Gurdwara Hound

Great to have the full band together this week. Steve took the lead role, Kevster on guitar, Daren on bass, Graham on drums while I contented myself with flicking a tambourine and the occasional doo-wap backing vocals. With the quiz under threat, a show of strength from our brigade was required.

An odd mix of celebrities for round 1, including Pope Benedict, Margaret Thatcher and Helmut Kohl. Maybe that's what pub quizzes are like in Germany. Donaudampfschifffahrtselektrizitätenhauptbetriebswerkbauunterbeamtengesellschaft anyone?

After a break there was enough news to drum up a current affairs round. We had been watching Wimbledon so knew about the flying ants and Venus's pink bra. But Laura Ashley and not TK Maxx isn't a great place to work and the Italian priest was courting punters with wine and not reward points.

So expecting a round on Cult TV - instead we had America. We weren't to be flustered though, knowing Pearl Harbor was attacked in December and the Waltons was based on Spencer's Mountain.

Billy Ray - an American

So would Cult TV form the connection? You know what, it almost could with June Carter, Danny Glover and John Wayne. Someone's going to have to help me out here, what was the connection?

Ten pointers - bit tricky here but Basho prevailed as a sumo tournament, Jimmy Stewart's character in Wonderful Life may also have appeared here.

Onto the linkups and this fellow?

Rich Uncle Pennybags apparently; not really important, monopoly and we were on our way.

Right, jeopardy and while five heads are unquestionably an advantage, it means five opinions bombarding Steve in the scribe role. Was gurdwara Buddist? Is it a beagle or a basset promoting Hush Puppies? and what did that Francis Galton fellow invent? Quite a lot actually, his Wikipedia entry describes him as:
Sir Francis Galton, FRS was an English Victorian statistician, progressive, polymath, sociologist, psychologist, anthropologist, eugenicist, tropical explorer, geographer, inventor, meteorologist, proto-geneticist, and psychometrician. I barely get time to read the paper between morning coffee and lunch. No wonder he gets this fine bridge named after him.

Galton bridge

Decisions were made and stuck with.

Music and other than confusion between the Mixtures and Mungo Jerry, fairly routine. Right, for once we'd maximised our jeopardy score, writing down our right answers and eschewing the wrong ones. Hurrah! Win for the Hound! Could be one of the last £50s that goes in the coffers, lets hope not eh?

Points of business:

- Hold 23rd September - I think. Pete's birthday, the big one.

- Given this and Plumpton is the day after, what about a return to Fontwell on the 10th September?

- Open at Hound Towers if anyone fancies it in two weeks?

That's my lot.

Grizzly Hound

First things first. The PA quiz is under threat due to diminishing attendance. We could move on but it is a good quiz and not many places offer £50 first prize. If we can get a few of us out next week may at least mean a stay of execution.

Only three teams this week, a full complement of Ladies & Tramps, Busters who had dwindled to 1 by the end, plus myself and Robson.

Board games up first, par score of 7 out of 10. We missed Cranium, Sorry! and one other. Unremarkable current affairs round, though not quite sure how Robson persuaded me to put trousers for what the speaker had said was unnecessary in the House of Commons.

Rd 3 is "Cult TV". No it isn't, it's famous duos. Cult TV will apparently come up next week so feel free to swot up. Phil & Don, Sooty & Sweep, Mork & Mindy, Black & Decker etc.

Connections had a familiar feel from way back, all cricketing terms. Oldest gentleman's club in London, 1949 film featuring character Harry Lime etc. We missed rapper with birth name Tracy Lauren Marrow. Ice-T not 50 Cent, still think that ours was the better cricketing term.

10 pointer missed, middle band on German flag is red not yellow. Got a feeling that we've got this wrong once before. R comes before Y in Germany, that's how I will remember it from now on. No damage done apparently, other teams got it wrong too.

Had to break sweat a little in the chain letters, didn't get that ahi/albacore are types of tuna straight away, had to amend apocalypse to Armageddon to keep the chain going, and had to dig deep for the space shuttle that never took off. Even first UK frozen food in 1937 was a bit of a guess.

Bear Traps did for us in the Jeopardy round. We fell for two. Who was the successor to Annabel Croft in Treasure Hunt? And, the release of which hostage was campaigned for by Jill Morrell? To compound this we left out two innocent correct answers suspecting bear traps that weren't there. The real life couple who played husband and wife in the 1996 film Matilda anyone?

Music round perfunctory, win for Lady & Tramps by 8 points (German flag q would have been enough). Bag of toffees went to someone who knew how many las were in the 1996 Spanish euro entry.

Answers not given above as follows;

Ties
Whites
The Third Man
Enterprise
Asparagus
Suzy Perry
John McCarthy
Danny de Vito & Rhea Perlman.

Support is growing for a Sunday recce to The Wattenden quiz. Daren, over to you for suggested dates. Possibility of another afternoon at Robson Towers for the final day of The Open, 23 July.

G-Force

Cheese Loving Hound

News from the team this week; Daren's picture has arrived from New Zealand, Graham has located the water source in his garden and my mother will be visiting. We don't really get up to much.

Pictures were "G" items, grapes, guitar, you get the idea. Very much a gentle warm up.Again, no current affairs this week on the quite reasonable grounds that there wasn't much. So "name the year" of various events. Those tripping us up were the first National Lottery draw and Concorde's last flight. Both quite recent but not that momentous. We weren't really close.

Concorde. Really is quite a lovely thing.

