The Full Hound

Greetings from the Purley Arms again. Just Graham and myself again as dry January continues to wreak havoc. In fact, a fairly quiet evening all in all down the pub with only four teams I think, although the swarming collective that is the Busters seemed even more numerous than normal.

Ok, to start.

Chocolate bars and I realised I've scanned them upside, however, maybe you eat them that way? Nothing too obscure here with a bunch of selection box favourites and a rare full house to get us going. Next up current affairs and the Daren approach actually let us down as neither of the answers were Asda.

By far my favourite question though was "For what reasons were 12 camels banned from a beauty contest in Saudi Arabia?" Here's a few of the darlings which may help?

Our answer of mascara was actually pretty tame compared with the true answer of botox. Truly raises a whole lot more questions than it answers. Graham was also delighted Gerry had included a question on Leeds Utds new club crest, somewhere between the Gaviscon ad and the Go West video IMHO.

The third round was on, largely fictional, bears. I guess the real ones don't get up to as much interesting stuff, other than the obvious. Most of the favourites made it in though, Paddington, Teddy, Rupert The. Other than some bear who featured in Wacky Races, a pretty good round.

Onto connections and my favourite flavour of this round; where the connection itself is pretty easy but you need it to work out some of the answers. Well played to Graham for getting it from answers of "Chelsea Dagger" and "White" though and yielding what Yperite is and the Beatles last concert venue.

Ten pointers and two relatively easy ones with only the first winners of the Six Nations Rugby testing us. It was always a bit of a punt and figuring England were strong around then we went with the percentages. It paid off and a decent first half under our belts.

Link ups and the gaps in the answers didn't get too out of control before we were able to back solve, Aberdeen as the first Scottish all seater stadium was never in until the initial A was there.
;
Jeopardy and it started easy enough, before rapidly getting into the realms of impossible. So for example:

- What is the Irish equivalent of an MP?
- What were Private Godfrey's two sisters called in Dads Army?
- Who voiced Esmeralda in the 1996 Disney film?
- In which county is the Drax power station?
- How many Chance squares in Monopoly?
- Who wrote the Pied Piper of Hamlyn poem in 1842?

Not trappy, just difficult. Still, it took away any decisions about going all in. These fellas we did know though.

I think I've eaten one which doesn't make me feel a lot better.

Music and we actually bagged the two recent songs though being Adele and Ed Sheeran, they weren't the toughest. So would the Hound prevail? You bet your ass! And being outnumbered by around 5 to 1 by the Busters.

To next week, look forward to getting the full team in place.

Those answers:

- TD
- Dolly & Sissy
- Demi Moore
- North Yorkshire
- 3
- Robert Browning

So long folks.

Hound + D + 2

It’s Thursday in the PA and another Wake. The quiz is unavoidably packed into a slightly smaller space. Two Hounds present, myself and Robson. R has a new smart meter but it can’t cope with more than one utility, not as smart as it thinks it is. The Anoraks provided us with some warm-up material including a tricky set of 40 pairs of famous brothers. One of the sheets gives both Robson and I flashbacks to a wasted night at the Woolpack, Banstead that none of us will ever get back. ‘Duncan’s phone number and email address is appended to the question sheet. Both are available on application should anyone wish to troll him.

Not sure when we last had a pig photo so will interject with one here.

Onto the actual quiz, pictures of dj’s to kick-off...

We got 9 correct unaided, but then spotted David from Lady & The Tramp, sporting a natty paisley shirt this week, all alone and frankly forlorn. He was expecting team-mates, but didn’t need asking twice to join us. 2 became 3. He had been struggling at around 3 or 4 djs but thankfully recognised Ken Bruce our last missing answer.

Current Affairs next and Julie and Neil arrived to join David and 3 became 5. Usual 7 out of 10. Not very close to the item that President Macron of France wants to be formally recognised as a World Treasure - the baguette! We also failed to name Pegasus as the airline involved in a runway accident in Turkey, and Southsea as the home of the Akash curry house delivering to the South of France.

Rd. 3 is schools and education. A good team effort, we were docked one point for fresher instead of freshman as the first year undergraduate nickname. We missed the year that corporal punishment was banned in UK schools by one, 1986 not 1987.

We bagged the connection after 4 answers. The 3 that we had all included the letters ONE consecutively, enabling us to backfill Roy Orbison’s ‘Only The Lonely’. We had to think for the plant also known as Woodbine with Neil eventually getting Honeysuckle.

I was going to describe Robson’s boy band knowledge as encyclopedic at this stage but not sure that this lot are even in the reference books!

