Radio Hound

Coming to the airwaves soon, Radio Hound;

A typical days programming might look as follows....

10.30-12.00: Siobhan's quiz hour, 50% extra free.

12.00-16.00: G-Force presents 'Eclectica' where Nasenbluten and Thrash Metal get an airing next to Grime, New Orleans Bounce, Klaus Wunderlich and Jimmy Shand accordion favourites.

22.00: Kevster's sexual health phone-in.

Late til later: 'Hot Night with Robson'.

If Partridge's people play ball we could also resurrect the successful Radio Norfolk show 'Radio Quiet'. Gentle prog rock just doesn't get enough FM airtime.

I may have misplaced a bit of paper with Daren's programing? Might have been his suggestion to have Bake-off on the radio, a sure fire ratings winner after all. I think that Louis offered to make his famous chilli piccalilli for one such programme. Other Hounds are invited to suggest contributions that they can make to any free slots.

On more mundane topics (but not much more) Daren may have been sacked without anybody telling him, he's looking a lot better but has bad blood and possibly a faulty neck. Bad blood within Kevster's family may at long last be having a hatchet buried in it. A 28 stone Christmas diner had to rely on a £120 doggie bag from Silvermere Gold Club. Robson is Menton bound hanging out with the jet-set. Oh yes, and I completed my tax return for 2015-16, it doesn't get much more cutting edge than that.

There was a quiz somewhere amongst all of this chicanery, and Hound completed a first hat-trick for some time. 8 teams this week, and all of the others have yet to break their 2017 duck.

Can't upload the picture round as somebody scribbled on it. Supposedly random celebs seemed to have a definite bird theme, Jay Leno, Robin VP, Sheryl Crowe, Flo Nightingale etc...

The following summarises some of the key points pictorially, 3 ten-pointers and all Jeopardy round questions answered correctly.





 




 







Dan Quayle.
Temple of Hackney vegan chicken shop.
Giants Causeway, co. Antrim
Albus Dumbledore, Macarthur Park
Summer Pudding
Winken, Blynken & Nod.
Book of the Play.
Cornershop.

It only remains to add a thought for the day;

How DO I keep my eclairs hard?

Snow Bound Hound

Making our way through the snow this week, the team looked something like:

Or maybe not but an excuse to show cute dogs.

We were numerically disadvantaged against the other teams with just Graham and myself so we needed the questions to go our way. Instead we got this.

Now Graham's knowledge of car badges is almost as bad as mine and the amount of writing on the sheet gives a clue as to what we knew, and one of those was wrong. Eventually we struggled to a score just under what a ten year old might get on his own with Graham managing to get Pontiac from somewhere.

So back of the field after the first fence, we had some catching up to do. Well we bagged it was Norway turning off their FM signals and Japanese hackers were stealing fingerprints from social media sites but thought a camel and not a snake had grounded a plane from Oman and the Russians not the Chinese were introducing a cut-off year of birth for a legal ban on tobacco so still back of the field probably.

A cheer from Graham greeted the announcement that the next round was geography and a perfect 20 resulted, with last year's canoeing holiday reminding us that Hereford is the only city on the River Wye.

Onto connections and we moved even further onto home territory. Answers such as Alexander Armstrong, Eric Idle, Sir IanMcKellen were all a bit posh and a bit intellectual and we were on the right track quickly. It possibly is the first connection round that I could have been a part of so no excuses there.

Ten pointers and we picked up one over the Anoraks here by knowing Anna-Frid from Abba was Norwegian, think they went for Denmark and we finished the first in a lot healthier position than we started it. Cue sustaining cheese based snacks.

Onto link-ups and for once we didn't need too much back-solving to join up the chains, on question 10 we needed to link "Delphi" back to "Opaque". Graham had gone with Idaho and myself Indigo. 6th colour of the rainbow! Hurrah!

Now onto the Jeopardy, we'd obviously dropped marks on the car round but pulled back on the ten pointers. The consensus was an un-gettable jeopardy round would probably suit us today. "Who played the station master in the Railway Children" was indeed that question, at least for us. It did Graham a chance to mention Jenny Agutter's performance more times than is probably healthy so...

The girl on Jenny's left anyone? Other than that question, a relatively confident nine.

