The Hounds of New York

Daren, Graham and myself for this week. The latter two are entering one of those rare phases of the year that we do some volunteering work, so time a bit shorter than usual. Highlight of my day was a cycle to, and fine lunch at the Lamb Inn at Lamb's Green near Rusper. That doesn't really back up the previous statement does it?

The Lamb

The quiz, well first up was a bunch of European landmarks, The Little Mermaid, The Louvre, that sort of thing. Routine 8 or so here I think. Onto current affairs. Don't think any of us had been paying much attention as we missed a few here. A really heavy Egyptian woman had just died, China have banned something else and a virus, we all thought had pretty much gone a hundred years ago has officially been eliminated in the UK. Blink and you'll miss them folks.

The next round was fun in that each answer had an A as every other letter. So CANADA, YAMAHA and SAHARA as the first three answers set the tone. Despite such help, we didn't know that Diego Valasquez de Cuellar founded Havana and not Caracas and din't have much of a clue on the books of Yasunari Kawabata, though to be fair, we've probably mis-spelt correct answers worse, think we went with Katayama. Here's the fella.

The connections proved less tricky in terms of answers, we had all nine, but were still foxed by the connection. Well played to Daren here and his growing horticultural knowledge for coming up roses. Graham claimed an assist here but I'm not having it. The ten pointers were curiously straightforward and the overall feeling was that it was still all to play for.

A general diversion was provided here for most of the first half of the quiz by a bloke who seemed to have taken a wrong turn on the M1 and was vociferously supporting Castleford Tigers in their game against St Helens. I know, rugby league! To be fair, it was a one point win by a drop goal in golden point extra time so we should forgive the lad.

So, link-ups. Think we squared the circle here without much back-solving. Eulogy led to Young, AA Milne to Estonia and Ambush took it back to Hannibal.

So the jeopardy. Anyone going to give me this geezer?

But at least one team did. We had no clue though. We had a strong clue on the film containing the gang - "The Dead Rabbits". Not many films would fit the bill other than that implied by this blog title. We really didn't know and we've made the mistake before in the jeopardy of putting two and two together and not getting there. So pitching for 8. Music and I think the only one foxing us was "Truly Madly Deeply". Here's the link if you want to see the video, doubt if you do though.



So, maybe a few left out there but not a bad performance. Well, quite the blanket finish resulted.

149 - Some new team I can't remember the name of
149 - Hound
150 - The Anoraks

So a cliffhanger for the second week running but just the wrong side of that wire. Always the tendency to focus on the ones that got away but I still think pound for pound we're punching above our weight. Just.

The link hasn't worked has it but I really don't think anyone is going to miss it; and fine stuff from England in the cricket.

Multiple Birthday Hound

Another Thursday and we had the full Louis, Liam, Zayn, Niall and Harry. Or based on ages, maybe Simon, John, Roger, Nick and Andy. Actually way more appropriate names for our generation. Talking of which, the most interesting pre quiz activity was the conversation Kevster overheard of a lady on the bus debating who should be the father of her forthcoming sprog. If only she'd followed him to the Purley Arms, a whole new gene pool to have a go at.
Onto the quiz and we kicked off with a bunch of comedians who may or may not be female, we don't assume gender these days. The first name of the Conti girl escaped us but well done to who bagged Roisin Conaty.

At some time around here, Graham was searching for the mnemonic to order the size of champagne bottles. I think Michael Jackson Makes Small Boys Nervous should do the trick. The usual current affairs stuff, JK Rowling has been selling non-boda fide pasties, Olivia is the top girls name of 2016 and the Ryan Air pilots rejected a 12,000 euro bonus to postpone their holidays? I mean, they are pilots, would they fly somewhere on their holidays? Weirdest of all was the 11 year old whose dearest wish, granted by Trump, was to mow the White House lawn.

That kid can go far.

Scissors, Paper, Stone was the theme of round 3. It took a bit of convincing to report that Giles appeared in the Express rather than the Daily Mail (guessing this is the paper part). Sadly no questions on Lizard or Spock, just as well as I still can't do the Vulcan salute.

Connections was clearly the people but struggling again for the link. Proved to be Hollywood Walk of Fame or something like that. On ten pointers, it was the fastest to 100 Premier League goals that vexed us to the most. Ferdinand (Les not Rio) had his supporters and he probably did get a bit of a start on Shearer but the pace of his goalscoring always makes him favourite for this kind of question. Ferdy always enjoyed a few days on the treatment table every now and again from memory as well.

