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.

George Hound

Just myself and Robson tonight. Two full rounds on Georges including pictures below.

Don’t think any teams got number 6. Clue is that he was in the news a lot during 2017. Answer at end of post. Rest were perfunctory.

Current Affairs seemed ok but only 6 correct. Millicent Fawcett now has a statue  in Parliament Square, a 12 year old Aussie kid went to Bali on his parents credit card, Vodafone are s**t, and Reading has named a bin lorry after Kate Winslet.

A hot streak of 36 correct answers then followed. A round of George based questions included answers such as dragon, ukulele, Desert Orchid and Sulu from Star Trek.

Connection was people featuring in song titles. Robert de Niro, Romeo & Juliet, and backfilling Joan of Arc and Bette Davis. 

Only Buttermilk troubled us at all in the chain letters round.

We weren’t inclined to gamble on the Jeopardy round, especially as we had no idea who played Mr Wormwood in the film version of Matilda. It was this small fella.

Left one other out but had guessed it right. Then vexillogical disaster struck as I mixed these two up...

Jeopardy meltdown consigning us to second place behind Plan. To be fair we would have needed 9 correct to match them. 4 musical points dropped.

We then somehow got into a pensions/financial products conversation with a bystander. Don’t ask me how.

Picture 6 is George Weah, Liberian president. Should have got it with the clue.

G-Force

You Ain't Nothing But A Hound, dog.

Let's cut straight to it, jeopardy round and we had eight answers complete.

We weren't sure of all of those frankly, probably Edward dropped/kicked out of the marines and the largest land predator, by weight, well those polar bears are pretty big and fairly sure Lee Van Cleef was the bad and not the ugly.

But the Nobel Prize that Alex Fleming won? Logically medicine but it had a whiff of bear trap. And the Merchant Navy? Again a red ensign was logical but by no means sure.

How had we got here? Well, we didn't know the first winner of BGT. We tried

But other than Diversity it was the only one we knew?

So chances were with only Graham and myself against the assembled might of the other teams we were trailing. It felt like trading one long shot for a slightly better one. But heck, who wants to die wondering so we went all-in.

We'd performed ok in the rest of the quiz. A fella took a hostage onn an Air China flight with a pen, not a chopstick and someone was billed £930 by Asda for a banana. With a third round of science and nature very much in our ball park, so far so good. The connection being "golf" allowed this lady in on things as well.

Minnie Driver

Somehow this fella made it in as well.

But sandwiched between Nitrous Oxide and goraphobia, that was probably the link-up round. And link-up they did!

So nothing ventured, nothing gained. Ten jeopardy answers submitted. King Kong Balls - 2 remarked there didn't seem to be much in the music round after around 1981. No there wasn't, why might that be?

Its about 700 miles less to the Falklands than we thought, maybe puts in in range for a nice holiday destination? And that wasn't close enough.

So, one by one, the jeopardy answers were ticked off, we'd aced it! And that, was all she wrote.

Untitled #1 Hound

I am Kloot. No, I am Kloot. Donald Sutherland was Klute but I’m not sure that that helps.

Writing this a bit blind having left just prior to the music round with none of the notes. Was very hopeful of a win but apparently it was not to be. If we were beaten by someone getting a Jeopardy bonus then they must have got the star of seventies UK women’s prison series ‘Within these walls’.

Googie Withers no less. Don’t even remember the show. Pretty sure that we got the other nine Jeopardy q’s correct, as well as all 3 ten pointers including this fellow.

Smike from Nicholas Nickleby. This kept up my impressive 100% recent record on Dickens questions. 10 points as well for Luxembourg’s pre Euro currency, the Luxembourg Franc.

 

If the wining team didn’t get the Jeopardy bonus then it must have been down to a poorish first half. Only half marks in the current affairs, but who would have guessed that 2 scouse pensioners would get an Asbo for leaving a welcome mat outside their front door!

A quite baffling connections round as well, still don’t know what the connection was. None of us could remember this lot duetting with Tony Christie on ‘Walk like a panther’.

All Seeing I. Can heartily recommend their collaboration with Phil Oakley, ‘1st Man in space’.

Probably our most glaring error came in the chain letters round. Weekly magazine/paper founded in 1843, starts with E ends in T. How many clues do we need?

That’s about it, fairly sure we would have banged the music round.

In other news, Flightradar24 was voted app of the week, and we can now stop bidding against Daren for Star Wars figures online. He still doesn’t know who is pushing the prices up, but it’s not so funny any more as he may well be declared bankrupt soon.

G-Force

Forgotten Hound

First up, an apology chaps, I chucked out the blogging notes along with other trash this morning. So this is going to have to be from memory, and we know what that's like.

Daren, Graham and myself formed the initial team. And as we were struggling with a set of London landmarks like this one:

In walked Pete. Gaps in the answer sheet were no longer. They might not all have been right, but I think largely they were. Maybe not this one:

Current Affairs. I really can't remember any of the questions or how we did, the news is just so wacky these days. Hard to work what the April Fool joke was last week, could have been anything.

Next round was connections, so not the actual connections round but a round where the connecting theme was the word "connect". Or something.

Then we had the actual connections round and it was wedding anniversary gifts. Now these come up a lot and there are alternatives but here you go.

1ST YEAR: Paper
2ND YEAR: Cotton
3RD YEAR: Leather
4TH YEAR: Fruit & Flowers, or Linen & Silk
5TH YEAR: Wood
6TH YEAR: Iron / Candy
7TH YEAR: Wool/ Copper
9TH YEAR: Pottery
10TH YEAR: Tin/ Aluminum
11TH YEAR: Steel
12TH YEAR: Silk
13TH YEAR: Lace
14TH YEAR: Ivory
15TH YEAR: Crystal
20TH YEAR: China
25TH YEAR: Silver
30TH YEAR: Pearl
35TH YEAR: Coral
40TH YEAR: Ruby
45TH YEAR: Sapphire
50TH YEAR: Gold
55TH YEAR: Emerald
60TH YEAR: Diamond

Think we got the ten pointers for a decent first half, food was chips and onion rings, much appreciated.

Link ups worked pretty well then onto jeopardy. So:

- Dickens book where Mr Brownlow featured?
- The annual sporting event which was the first BBC filmed in 1931?
- The colour seats in the House of Lords?
- Something else?

Well, first we were going 7, then 10! But filming the Boat Race along 4 1/2 miles of river didn't make that much sense, not that it does now. So we settled on nine. But an administrative error made it zero, I say no more.

But it would have had to have been 10 to win, so moot really.

Ok, to reiterate I have four tickets for Epsom Races on the 25th April that cost me nothing. So pencil in if interested.

To next week.