Onto music and Gerry excelled himself this week, nothing after about 1986 but that's when music stopped in reality. So the marks, King Kong Balls, Busters and LATT well off the pace, Anoraks 149, Hound 152! Back to back wins from a frankly dreadful start. One for the diaries, Scout quiz on the 11th March, probably the Saturday before Cheltenham. Lets finish with a picture from Hound Towers.

Perfect 2nd-half Hound.

The title probably indicates that we did ok, but to keep some suspense we did miss two ten-pointers.

1. What fruit grows on a banyan tree - our best guesses were bread fruit or pineapple both wrong.
2. What joint in the human body is known as the coxa - we said wrist with no conviction, we were right to have no conviction.

Only myself and Robson present, Happy New Years all around from the other 6 competing teams who all appeared as if by magic just when we were starting to think maybe there won't be a quiz.



Christmas pleasantries were also exchanged, Robson had a festive trip to the pub pictured above, which claims to be the oldest pub in England. He also raised the subject of Fancy Free walks which I think warrants further investigation. A quick game of my new favourite QuizUp topic called Buchstabensalat, and on with the quiz.

 

 

Trouble with my scanner, so just a hand-held photo with rotational issues. All died in 2016, we missed 1. which was the guy who played Grizzly Adams on TV. I didn't think that Kris Kristofferon had died but it was the best that I could offer. Didn't get 8. either, big up to anyone who can get it from this angle, or any other for that matter. Massive 18 points on the current affairs, with some pretty wild guesses coming in (e.g. Volkswagen topping 2016 auto sales figures in Sweden).

 

Respectable 16 on History, some confusion for me over which Ernie Shackleton Antarctic expedition ship was crushed by ice. Is it Endeavour or Endurance, on googling now I think we got it right so may have been 18 points again. Only out by 1 year on Nelson Mandella's release date from prison. Less than brilliant connections round for us, all were MENSA members which some teams got. CJ De Mooi and Carol Vorderman seem obvious with hindsight but who would have thought Brendan O'Carroll (of Mrs Browns boys fame), Major Charles Ingram and Stormin Norman? We got Brendan's surname wrong and also managed to confuse Thelma and Louise. Absolutely no clue as to the guy on which  Robin Williams' character in Good morning Vietnam was loosely based (Adrian Cronauer).

 

 

 

Answers to ten pointers mentioned above were fig and hip. Such small words for 10 points each.  

 

So, what about that 2nd-half! Chain letters answers were BerliN, NapleS, SaleM, MontreaL, LagoS, Southend-on-SeA, AnorexiA (hastily added once Siobhan realised she only had 9 answers), AppenineS, SueZ, ZagreB. Geography heaven.

 

Not the hardest Jeopardy round admittedly, only the greek goddess of love sounded anything like a potential bear trap until Question 10. Who had a number one hit in 1986 with 'Nothings Gonna Change My Love For You'?  Cue agonised expressions as I can't believe I can't get it, and worse still Robson can't. Right up his alley I thought. I'm pretty sure that it was my wrong offering of Nick Kamen that eventually prompted him to get Glenn Medeiros. A hard fought quiz was won there and then. Full marks on the Music round for a perfect 2nd-half 80 out of 80 points. One tune remained tantalisingly ungrasped after the first round of plays, and only by singing the rest in his head after the second play did Robson come up with 'Hold On' by Wilson Phillips.    

 

        

 

Winners with 19 points to spare from the Anoraks. Busters et al further behind.

 

Picture  8. above is apparently Burt Kwouk, from Pink Panther films and Last of the Summer Wine fame, amongst other things. 

 

Cryptic remark on Robson's note says 'Give My Head Peace', what is that all about? Multiple trains home cancelled, but we stay to closing regardless. It's been a while since a win.

 

G-Force

 

 

 

 



The Hound Who Stole Christmas

Festive greetings from what proves to be the last quiz of the year at the PA of which more later. Making up tonights's team were a Namibian and a Romanian, as defined by drinking nationalities in a BBC thing. Personally, I'm not sure its actually possible to be anything else. By way of clue, here's one of the team:

Christmas justifies a lot of things but....

Once the interlopers in the pub were dispatched we could take up positions and the quiz began. Now, Siobhan gave us a heads up on the theme of Round 1, its not cheating, its taking advantage of available information. So with a quick google and photographic memory these were dispatched:

To be fair, we knew most anyway.