Croydon’s own Dane Bowers on left of this picture of Another Level. Well worth 10 points with at least one of our nearest rivals missing out.

Full marks for the chain letters. I recognised the Christian names of the Inbetweeners, but was not familiar with the term Gentleman’s Relish for anchovy paste (they both sound like euphemisms to me). Others were more enlightened.

Feeling in good shape going into the Jeopardy. After last week getting all ten but erring on the side of caution and leaving 3 out, we are collectively gung-ho this week. Rightly so as two that could have been traps turn out to be as straightforward as we hoped. Neil knew that Dune and Poison were by Dior, and this bloke also featured.

The obligatory recent pop tune cost us a perfect second half but 179 points with 153 in second place and a good evening’s work. Tramps kindly turned down a share of the winnings, not sure they believed me when I said that we would probably spend it at the races. 

No Robson for 4 weeks from Feb 15 so reinforcements will be needed.

Happy New Hound

First quiz of 2018 for me and boy, it felt like a while since the last one. Good to get back into the saddle and it was a packed pub with 8 teams but just Graham and myself on the Hound table.

First up was a collective blind spot, pictures of cars in TV shows/films. We picked up the obvious ones but a measure of our knowledge was putting down "Inspector Morse" for two of the cars, thankfully one of them was right.

This one actually didn't appear.

Onto Current Affairs which was a series of guesses to be honest. It turned out that Riccardo Ascerbi is the New Captain Birdseye, not Go Compare bloke and that Georgie Weah had invited Arsene Wenger to his inauguration, not Pep Guardiola. Maybe his "cousin" will be there as well? It was Ethiopia and not Nigeria which has banned exporting babies, maybe Madonna was spotted around Addis Ababa?

The third round was a round on "Miss", Saigon, Congeniality, Marple etc. though way more of a Hit than the previous two. This followed up with a curious connections round. Finding an obvious connection between "India", "Israel", "France" etc was hardly a headscratcher. However all the countries truned out to have nuclear capacity which was indeed the requirement.

Miss S, who always goes first.

Ten pointers didn't really trouble us, Sam Walton, Naga Viper etc, half time with much needed sandwiches.

Notes get a bit scratchy on the linkups, but the zodiac sign represented by the archer vexed us for a bit, and somehow we circled back correctly without getting the answer before correct, the way things happen sometimes.

Jeopardy and cutting to the chase, 10 best punts were correct but with doubt on three of them we didn't play. What about this fella though?

Now memory from back in the time was he had to be told how to hold the guitar in order to mime properly. Since then, he's graduated to the status of singer/songwriter. No wonder we couldn't identify John Simon Ritchie correctly. Some other minor controversy arose from whether the Roadrunner says "Beep Beep" or "Meep Meep". Frankly it didn't make any difference to us and a mid table result ensued.

Always up against it with two bodies against bigger teams, particularly hits us in the jeopardy, lets hope for a few more faces next few weeks.

RaceHound

28 December, it must be a Hound inbetweener at the Racehorse in Carshalton. A few in The Hope over the road first and we are ready to rumble. Pre quiz banter about obscure but loved songs, and former Croydon record shops amongst the usual drivel.

Six rounds of fifteen questions each, mainly music and GK with a strong Christmas flavour. Well within our comfort zone. An unusual picture round to start with. Unusual in that the questions are related to the pictures but can be answered without reference to them. On our way to 12.5 out of 15 we identified the following star as the worlds first million pound player.

For rd 2 the first letter of each answer is given and collectively they spell Happy Christmas X. 13 doubled up to 26 due to Hound Joker being played.

Rd 3 is musical pot luck. Some had more idea than others as to when Glastonbury started. 1970 proves to be the year, we were out by 3. 12 scored, didn’t know that Greece has the longest national anthem or who wrote the following autobio.

14 correct in Christmas related songs round. Only a couple of half points dropped for guessing wrong years. The answer given for one of these required invokement of the quizmaster is always right proviso. We went 1984 for Wham, Last Christmas, answer given 1986, check it out for yourself.

With admirable consistency we scored 13 on Christmas pot luck. We were way out on the tallest ever Christmas tree. 20 feet of margin was given but 120 wouldn’t have been enough for us. 

Just songs for the last round as the clock showed midnight, I eventually got home about 1.30 am. 13 points, out on a couple of years again, plus my bad mistaking the Sensational Alex Harvey Band for Nazareth. Easily done.

11 teams all told. An emphatic win for Hound on 90.5 points with second place in the mid-seventies.

A round of drinks for winning, and a possible case for a revisit. Quiz is held last Thursday of each month, so good if no PA quiz or just for change of scenery and late drink sometime.

G-Force