Hound Did That Happen...

Thursday 26th February 2015

Purley Arms, Croydon

Beaten unexpectedly by a point by a new team of menopausal (their words not mine) ladies called '5 Shades of Grey'.

 

Not much to report from the pre match banter, the future if it has one of Umbrella Towers was discussed, and lots of Quiz upping. British teams falling like flies in European competition.  

 

The Picture Round was made up of 10 fairly bad pictorial puns intended to suggest various drinks. Or make that 9 fairly bad pictorial puns and one truly atrocious one. A close up of someone smiling with unfeasibly good white teeth was meant to depict 'a pair of teeth' = 'aperitif'. Despite there indisputably being much more than a pair of teeth (pair was two last time I checked), somebody else got it so our alternative suggestion of R Whites never got us anywhere.  

 

Decent Current Affairs round, only failing to recognise a West End play about the early life of Carole King, and the name of some political Doris, a green party leader I think.   

 

Followed by a round of Firsts where we tailed off a bit missing 3 of the last 4.    

 

Then, the connections round which seems to be where we lost the quiz. Siobhan clearly put a lot of work into designing this round herself, but it is fair to say that the Hound just didn't get it even with a few prompters from Siobhan herself. The answers were as follows (with our wrong ones in brackets)...  

 

Dresser  

Grammar (Secondary)

Uneven (Rough)

Banana

Revive

Voodoo

Acidic (Acid)

Potato

Greyer (White)

And the connection. If you take the initial letter away from each word and put it to the end of the word and then read it backwards it gives the same word. Yes really. Fair play to 5 Shades of Grey who got all 9 but not the connection. Fair play to Siobhan for completely fooling us.  

All 3 ten pointers were picked up - Who directed Platoon & JFK/Capital of Guernsey/Italian name for Pasta quills.  

No reason to believe at half-way that we were playing catch-up or would need to be brave in the Jeopardy round.  

'Top 10' was replaced by ten link words e.g. (rubber) band (aid), (times) table (cloth) etc. We got 9 (see also below).  

We got all of the answers correct in the Jeopardy round, but perhaps bearing in mind the recent Colonel Sanders debacle, and because we didn't feel we had to get them all, we left hypno-phobia being a fear of sleep out. At least one team blew out on Tanzania being the location for Mt. Kilimanjaro (rather surprisingly I thought putting Mozambique).   

Not quite last week's full twenty marks in the Music Round but only two points short.  

The Maltesers came our way for being the first to identify that Ian Fleming wrote 'Chitty Chitty Bang Bang'.  

It's always tempting when losing by only one point to think of 'what might have been' and 'if only'. This is of course ultimately fruitless and futile and doesn't even make you feel better. However, if I had of fallen in that trap, I would more than likely have mentioned some or all of the following in addition to the Jeopardy round and 'a pair of fu**ing teeth' as Kevster wrote in huge letters on the copy that I have in font of me now;   

- How come (Sunday) Express (Delivery) is ok but (Sunday) Mail (Delivery) isn't?

- The Van Morrison/Michael Buble mix-up mystery

- Why do certain Lionel Richie songs sound so completely like other Lionel Richie songs?    

That's it. Cheltenham gets ever nearer, and Maundy Thursday can't be far off. Happy hounding.

G-Force

 

 

Revel Hound

Thursday 19th February 2015
Purley Arms, Croydon

Apologies for the almost unforgivably tardy appearance of this update...

The bare minimum of Hounds gathered last week for our first quiz in seven days, in stark contrast to the hectic goings on of the previous week.  The Green one had sent apologies, D2 was high in the skies bound for Kooba and Lord Peterkins of Fatherhood was once again fondly remembered.

Pre-match discussion was dominated, and I do mean dominated, by who'd killed Lucy Beale.  *jokes*

No, in actuality the discussion centred around Figo's bid for FIFA's Presidency and the number of sovereign nations that there are in the world and therefore could be in FIFA - we eventually established that there are 257 countries in the world, of which 195 are Sovereign States and FIFA has 209 affiliated members.  Riveting stuff.  We left the tedium behind us quickly though with a properly fascinating discussion on Revels and our respective favourites - the results of which are detailed here and, I think, make for essential reading...

