Hound Soon Is Now?

Quorate by just after 6 pm, 5 hounds joined by two guest hounds, Mr S and Jane, great fun subsequently had by all.

Q: How do you make a Maltese Cross?

A: If you stretch the definition to include other Mediterranean islanders then trip him up on a flags question would seem to do the trick. As any schoolboy knows the whole island of Malta were awarded the George Cross after WWII leading to the medal itself being depicted on the Maltese flag. Well, I must of been off school when they pointed out that the medal has St George and a dragon on it. Daren guessed it to be fair, even if his logic wasn't 100% correct.

Two birthdays to report, Kevster becoming semi-obtuse before our very eyes, and Steve's coming up  at the weekend on the same day as my nephew. My nephew is getting a LEGO ninjago boulder blaster, Steve may have to settle for a pint at Plumpton races on Sunday. Kev was toasted with two rounds of variously coloured shorts, of the kind that one would normally associate with binging teenagers, purchased from our winnings (apologies for the result spoiler).

Being his birthday, Kevin naturally reminisced, regaling us with tales of lucky heather, god-squad dodging, naked protests and (it says here) hamster squeezes. Robson had problems with the size of his data and appeared quite pixilated and irked at one point. Daren visibly winced when mentioning his latest contact with a rubber glove, before reeling off an impressive list of drugs that he is on that would probably have kept even the Happy Mondays quiet for an hour or two. Steve arrived slightly later then the rest of us having come from something called 'work'. Strange times indeed. I merely reassured everyone that the pig continues to be well looked after chez moi.

There were questions too, relating to Coronation Street characters, dragons, things with a size (big, small, long, little etc.) in their title. Things starting with 'N', songs by Elvis/Freda Payne/Dolly & Creedence. The latter spookily being number one on the very day that Kevster was born, it was the one sometimes misheard as 'There's a bathroom on the right'.  We nailed the 10 pointers and got all of the jeopardy answers including the two that we crossed out. A win by a decent margin.

Today I have mostly been listening to Spear of Destiny and the Cure. Both seem to have a good groundswell of support in the Hound, so many classic songs. As well as Plumpton races notice is duly given of another Hope beer festival next weekend.

Hound In Glove

An early start for me this Thursday. With an error that couldn't even be described as schoolboy, I arrived at the gym without any footwear. This curtailed it all somewhat and consequently I was first in.

Having not been sure of a quorum 24 hours before, it was a pleasure to see all the regulars roll in though Graham didn't make it until 9ish. Daren explained that the jam had oozed out of his doughnut, thought that had happened years ago frankly. Kevster then regaled us with a biblical style tale involving 15,000 of the sugary deep fried jammy things and the London to Brighton bike ride.

The pub was filling up and the oestrogen positively wafted over from the table oposite, someone dropped and smashed a glass, everybody cheered, naturally.

"King" Louis would be this week's quizmaster and announced the picture round would be "name the fruit". Expecting the likes of Stephen Fry, Elton John etc. I was mildly disappointed to see this lot.

Being Louis there was one on the other side, a blackberry I think.

Louis is no respector of convention and round two would be the week in television. So we had

- Who's hosting BBQ Champ? The man v food fella, Adam Richman. Is he?
- What century was Ripper St set in? Never seen it but surely Victorian?
- What is the Lotto Quiz. In it to win it was our best shot but has that finished?Something with the tedious Nick Knowles in probably
- What Saturday night favourite is back. Strictly! Squeals from the table opposite.
- Which Atomic Kitten is in CBB? After Heidi Range I had nothing. Fortunately Steve wrestled Natasha Hamilton from the memory bank. Which bank? I didn't ask.
- Who hosts Room 101- we all knew
- Who's back co hosting with Phil Schofield. Liked Daren's answer of Gordon the Gopher but Holly Willoughby was more pragmatic and at the end of the day, more right
- What TV quiz show does Ben Shepherd host. Who?
- Who's got Champions League? BT sport. Might have to get that.
- Who hosts Eggheads? Did he want Dermot or Jeremy? We put both
- Nothing on Uni Challenge or Only Connect. Isn't VC-M massive though?

Next round and another curve ball from Louis with the connections as round 3. Crazee! It was monarchs of England/UK etc. and they're not an imaginative lot, 8 Henrys and 8 Edwards will testify so it wasn't tough.

Next lakes, inland seas and rivers. Cannon fodder for us Oceans, Lakes and Rivers fiends so on to 10 pointers.

Where was the Magna Carta signed - well technically it was sealed but we all knew.
Whose real name is Royston Vasey - standard quiz fare. Is he actually funny?
What's the church in Barca - Sagrada Familia from Daren. Someone should tell Louis van Gaal this as he's just spent £20m on him.

Round 5 and music anagrams. Here's a picture to save me typing.

Jeopardy and cutting to the chase, it emerged that Graham had a tellytubby a gram for his stag party! Just let that one sink in for a while, it was Po by the way. In terms of the actual quiz, what's a place of worship with a spire on an OS map. I'm probably reading more maps than most, but I also get lost more and ultimately wasn't confident enough to go 1 on 4. Along the way we also struggled with the live wire in a plug but ultimately got there, maybe get the electrician in next time.

Music

I like this picture thing.

Would we win? Daren and myself said no and we were the ones proved right. High scoring though.

You Houndsome Devils

Bit late getting there today, detained on the golf course. Ashleigh was a late replacement for Steve who joined Daren on the injured list. The chocolates she brought along were more than welcome.

