A Right Royal Hound

Two days from the big day and the Hound was on tenderhooks. Naturally enough, Round 1 was people who've married into the Royal Family.

Other than getting the wrong season for Peter Phillip's missus, we did ok there. And I'm going to say it, a young Camilla looking quite foxy as well.

Right, other than the actual time of the big event on the current affairs, which we didn't know, that was the end of all that. In more conventional news, Kristen Stewart abandoned her stilettos at Cannes, Mothercare are teetering on the brink and it was The Last Jedi that a bunch of storm troopers were promoting. Who needs real news when you do the quiz every week eh?

The next round was TV and film. Again, fairly routine stuff though we didn't know it was the Budget first televised in March 1990. We did know though that Hatchet Harry and Barry the Baptist were in Lock Stock and Jane & Michael in Mary Poppins.

Not Hatchet Harry and Barry the Baptist.

A fun round for the Connections with not the easiest connection either. A team effort dragged out Tim Lovejoy as Soccer AM presenter but "This Old House" and "Grimm" frankly weren't making it any clearer. The fog started to lift with "The Tube" and "Who Dares Wins" and we were in the realm of TV shows, affirmed by Life on Mars and "Poker Face". No number of clues were giving us the Bingo name for number 9. Doctors Orders, a laxative issued to soldiers in World War II and a, no doubt hilarious, medical sitcom, I'm guessing from the 1990s.

A slight deliberation on whether it was lace or silk manufactured in Burano on the ten pointers but then, it was the first half completed. Now, not wishing to be left of out the team's medical tribulations, I had a bit of a stomach bug on Thursday night so I'm hoping the PA sandwiches had nothing to do with it. Anyone else? Included vomiting out of my nose which was both unpleasant and slightly weird.

So the wrap-around round and the venue for the aborted 1940 Olympics foxed us from the get go. Thankfully though, clues emerged and the whole thing stitched itself together. Why apricot jam with Marzipan though? Is that just a flavour thing?

So onto jeopardy. Nowhere else is knowing what you don't know important. We knew we didn't know which Asian country is a permanent UN member, a toss up between China or Japan, we didn't know that we knew who made the 3310 (Nokia) and we didn't know that we didn't know the Confederations Cup is football, not the teasingly different Federations Cup, a tennis tournament.

Bear Trap? Well we fell right in.

A ceremonial lap on the music and I think a third place for the Hound. Some squad rotation required next week as G Force and myself both otherwise engaged. The Anoraks, LATT, Siobhan and Gerry etc. send their best to you Daren.

Right, those Mumbai scripts won't mark themselves.

112 Hound

Don’t think we have ever had a perfect first half, partly due to the current affairs round. Well we scored 112 compared to the usual maximum of 110 thanks to two extra dingbats in the pictures round. The only slip was the established singer who warned Ed Sheeran that he won’t always be popular. One of these two....

Daren got it right but was outvoted. Elton not Rod.

Geography round didn’t tax us much. Connection was all appeared on Bank of England banknotes. Including this bloke apparently...

Bottom note not top.

Robson identified the Tory party’s “Quiet Man” for 10 points.

I know that North and South Korea have been cosying up to each other lately, but the chain letters round required Korea to be a country, a bit premature I think. The Anoraks decide to claim that this product was from Kenya rather than go with the obvious.

We couldn’t get the first two of the Jeopardy round. We all thought that we new what everyday item often has the letters YKK on it, but couldn’t call to mind what it was. It was this...

Question 2 was a Prince Charles/Phillip dilemma so we left that and then answered the remaining 8. However, my call of David Coleman for stating the bleeding obvious about Spurs kit in a famous quote didn’t convince all so we scrubbed that as well and won the quiz right there. It was Motty as Robson suspected all along.

A superb twenty on the music round. R got a  Brother Beyond hit rather impressively (possibly not the right choice of word). I was overjoyed for having, at the very last minute, dredged up Susan Maughan as the singer of Bobbie’s Girl. £27 kitty.

Dates for the diary include 24 June at Daren’s for England v Panama. Oaks at Epsom 1 June. Other race evenings at Epsom and possible Surrey cricket day. Robson to provide more details.

G-Force

Snookered Hound

Graham and myself this week again, facing a relatively packed Purley Arms, southern section. Both of us into the exam marking now so a welcome break from the rigours of a working life.

Straight off and a bunch of snooker players spanning the ages. Absolutely no good for the oenophile teacher-type ladies next door but for us, frankly could have been tougher though we did get the wrong Davis between Joe and Fred.

Current Affairs and it was rotting durian that caused a university campus to be evacuated in Melbourne and the fire brigade called. That's it, they're scared of fruit. No wonder their cricketers resort to cheating. Other informative news was that Ikea's, in my opinion, quite good, meatball recipe is actually Turkish.

There followed a literature round, fairly standard fare and then that fiendish connection round. Looking back, how did we miss it but we did have at least two wrong answers. In our defence there doesn't seem to be universal agreement on what the four horsemen of the apocalypse all represent and well, we just didn't know Mexico's national flower. And Black September? Ok, a terror group but pretty obscure.

So ten pointers, two easy and one trappy. The first female US secretary of state? Condoleeza Rice or Madeleine Allbright? Given more time, I'm sure we'd have worked it out but that's the challenge of that three minute round and the coin came down the wrong side.

Rather a stern looking sort?

So, not exactly needing snookers but definitely behind the 8 ball at half time so an attacking approach would be required.

Link-ups and we got a bit side-tracked with a word that sounded like a letter. So we were trying to think of a word, or more likely acronym that slotted in with "queue", somehow missing the more obvious "eye". So not a perfect round and we were onto jeopardy.

Well, we weren't sure on them all but we had nine other answers. We needed a popular vegetable (contradiction in terms?) that included a plausible purple dragon? Well, we went cabbage.

I'm not sure I have much truck with these designer vegetables, pink-sprouting kale and all that nonsense. Thankfully Aldi don't seem to go a bundle on them either.

So with some, actually more modern music to finish up and a disappointing attempt on the length of the Volga as the nearest the pin, it was a mid table finish for Hound.

So in honour of Star Wars day.

From today at Heathrow apparently. Might have been confusing. Add for tomorrow, feliz cinco de mayo.