Revel	Robson	G-Force	Kevster
Orange	1st	2nd
Coffee	2nd	3rd
Toffee		1st
Malteser			3rd
Peanut
Chocolate	3rd		1st
Raisin			2nd

 

Acknowledging that the evening's excitement had obviously peaked we moved onto the quiz itself in good heart.

Round 1 - a curious type of 'say what you see' picture round that actually required Band/Artists names to be given as the answers - some were obvious (an ear and Asia = Erasure), some less so (a strange pair of hands moulding a pot of some kind = T'Pau) but we came through with 11 out of 12

Round 2 - Current Affairs - Nutella, Teletubbies, Tacos, and a few other bits and bobs got us 7 out of 10

Round 3 - Eastenders - when this was announced I won the race to go to the bar - G-Force said he was off to the loo and Robson seriously contemplated cadging a fag off somebody and going outside to poke himself in the eye with it.  I returned from the bar having got in touch with my inner Danny Dyer and with Robson channelling Pat Wicks and G-Force all over Dot Cotton's little Willy we somewhat remarkably emerged with 9 out of the available 10.  Cor blimey guv'nor, a rare old result and no mistake eh, me ol' China - as none of us were to be heard amusingly muttering.

Round 4 - Connections - smashed it - think G-Force might have said it after the first one although it could've been Robson and it might've been after the second one - I was still reeling from the Eastenders tour-de-force to be honest... 

I Am The Walrus, The Big Easy, Mrs Doubtfire, Wild Thing, Great White Shark, Black Knight, El Nino, The King, Shrek - and the connection is they are all...*

Round 5 - Ten Pointers - Only current Premiership team not to have appeared in an FA Cup Final?  Only letter not to appear in the periodic table? And something about the Indian flag having a wheel of 'what' in its centre?**

Round 6 - all numbers in the 90s - Channel tunnel opened (94), Diana died (97), Atlanta Olympics (96), John Major wins General Election (92), Blur vs Oasis (95), Good Friday Agreement (98), Freddie Mercury and Robert Maxwell died (91), Britney Spears Hit Me Baby (99) and Mandela released (90).  Full house.

Round 7 - Jeopardy - we were confident with eight so submitted them and swerved two - as it turned out we got the very first question wrong so came away with nothing.

Round 8 - music - notes are a bit ragged but suggest we got them all

Bag of sweets - how many Mail Bags were stolen during the Great Train Robbery?
Now for some unknown reason we listened to Robson and he postulated that none had been stolen.  Suffice to say that was the worst answer in the entire pub.  Apparently 120 of the 128 Mail Bags on board were heisted - the closest and therefore chocolate winning answer was 60.

So we ended with 138 points and despite blowing the jeopardy and not covering ourselves in Ten Pointer glory either that was a good enough total to win.

One for the road, buses, trains and another epic warm chicken salad.

Woof.

* all golfer's nicknames
** Swansea, J (although we said, Q) and apparently it's a wheel of truth although my notes show suggestions of a wheel of righteous indignation so God knows what we actually answered for that...

5 in Five - The Post Script - Recollections, reflections and lessons learnt...

Robson Hound

Sunday – The Rail View 

What a soulless place! Back in the day I remember this being one of the nicer South Croydon establishments but it now looks ripe for turning into a Tesco Express or a block of flats with easy access to South Croydon station. Quiz wise – nothing stands out – we came in and did an effective job. Number one for bar snacks though – just have many bags of crisps can you actually get from one ox?

 

Monday – The Woolpack 

Where do you start? Pub-wise I thought this was ok actually, the food and beer ranges were both decent and there seemed a bit more “going on” than the average place of that nature. Could probably fill the whole piece though about “Duncan” and his irksome habits and ways. Baffling popular – I know Banstead doesn’t have much else to offer on a Monday but really.

 

Tuesday – The Windsor Castle 

By contrast, here was a quiz that definitely deserved more support than it got. Maybe music – with precious little before 1990 is a bit niche and self-indulgent – but no harm in that. Maybe it suffers with the Sun quiz on the same night in Carshalton. Quite probably the best beer of the week here – though I forget exactly what – and a rip-roaring charge through the field from the Hound. Marvellous stuff.