Kevster chucked in the Wimbledon 8 as a possible future Hound event, why the hell not? Apparently Ollie Reed managed two laps in one hour forty, we'd struggle to do that as a relay but has to be on the list.

Onto pictures and a bunch of newsreaders to kick us off. Knowing your Kirstys from your Kates would be important here and we kind of failed.

Current affairs and one of the more memorable questions was centred around Jermain Defoe's advert for a PA to water his flowers and grow his global brand. There's a few of us possibly entering the job market soon but somehow that one doesn't quite appeal. Otherwise we did ok, actually we didn't but who'd have known ketchup was rebranded in Israel as tomato seasoning?

Looking at the next round, I guess but don't recall that the theme was 20th century history. Been bashing the history topics in quizup so this was fun. Biafra was a new one for me though and hadn't realised the guillotine was recently abolished ( by Mitterrand ). Here's the pig.

Connections and didn't this prove to be a tricksy round. Frankly reading the answers back myself Barrel, Train, Camel, Dole, Yoke, Army, Wedge, Kindle and Murder it's still not leaping off the page. Collective nouns though was the solution.

Haven't made a note of ten pointers but recall that it was JRR we failed to name. Sure we've had this before, probably will again and still fail. John Ronald Reuel for posterity.

Next round was a list of Ls, think we got them all. Thought, we could revise everything beginning with M for next week? Then again, maybe we won't bother.

Connections and the first question "Name Moe's cat in the Simpsons" kind of put a dampener on things. We didn't know what Grevys or Burchell's was, sounded antelope but proved to be zebra. After Mr Snookhams though, we settled for what we could get and came through unscathed.

Think we got all the music, so it was onto the chocolates question. Now Graham had pre-prepared an answer of 62 so when the question of how many times was Tower Bridge raised in a year, in the absence of anything else, we went with it. Around 1000 apparently, have never seen it.

The results, not an epic Hound performance but one where we'd had to roll up our quizzing sleeves. Cutting to the chase Dave Ja Vu 126, Hound 126 and to add spice, DJV were the team formally known as the Hamsters. So tie-breaker and how many Tolpuddle martyrs were there? We didn't know and went 15, DJV 8, the answer 6. And you know what? They weren't even martyrs. Pathetic.

Well with the senior members of the DJV team about to decamp to Avonwick in Devon, it was all too much. Too young. One more quiz as an L&G employee.

Hound Predictions 2015/16...

Mr Green's

D2's

Mine

Robsons

G-Force

We're on.

I have the table's breaking down the different combination payouts if anyone wants theirs...

配方猎犬

 

Stardate August 6-15 and the away team had landed on a rocky outcrop known as the Purley Arms, frequented by the flotsam and jetsam from all 4 corners of the universe (if the universe indeed does have corners). A ‘wretched hive of scum and villainy’ and that was just our table.

 

Unable to escape we were forced to imbibe some sort of amber liquid, which slowly rendered us senseless, and then subjected to a 2 hour interrogation by the evil empress Sio Bhan.

 

First up was Dingbats. All of which were easily despatched apart from ENTURY *

 

Second round was current affairs, the first of which vexed us no end. Something along the lines of “what have biologists challenged the UK to come up with a top 10 of ?”.

“What madness is this?” I hear you ask 

“Exactly” I reply (I’m not much of a conversationalist)

Biology, as I’m sure you will agree, is a bit of a wide remit ranging as it does from Amoebas to Zebras so we plumped for insects which I believe was right.

 

Round 3, as it’s popularly known, was Cowboys, Indians and Outlaws (I know what I am, but which are you?)

This round’s most vexatious question was what custom did some Indian Tribe introduce? We were torn between scalping and war paint, as is so often the case but it turned out to be Ghost dancing. (For some reason, someone has written ‘Daren Sucks cock’ on the answer paper at this point. I hope it wasn’t me).

 

Round 4 -Loads of various people, Aldrin, Hanks, Murdoch but no obvious connection. Graham postulated, Steve Pontificated, Kevin Conjectured and Robson re-arranged himself, all to no avail. We got it into our heads that they were characters from Toy Story but turns out that they’d all appeared on the Simpsons.

 

10 pointers I think we managed all 3 which, if my maths is correct, equals 30 points (Robson, please confirm). The only one I can remember is Glandular Fever. Another one that I remember is the League of Nations.

 

I have no notes for the second half – the amber liquid was obviously kicking in by that stage.

 

There was a round where every answer started with an I. I think we aced it. Aye, we did.

 

On to the housewives favourite, the Jeopardy round (Jeopardy jepərdē –Noun = danger of loss, harm, or failure: synonyms: in danger · in peril) If I’d known any of this, I wouldn’t have entered, I’m not sure my Insurance covers me for this.

Anyway, enough of such ramblings, we swerved one question on the basis that we had the 3 x 10 pointers in the bag (It is 30 isn’t it Robson?). Much to Steve’s chagrin it turned out that the proposed answer of Hurling was actually right but no matter, onto the music. 

 

I cannot recall any of the music but helpfully at this stage someone has added to the notes “Daren is a Puff”. I know what you’re thinking - but who did the original?

 

Scores ranged from 80 – 154 with the Hound managing one of those.

 

Robson bought me a vodka to celebrate and then I woke up to the alarm telling me it was 6:10. Had it all been some weird dream? Tune into next week’s episode to find out.

* Long time no C