Next round was science. Pleasing naturally but I stumbled over the first in not recognising Newton's Law of universal gravitation, ah, the shame. We got on track though, recognising the small intestine is longer than the large one and that we should have 32 teeth but failing on the pistil rather than anther being the female part of a flower.

Connections jumped out quite quickly, answers such as Flash Gordon, The Tide is High and Aerial leaving us nowhere else to go. Still didn't get the Death card in a pack of playing cards or Jan & Dean's number one though - although we were close.

The only card you need.

Ten pointers reasonably dispatched and a draw of breath at halfway. Snacks were chicken nuggets and entertainment was from the US Open golf.

Here's the Erin Hills card. Safe to say they'll be off the blacks. 7800 yards! That could well be further than I go on my holidays.

I digress, back to the quiz and those chain letters. Alcatraz was linked with Zloty which followed on to Ypres and it all linked back to consommé. Which was nice.

Jepoardy kicked off in fairly gentle fashion but it took a real team effort to nail Klaus Barbie as the Butcher of Lyon, which is probably what it took in reality. Now we had only one blank, what is a turophile? This could be critical, entomology and etymology were used to their maximum effects but we weren't getting there. It was with a heavy heart that we left it blank.

One gap in the music was followed by a rare Hound win on the nearest the pin round (what is SCRABBLE worth in Scrabble)? We expected a high scoring contest and the lowest score was 123. The highest? Hound with 159! Turophile, well the blog title gave it away didn't it?

Until next week, but apologies from me, out of the area.

Call Us What You Like, Hound!

A few drinks with the boys uptown, and back to the PA during the picture round to join a lonesome Robson...

All pictures beginning with F, we failed to identify a close-up of a flip-flop. A straw poll of 3 at home and they all get it within a few seconds. We got fennel though far from sure.

No written record of Round 2 exists in any known archives, not even sure if we had a current affairs round? We got 7 out of 10 is all I can ascertain.

Rd 3: Politics. 5000 was our only incorrect answer, I think it referred to lost deposits and should have been 500. Father was a trapeze artist, female speaker, first PM, Tory Chelsea fan, that kind of standard quiz question.

Connections  were all terms for prison, we only got it fairly late but considered drugs based on fix and Rock at first. Cage, Nick, Bird etc sorted it out..

2 out of 3 ten pointers but nobody admits to getting Oliver McCall as vanquished by Frank Bruno in 1995 for a world heavyweight title. We proposed Bonecrusher Smith.

A full bag for the chain letters round, working hard to get Ryan's DaughteR (John Mills oscar winning film), and SucculenT (something to do with water absorbing trees).

The first question in the Jeopardy round ensured that we weren't playing for the bonus points. What American Art Nouveau designer was famous for his stained glass works and lamps? We only left one other out but seems unlikely that anyone will get ten.

Music generally well within our comfort zone, think I identified the wrong Ronettes song, and we mistook Eminem for something completely different.

Siobhan reveals that someone has indeed got all 10 for the Jeopardy. The usual reverse order sees all our principal competitors come below us in our creditable second place. Wait a minute, she hasn't mentioned "Call Us What You Like". The young 'uns with two more mature guests, only a couple of weeks married, eschew tradition to top the heap. Surely someone's mum their mystery 4th member will be asked back after this stunning debut. A more than popular result in the house with all teams.

Tiffany was the US designer, yes I have heard of the lamps.

Boisterous Hound

Firstly, all the best to regular quiz-mistress Siobhan, struck down with a yet unknown ailment. In her place, "Brother" Louie brought his own brand of running proceedings to the night. Steve and G-Force were off on European holidays, if they were looking for better weather, they'd have done well to find it as a glorious day. Boost up some of those slacking Euro cousins on the blog stats guys.

Right, almost inevitably with Louie we kick off with something Disney like or that sort of thing. This week, cartoon characters e.g.

Green Lantern. Daren picked up this particular ball and took it pretty much to the end zone.

Next up, a not too challenging general knowledge round. No point looking for hidden demons here, the first commercial monorail was indeed Japan and the J in JRR Tolkien stands for John. Next up, names of dogs. Names note, rather than breeds so the dogs in Oliver Twist, Blue Peter, Famous 5 etc. We wouldn't really be doing justice to the team name if we didn't get ten here.

Timmy the dog. I've always pictured him as a golden lab but how wrong can you be?

Louie continued to mess with our heads by making Food and Drink round 4. Not too much around the ears here and I think another ten, our old friend the Harvey Wallbanger making an appearance. He did stick to form with the ten pointers though, the only one really vexing us being the Queen's job in WWII. We'd put ambulance driver, t'internet says truck driver but I think this is pretty conclusive. Think any sort of driver got the points.

HRH

The next round was the connections. Well, they were clearly all films but what links Blade, Austin Powers, Alien, Naked Gun.... They all spawned trilogies, credit again to D2 for that one.

The jeopardy required some careful treading and that's what it got from us. 41 in Roman Numerals, the official language of Iran and a definition of conchology? I think with a gun to our collective heads we get them all but enough doubt existed for discretion to prevail.

Can't remember much of the music, oh, I'll throw this picture in for Graham to try and name?

And that gents, was that. Outcome? A win by a cosy ten points or so, the jeopardy proving beyond everybody (Note to all, I picked up the £50 and will probably spend it at the races today so don't let me get away with that).

Those answers? XLI, Persian and the study of shells. But you knew that.

Adios