 

Wednesday – The Oval Tavern 

Now this is one of my favourite pubs in the vicinity. Don’t always agree with the music they have on, but seems to come with a laid back relaxed atmosphere to it. Wendy showed that a quiz doesn’t have to go on until 10.30 pm as well, I guess this is normally a slightly cynical move to keep the punters in but was more than happy to stay. Even got on ok with the love theme.

 

Thursday – The Purley Arms 

Back to the usual stamping ground. I guess we’ve arrived at the Purley Arms by way of comparing a number of factors. It definitely stands up by way of quiz but certainly isn’t the best pub and certainly doesn’t have the best beer. An ideal scenario – take the Oval Tavern, with beer from the Windsor Castle and the Purley Arms quiz and have it all on a Thursday. And move it all to the Ramblers Rest while we’re at it. As for the actual night, I was way too tired to care.

 

 

G-Force

 

Sunday: Low key describes this one best I think. I though we worked hard for the win. Would have been nice to actually see more of our fellow competitors.

 

Monday: Bingo was the best bit, felt a bit like we had nothing in common with any of our fellow competitors. Liked the Freak Show though.

 

Tuesday: Yeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeees! We won the music quiz, coming up on the rails to finish strongly. The anagrams of sixties bands were right up my street, and I thought that the format was generally reasonably innovative. Low point was my piqued behaviour in respect of the Hull question, but the 2-0 win for the Mighty Whites cheered me up no end. Enjoyed sinking a few Guinness as well.

 

Wednesday: Had a real blast at this one. Possibly because the questions were condensed into a relatively short space of time. Girls, Wine, Quiz App and Darts, what’s not to like? Slightly surprised that somebody aced the jeopardy equivalent round, but pleased with our celebrity recall.

 

Thursday: Back on familiar territory. I really think this quiz is improving weekly, the more general knowledge based rounds replacing Top 10 etc. can only be a good thing. Total strategy breakdown on the KFC question, all the less excusable in my case given that I was sober. Rarely have I seen Robson so jaded as half way through this event, certainly not before closing time at any rate.

 

A stamina sapping success overall, but don’t mind if I never hear a Valentine themed question again. Would do the Windsor again, and possibly The Oval with a full complement of Hounds sometime.

 

Kevster

 

It is said that a week is a long time in politics but no-one ever says what it is in quizzing because no-one, in the history of the world*, has ever quizzed for a week.  Until now.  Kind of.  So, a long time?  Or not?  Well, by way of auto-interview, let's see...

So, Kevster, are you glad it's over?
Yes.  And no.  Hopefully that's clear enough...

What were your highlights?
Sunday's Roast Ox crisps, Wednesday's wine and darts, the battered onion rings that wouldn't have looked out of place around Saturn, three epic 'warm chicken salads', walking out of The View to the closing strains of Kirsty MacColl's wonderful 'New England' and the Oval's beautiful birthday brunette

Were there any low points?
Averaging over two hours a day on a bus for five days, forgoing two post-quiz epic 'warm chicken salads' and Monday's bizarre excursion to Middle Earth replete with an array of characters that Tolkien himself would've considered too outlandish

Favourite moment of the 5 in Five?
Early in Thursday's proceedings - D2 pulling 'bulldozer' out of the ether when the collective Hound's entire focus had been fruitlessly 'on it' for five full minutes

Would you do another 5 in Five?
Yes, as long as Middle Earth wasn't on the itinerary.

Can you summarise the 5 in Five in five words?
Two wins and three losses
More answers right than wrong
Pubs, buses, beer, quizzes, blogs
Yes that's actually fifteen words...

Thank you Kevster.

My pleasure.

* probably

D2

There's more to life than quizzing but not much more.

When a man is tired of quizzing he is tired of life.

I think that sums it up neatly if not obliquely.

 

My highlights? In no particular order;

1) Graham's onion rings

2) Graham's pork scratchings

3) Graham's lift home on Thursday 
4) the Alan Partridge quote session brought on by Duncan

5) ignoring government advice with regards to units and probably having a whole week's allowance by 8 o clock on a nightly basis

The lowlights?

1)2)&3) Duncan, Duncan's voice, everything Duncan has ever said or done. A plague on the house of Duncan.