So half time arrived and we didn't feel we had done a lot wrong. Second half? Well it kicked off with a fine call of three beaches all being linked by being nudist, Strudland Bay among others. Looking at where they are in the UK, nearly all on the South Coast other than the marvellous Crakaig Beach in Northern Scotland below. Fair play to anyone braving that.

A typical day on Crakaig Beach.

Onto Jeopardy and to be honest, not that much debate. Hippocrates founded Greek medicine, ravens guard the Tower of London and Helen Shapiro worked for Mars. It would be all in. Music was tougher than sometimes the case this week, Siobhan clearly pandering to the youngsters in allowing songs made after the year 2000 into the quiz but it felt like a satisfactory night's work.

So tension rose as results read out and no specific mentions in the jeopardy. Anoraks 163, Hound 171, Busters 171! So tie break? Share the cash? To our credit, we don't do half measures, no sharing of cash but did collectively agree a charity donation, not that we like to talk about it. So a pleasing night's work and great to have the full team.

Last Item of Business - Hound Baash 22.12.2017. Ink it in.

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Look at me. I can add pics

Google Pics Hound

Another decent turnout, 6 sizeable teams. Robson has bought the cheapest tablet on the market and plans to go to Palace v Southampton, Daren is upping his meds and being nice to cats, and yours truly may have to spend some time up north mummy sitting.

Famous leaders when they were younger, we didn't get 7 (can't remember who), or 10 (Berlusconi).

Current affairs not too bad, 20 or so hours in nobody has seen a plastic tenner with Jane Austen on the back yet. Apple's latest gadget phone cost £1K, France has the 2024 olympics and George Osborne may be a serial killer.

The long promised Cult TV round then ensued. Daren dredged up 'Burt with a U' Ward as playing Robin in the sixties, I successfully learned the Prisoners number when swotting up, Robin knew Buffy's surname. The Pangalactic Gargleblaster was a team effort.

Connections round went Eye of the Tiger, Plymouth Hoe, Shin Pads etc. Ok, body parts then. Goddess of the rainbow, Iris probably the hardest, Desert Island Discs topical given our pre match discussion of said body parts. Ten pointers successfully negotiated, but we needed all 3 minutes to zero in on Louis XVI as being Marie Antoinette's other half.

Missed a couple of chain letter q's again. 2002 Winter Olympics were in Salt Lake City, and we also missed the widely renowned Yordas cave situated in N Yorks.

   

Somewhere around this point a lovely surprise. Daren's mystery phone call turned out to be Tina on her way back from Brighton dropping in to boost numbers. A solid start but we didn't feel that we should stick our neck out on 'Sailing By' being the theme music for the shipping forecast or some other question that was surely Amsterdam but we didn't actually know. Some debate over whether Kevin Kline or Mike Palin won best supporting role oscar for Wanda (it was KK, but he would'not have got Robson's vote). And a spelling debate regarding skin pigment substance.

Nailed the music on first listen, except may have put down wrong Squeeze song. First place, deserved I think, but as ever margins on the Jeopardy were thin.

Julie's cubs have a GK quiz on Sat 7 Oct, usual two-course dining plus raffle for £10 a head. BYO booze. I'm in.

Daren recommended Google pics to add images to blog. What fun!

Peak Hound, Lake Hound

in the week that hurricane Irma wreaked havoc across the Caribbean Robson Hound returned from the Peak District whilst Daren Hound returned from the Lake District.

Off to a late start, to Steve's chagrin, due to a lack of teams but by about 20:45 enough people had turned up to form 6 teams.

Round one was Road Signs, which was dispatched with aplomb and lead to the talking point of puffins, toucans, zebras, pelicans and more surprisingly, Pegasus.

Current affairs  contained Stormzy calling Theresa May a 'Paigon' and Aeroflot being forced to end its ban on Stewardesses above a size 16. Elsewhere Iran had banned women from buying tickets to a men's football match. What a strange world we live in.

The next round was intriguingly entitled 'The light round'.  Turns out that the lighthouses on Lundy Island are in the county of Devon, not Somerset. The other question that troubled us was what did the   BBC light programme rebrand itself as in 1967. We put BBC2 when we should have answered Radio2. So close.

