "Radio Hound" battling for top spot at present. Will one of them make it to the thousand?

So the quiz started with some strange looking characters. But we seemed to have a full sheet of answers for which I claim absolutely no credit.

Current Affairs at least made some sort of sense. That was until news emerged that a woman in Taiwan had been granted a divorce on grounds of her hubby ignoring her texts. Also it was John Humphreys who have Jo Konta a hard time about her nationality. Apparently for his money you could get four Sophie Raworths. No contest.

Round 3 was art and lit. Don't think we had any problems here, Oberon was King of the Fairies and Phileas Fogg did live at 7 Savile Row.

Connections took a bit more getting our heads round. Was Murray Walker really still commenting two years and its always tough to get William Hague and IDS in the right order. Order emerged and they were all Sandhurst graduates including oddly Katie Hopkins who passed out when she passed out, as it were.

Ten pointers were similarly dispatched with Bam Bam clinching the deal as a Flintstones youngster.

Bam Bam. In his younger days.

Link-ups duly linked up and on to jeopardy. What the axilla was foxed us to start with and what product is durable, reliable and exciting? Missed this one as I was at the bar but wouldn't have been contributing. Well, Duracell it wasn't and Durex it was. Reminded me on the run on the London Rubber Company in the mid-eighties, a few of us carried the wave of their share price rise for a time. Crazy days those university years.

Well, that put paid to it. We were also required to identify the lunula:

Did we know but not put it? Well it was playing to the strength of anyone with a bit of medical knowledge which for sure wasn't us, LATT duly prevailed, nailing the jeopardy and storming clear. To reiterate, September timetable:

10.9 - Fontwell
16.9 - Daren's
23.9 - Pete's big 50

Quiz at the Wattenden sometime but leave that to Daren to resolve the Wednesday/Sunday conundrum, or I might.

До свидания

A Feast For Hounds

R, D & G present, late call-off by S stuck in the office. Felt like we were all at sea on the picture round this week. Celebrity couples kissing. However, some inspired guesswork and others struggling as well may have meant not too much damage done.

Current Affairs this week, q about political correctness by London Underground seemed to slip through our hands, but on reflection I think S marked us right anyway. Arizona has run out of cannabis soon after legalising it, and one other eluded us.

Round 3 is vegetables, D quickly making this round his own. Mushrooms can grow in the dark (not really veg we thought), and S's recipe for gumbo differs from D's. We went for celery as the principal veg, answer given was okra. Apparently the Cajun holy trinity of veg is onion, celery and green bell pepper. Okra looks to be further down in the recipes I looked at. Cavolo Nero and Daikon were correctly identified as cabbage and radish respectively.

R got the connection straight away, units of measurement starting with the League of Nations. Good knitting knowledge from D. Otherwise fairly easy.

I only knew 1 of the 10 pointers initially though once D said Sea Parrot was another name for the puffin I knew that I had heard this more than once previously. D on fire by now completed the (well-known?) saying "Enough is as good as a ........  Feast".

Chain letters round was geography heavy as usual, but also included the James Bolam sitcom "Only When I Laugh".

Mood in the team is to go for the jeapordy round if at all possible, with the Anoraks doing similarly. Q2 turns out to be the key, with Anoraks not knowing that the Manhattan cop on a horse played by Dennis Weaver was McCloud. Not to say the rest was by any means easy, an educated guess that David Ivan Davies was the real name of Ivor Novello, and a tortuous process of elimination to confirm that Podgorica is the capital of Montenegro.

Music round was aced, R identifying a Lionel Richie song the best get.

We've scored a perfect second half before, but this time the run started with the connections round, 130 out of 130 thereafter. No wonder then that our winning margin was sizeable, although McCloud would have made it very close with The Anoraks, who invented a TV detective called Hooper.

Advance warning for September, day out planned to Fontwell on Sun 10, P is 50 later in the month so could double as beano for him. Open house at D's on Sat 16 for those not going to Millwall/Leeds that day. Holding out for an early kick-off on police orders.

G-Force

Gurdwara Hound

Great to have the full band together this week. Steve took the lead role, Kevster on guitar, Daren on bass, Graham on drums while I contented myself with flicking a tambourine and the occasional doo-wap backing vocals. With the quiz under threat, a show of strength from our brigade was required.

An odd mix of celebrities for round 1, including Pope Benedict, Margaret Thatcher and Helmut Kohl. Maybe that's what pub quizzes are like in Germany. Donaudampfschifffahrtselektrizitätenhauptbetriebswerkbauunterbeamtengesellschaft anyone?