4) missing the 127 to Coulsdon by such a small margin that I was then forced to chase it across Purley whilst there remained a glimmer of a hope that I could still catch it

5) Robson's unhelpful text messages after said incident with bus.

All in all a memorable week and congratulations are in order for my fellow team members.

Here's to the next one! 

5 in Five - Chapter Five - Let Sleeping Hounds Lie...

Thursday 12th February 2015
The Purley Arms, Croydon
(written by Steve and posted on his behalf)

As a preamble to the main event, having had a long and arduous week of quizzing the majority of the Hound were, to use a word “jaded”, 60% of us had been in for the 5 day long haul with D2 and myself only managing 3 of 5 due to other commitments.

We all assembled at the usual Thursday night haunt of the Purley Arms with an enthusiasm that can only be described as functional. However the usual pre-match libations perked most, if not all, into game mode.

Round 1

Rather than the usual picture round it was a Dingbats type round, of which 9 out of the possible 12 were dispatched with ease. Two more were added with lateral thinking from both G-Force and Daren. Down to the last, which pictured a bull, and the words “Rip Van Winkle”. After numerous shouts of Bull ….. (write your own answer) and an almost conceding Bull Sh#t!, Daren piped up with Bulldozer, RVW being a very tired man!

Round aced and onto..

Round 2 – British Isles

An eclectic mix of longest river, longest motorway, railway station in Bristol and various Island based questions, the only stumper was the prison upon which the Old Bailey is now sited. Various shouts of “I know it’s not right but Highgate”, “Aldgate” led us to the path of Newgate. Again, another clean sweep of points.

Round 3 – Valentines

Oh valentines, what a week to choose to do a 5 in 5. If we collectively hear another question with the word love in it, it will be too soon.

Various love based questions, which to be fair, were far more diverse than the previous offerings this week. The only one which didn’t have full support from the team was the question: who wrote the poem with the line “My love is like a red, red rose” Daren touted Robert Burns and was overruled by majority rule to Shakespeare. Of course he was correct and 9 out of 10 in that round.

Round 4 – Connections

This round started with the name of the world’s highest waterfall, which is Angel Falls. The Hound as usual tried to pre-empt the connection after one and various answers including footballers ensued. Second question was who wrote Trainspotting, being Irvine Welsh (I knew I was right with the spelling of his first name!) the penny started to drop. Confirmation was achieved with the third question which was the alternative name of the flying fox (fruit bat) which affirmed our belief that they were all cakes. Dundee, Sponge(bob) Squarepants, Marble just added fuel to our own personal fire. The only answer missed was the Northumbrian dish layered with chees potatoes and onion which, apparently is a Pan Haggerty!? 9 out of 10 again then.

3 pointers

The questions were: What vehicle made it’s first channel crossing in 1959, the largest castle in Britain, and who played Philo Beddoe in two films.

The first was easy enough, however debate ensued around the castle whilst I slipped into archive mode for the third.

Caernarvon was put with Windsor being the right answer and my caveat of a very famous actor but the best I have is Robert De Niro, was incorrect as I’m sure Clyde the orang-utan would vouch as not his co-star.

So 20 points dropped with half the quiz to play, which maybe started to make some of the Hound twitchy.

A half time conversation as to why Koreans etc shouldn’t farm and eat cats and dogs ensued which pulled in the Japanese and their predilection of hunted most sea born fish / mammals. We swiftly moved round to thoughts of the week and the over-riding memory was Monday and Duncan. Oh Duncan! His north Norfolk radio style self-promoting pre-recorded messages and his effing desk bell will live long in the memory.

Round 6 – Who’s backing group

A fairly abstract 10 questions to which Graham had all the answers. A couple even predicted in advance by the remaining Hounds. 10 out of 10

Round 7 – Jeopardy

And now to the contentious round;

The first 9 questions were answered with 100% surety and Daren even remarked that “I’d forgotten it was the jeopardy round” so sure were we of all the answers. And then came the final bombshell question: The first name of Colonel Sanders.

Not having the foggiest, Daren and myself were keen to swerve this one and hopefully take the 18 points from the answers we had put on which we were confident. Perhaps blasé after a war of attrition with various quizmasters and the feeling that we had to play catch up given the 20 points dropped earlier, our views were overruled and Franklyn was put. In my own mind on count-back, I thought we could survive with just the 18 but as we always do, majority rules.