Connections round was identified fairly early on; Phil Bailey, Isla Fisher, Viking.........? At this stage we were hoping for a question along the lines of 'What is Stan Collymore's favourite pastime?' Unfortunately Dogger never came up but Tyne Daly, Trafalgar Del Shannon etc confirmed the connection .

The 10 pointers lead to a difference of opinion. Which boy band was Colin Farrell in? Not for the first time Robson had a gut feeling for westlife. Two of us thought it was Boyzone but with a 50/50 split we decided to go with the gut feeling. The fictional author of 'Fly Fishing' and the Saint's day of Shakespeare's birth and death were both clipped away to the covers quite easily but it turned out that Westlife proved to be our googly (I'm watching the cricket as I write this- could you tell?)

Things started going askew in the connections round; We knew Addagio means slow but decided to twist the answer in order to fit the next. Our answer of SofT lead us to Tea but we should have answered SloW which should have lead us to Walnuts (Persian English, Black) and not Tea. We recovered for the rest of the roun but a sticky wicket of a start.

The Joe Perdy round was pretty straightforward. Too straightforward and Graham smelt a bear trap. If it looks like a bear trap and smells like a bear trap, it probably is a bear trap and so it proved. Indira Gandhi's father was not Mahatma but Nehru. All our other answers were correct but counted for nothing.

Music round was the usual eclectic mixture of decades and genres with Yakety-Yak proving to be the most popular sing along track.

So, we finished a distant 4th but exactly a Boyzone and a Nehru behind the Anoraks who won with an impressive score of 173. Ah well, fine margins and all that but on to next week. TTFN.

Bear-Faced Hound

Three of us this week. Graham probably in the air though if Kevster's experience of recent flights was continued, loitering around Malta airport. Steve had a strategy meeting, whatever that is.

Anyway, we arrived in the pub, looked like one of LATT had made it in early.

Why the big paws?

We never really got a decent explanation for his presence, but we could have used him on our side. By way of pre quiz fun, I produced a wrist ball which were all the rage back in the day, gosh must have been around 1999 or the like. The hours of fun we had back then, simpler times.

So first up in the quiz, pictures of UK celebs back in their younger days. These were pretty A list and I think we got most of them, only mixing up Emma Watson with Helena Bonham-Carter, Gryffindor rather than Slytherin I guess.

Next up, the usual current affairs nonsense. The Scrabble World Champion won £7,000. Decent but probably not a cue to give up the day job and a crossbow bolt shot into the ground disrupted Surrey v Middlesex.


Third round was trains and the like. Sadly not focussing on the Tattenham Corner line but a more global challenge if you will. A few missed punts here, Beijing, Tokyo and New York all featuring but we probably got them in the wrong order.

Mumbai station, if it didn't feature, it should have done.

Onto connections, Jerry Lee Lewis, Henry VIII, Richard Pryor and Elton John pushed us onto the tracks of multiple marriages/divorces though Henry generally didn't bother with such formalities. Did we get the ten pointers? I'm going to say we did. Fine sandwiches as well with a good proportion of egg.

Link ups went awry towards the end, we lost it on Hajj and Jollof, citizens of the world that we are. Eyes down and time to focus on the jeopardy.

Or something.

So which England manager preceded Capello? The first name to jump up was Sven. But what about Stevie Mac? And didn't Pearce have a few games as caretaker? And then Howard Wilkinson has a game or two in charge every now and then? So we won't forget again (likely).

Graham Taylor - 1990–1993

Terry Venables - 1994–1996

Glenn Hoddle - 1996–1999

Howard Wilkinson 1999, 2000

Kevin Keegan 1999–2000

Peter Taylor 2000

Sven-Göran Eriksson 2001–2006

Steve McClaren 2006–2007

Fabio Capello 2008–2012

Stuart Pearce 2012

Roy Hodgson 2012–2016

Sam Allardyce 2016

Gareth Southgate

At least now we've accepted it doesn't really matter, we're not going to win anything and I'd say we have Roy to thank for that. We swerved it, plus maybe another. Music we got nearly all on and drum roll, joint second, beaten by a narrow three points by the Busters. So no win and close enough to think about what might have been but good to share the love, another fairly thin week in terms of team entries so no harm in the wins being shared around.

Phew, left my blogging notes in the pub but I think I got away with it.