Current Affairs was trickier, the most attended Sporting Event of 2016? Answer given was the Wimbledon Championships, 494,000 over 14 days. Well if we're counting "a championship" why not the Premier League, approx. 300,000 * 38 or single event, London Marathon? Hurrumph.

Food and Drink was Christmas themed but not 100% so. Which type of cheese comes solely from La Mancha? That struck me as very much a filler of a question. Carp for Christmas dinner though? No wonder all those Poles come over here.

On the connections, we were on for the first letter of all the answers spelling "CHRISTMAS" but Kenny Everett swung it back to Xmas birthdays, the way he always seems to. So those crucial 10 pointers, we'd located the labyrinth and who sang "It's Christmas time, there's no need to be afraid.." Who did Sue Nicholls play in Corrie though? Anyone?

Refreshed by a combination of Siobhan's poppy sord shortbread, hot nuts and beer, the second half. The alternate name of the Moluccas Islands detained it for far longer than it really should, otherwise we made relatively short work of them all.

Onto jeopardy and a few vexed us. Was it Curry or Cousins at Lake Placid and who played Lofty Holloway in Arsenders? We were almost resigned to taking an eight when out of somewhere, Tom Watt appeared. A couple of other measured risks and we were going for it! Music, more Christmas themed stuff, we failed to get Cruz Beckham, oh well. So how did we do? Well chicken Marengo proved our undoing, concocted to celebrate a victory in the Napoleonic wars. Tell you what though, it looks good! As was the pub, at its festive best.

Ok, so we didn't win and were third. Those items of business

Next week - The Sun at 12.30 - bring pieces des resistances, plus Steve, please bring some cash
The PA will have a buffet for Thursday regulars, an option?
Or maybe a quiz around Carshalton/Sutton? Kevster, any thoughts

To follow maybe an Inbetweener somewhere, bring ideas and knowledge of suitable days. Sayonara.

Hydroponic Hound

There are those amongst you who probably wouldn't put it past me to claim that we only lost because I forgot my specs. Not so. I never forgot them, they were in my coat pocket all of the time. Anyway, my assistance wasn't really required for the pictures, manually altered film posters. 

A near maximum in the current affairs round, just missing John Key as the new NZ PM. Similarly on the British sitcoms round, we missed only Tyler as Boycey and Marlene's kid in Only Fools and Horses. As expected, Mrs O got one this before I had even finished asking the question.

Connections were airports as follows;

James Stewart - Indiana County, Pennysylvania
Yuri Gagarin - Namibe, Angola.
John Wayne - Santa Ana, California
Cristiano Ronaldo - Santa Cruz, Madeira
Pope John Paul II - Krakow-Belice
Louis Armstrong - New Orleans
Ronald Reagan - Washington
Alexander the Great - Skopje, Macedonia
Frederic Chopin - Warsaw

How did we not get that connection? First 8 answers correct anyway. No further drama with the ten-pointers.

Half-time report: Cameo from Kevster around the mid-quiz break. Daren is keeping himself busy, mostly baking cakes to help pass the time. Our sloe gin has become slow gin and won't be ready until well into the New Year. Steve mysteriously disappeared for quite a while, could it be love? I still bemoaned my "missing" spectacles. Someone hilariously hid D's phone in a Quavers packet, and one of the opposition looked like a house-elf in seasonal knitwear.

                  

Quite a lot of backfilling in the chain letters round but we got there. Hearts, Eclipse, Offenbach and High Chaparral proving to be the trickier ones.

Busters "did" the Jeopardy round to win. We left two out but got the other eight correct, including Joe 90 as the Gerry Anderson creation that worked for WIN, which put paid to the Anoraks hopes (they went for Captain Scarlett). We didn't know that Suzuki make the Gran Vitara, and myositis is also known as 'forget-me-not'. Missed two in the music round, a score of 154 out of 170 (excluding Jeopardy bonus) represents a good night's work, but not good enough. I leave you with an artist's impression of what Daren's cakes might look like;

 

   
The Hound gathering on the 22nd will now be closer to home than originally anticipated, Carshalton seems popular. Apparently Christmas jumpers are suggested for next week's quiz. Up to the individual I guess.

G-Force