Sure enough we got 9 but Harland David Sanders can go do one!

Round 8 and the music round.

Traditionally and as far as I can pretty much remember, the Hound normally get 85% from this round, however again we nailed every answer.

The chocolate question? I haven’t the foggiest as I was seeing a man about a dog! Ladies and the Tramp were victorious though.

So to the scores, the winning score was 153, we scored 148 and were third. On revisiting we only actually got 5 questions wrong in the whole quiz, but the winning or losing is around the relative position tipping point.

The week's prize money from all quizzes, £9 from Sunday and £19.50 from Tuesday, was donated to the local Scouts.  Sorry we couldn't have treble that pot.  Like Rip Van Winkel I think that the collective Hound will be sleeping for a very lengthy period.
 

5 in Five - Chapter Four - When Love Takes Over...

Wednesday 11th February 2015

The Oval Tavern, Croydon

  

And so, the end is near. The Hound has travelled the length and breadth of the Surrey/South London border, taking on all comers. We’ve faced joy and elation and tasted glorious victories and also plumbed the depths of despair and that Duncan idiot. In years to come, men will talk of the journey made by the Hound in 2015 in hushed tones and wonderment.

 

Chapter IV took us to the Oval Tavern and East Croydon where no doubt new challenges would be faced by the Hounds in attendance being Graham, Kevster and myself. Our opposition included a team who ejected Kevster from his seat claiming it was “their regular table and couldn’t win otherwise”, a young staffie accompanying one team and three foxy types on the table next to us, the least attractive of whom was a vast improvement on anyone else we’ve seen all week.

 

Kevster – a picture here would work well.

 

 The Oval Tavern dartboard... 

 

The quiz mistress would be Wendy, known by us from when she was out of her tree once at the Farmers and running the Green Dragon quiz. The theme for the night, factoring in the date would be love and Valentines. More love frankly than we would ever need. Would this play to our strengths? Right.

 

The first round was tenuously valentine themed, who designed Liz Hurley’s safety pin dress*, what was Kate Winslet’s character name in Titanic etc*. Curiously we got both of those, though I was required to undertake an exercise in self-flagellation for knowing the latter. Next up connections, not a desperately opaque connection (flowers, ah!) but it meant lots of head scratching on which writer was both played by Dame Judy and Kate Winslet (Winslet again!) in a film*. Finally for the first half, Valentines trivia. My main memory from this and indeed the whole quiz was it featured lots of Greeks – Aphrodite, Eros, Adonis, Narcissus, Stavros, Aristotle. Fortunately Graham had some distant memory of a classical education and frankly having had some of it in Cyprus, he ought to and helped steer us through.

 

Wendy was fair rattling through the quiz and the half time round was loads of celebrity couples. We did ok here, failing to distinguish Abbey Clancy from Patsy Kensit and not getting Bieber’s and Affleck’s other halves being failures*. Kevster came up with a cracking comment of “Adrian Chiles is punching above his weight there” which did make me think what that would mean for those two characters in the Woolpack.

 

Love themed Wipeout would follow, we hesitated on two more Greek fellas before our failure to have a clue on who played Spiderman’s love interest* put the entire kibosh on the round. Still picked up eight though, including a bonus for who had the hit with the title song of the blog, including featured vocals*.

 

Last up – love based music and love was truly all around – although that wasn’t included. Why Can’t This Be Love, Easy Lover, When I Fall In Love certainly were. How much love can a man take in one night? Results – well, it won’t surprise anyone that love didn’t really do it and we limped in third. Annoyingly though, it was the team who ejected Kevster that won, the advantage clearly being in the table.

 

Wendy clearly doesn’t get paid by the hour and we were all done by about 9.30 so naturally an early night and recover our strength for the last night? Er no, Kevster suggested getting into the love thing by sharing a bottle of wine and one led to another and another. A game of darts was a slightly more macho pursuit, won by me naturally, plus a fair bit of Quiz Up and exacting our revenge on various unsuspecting souls around the world.

One to go.
 

 

Some wine, spotted earlier...

 

 

*  Gianni Versace, Rose Dawson, Iris Murdoch, Kirsten Dunst, Selena Gomez and Jennifer Garner, David Guetta and Kelly Rowland