After a break there was enough news to drum up a current affairs round. We had been watching Wimbledon so knew about the flying ants and Venus's pink bra. But Laura Ashley and not TK Maxx isn't a great place to work and the Italian priest was courting punters with wine and not reward points.

So expecting a round on Cult TV - instead we had America. We weren't to be flustered though, knowing Pearl Harbor was attacked in December and the Waltons was based on Spencer's Mountain.

Billy Ray - an American

So would Cult TV form the connection? You know what, it almost could with June Carter, Danny Glover and John Wayne. Someone's going to have to help me out here, what was the connection?

Ten pointers - bit tricky here but Basho prevailed as a sumo tournament, Jimmy Stewart's character in Wonderful Life may also have appeared here.

Onto the linkups and this fellow?

Rich Uncle Pennybags apparently; not really important, monopoly and we were on our way.

Right, jeopardy and while five heads are unquestionably an advantage, it means five opinions bombarding Steve in the scribe role. Was gurdwara Buddist? Is it a beagle or a basset promoting Hush Puppies? and what did that Francis Galton fellow invent? Quite a lot actually, his Wikipedia entry describes him as:
Sir Francis Galton, FRS was an English Victorian statistician, progressive, polymath, sociologist, psychologist, anthropologist, eugenicist, tropical explorer, geographer, inventor, meteorologist, proto-geneticist, and psychometrician. I barely get time to read the paper between morning coffee and lunch. No wonder he gets this fine bridge named after him.

Galton bridge

Decisions were made and stuck with.

Music and other than confusion between the Mixtures and Mungo Jerry, fairly routine. Right, for once we'd maximised our jeopardy score, writing down our right answers and eschewing the wrong ones. Hurrah! Win for the Hound! Could be one of the last £50s that goes in the coffers, lets hope not eh?

Points of business:

- Hold 23rd September - I think. Pete's birthday, the big one.

- Given this and Plumpton is the day after, what about a return to Fontwell on the 10th September?

- Open at Hound Towers if anyone fancies it in two weeks?

That's my lot.

Grizzly Hound

First things first. The PA quiz is under threat due to diminishing attendance. We could move on but it is a good quiz and not many places offer £50 first prize. If we can get a few of us out next week may at least mean a stay of execution.

Only three teams this week, a full complement of Ladies & Tramps, Busters who had dwindled to 1 by the end, plus myself and Robson.

Board games up first, par score of 7 out of 10. We missed Cranium, Sorry! and one other. Unremarkable current affairs round, though not quite sure how Robson persuaded me to put trousers for what the speaker had said was unnecessary in the House of Commons.

Rd 3 is "Cult TV". No it isn't, it's famous duos. Cult TV will apparently come up next week so feel free to swot up. Phil & Don, Sooty & Sweep, Mork & Mindy, Black & Decker etc.

Connections had a familiar feel from way back, all cricketing terms. Oldest gentleman's club in London, 1949 film featuring character Harry Lime etc. We missed rapper with birth name Tracy Lauren Marrow. Ice-T not 50 Cent, still think that ours was the better cricketing term.

10 pointer missed, middle band on German flag is red not yellow. Got a feeling that we've got this wrong once before. R comes before Y in Germany, that's how I will remember it from now on. No damage done apparently, other teams got it wrong too.

Had to break sweat a little in the chain letters, didn't get that ahi/albacore are types of tuna straight away, had to amend apocalypse to Armageddon to keep the chain going, and had to dig deep for the space shuttle that never took off. Even first UK frozen food in 1937 was a bit of a guess.

Bear Traps did for us in the Jeopardy round. We fell for two. Who was the successor to Annabel Croft in Treasure Hunt? And, the release of which hostage was campaigned for by Jill Morrell? To compound this we left out two innocent correct answers suspecting bear traps that weren't there. The real life couple who played husband and wife in the 1996 film Matilda anyone?

Music round perfunctory, win for Lady & Tramps by 8 points (German flag q would have been enough). Bag of toffees went to someone who knew how many las were in the 1996 Spanish euro entry.

Answers not given above as follows;

Ties
Whites
The Third Man
Enterprise
Asparagus
Suzy Perry
John McCarthy
Danny de Vito & Rhea Perlman.

Support is growing for a Sunday recce to The Wattenden quiz. Daren, over to you for suggested dates. Possibility of another afternoon at Robson Towers for the final day of The Open, 23 July.

G-Force