Well below par Hound

Just myself and Robin. Quiz relegated to the Pool Table area due to England-Neth game. It’s on our screen as well but about 45 seconds behind which proves useful whenever it becomes apparent that something has occurred.

10 statues to identify first up. We only missed no. 8 with Robson a lot closer than me. Emmeline Pankhurst not Molly Malone. Other answers available on application.

Below par on current affairs, BA have resumed flying to Pakistan not Egypt, tourist boat crash in Venice not Budapest, Sainsbury not Waitrose acting quicker on plastic packaging for fruit & veg, and a couple of others including who won BGT. Passed me by that one.

Round 3 was fictional dogs, although I’m fairly sure Blue Peter was real. Went well at first but finished weakly failing to get The Perishers as the cartoon strip with a dog called Boot and couldn’t remember Wellard as being Robbie Jackson’s dog in Eastenders. Some controversy over what was the second BP dog, she wanted Shep as the answer but Patch had a lot of support as well. Didn’t affect the final result.

No real probs with the this week in history round even getting Chicago as the US city introducing an elevated railroad in 1892.

From here on in we weren’t really in the hunt starting with 10 points dropped here.....

Colin Powell not Madeline Albright was the US Secretary of State immediately prior to Condaleeza Rice. 2 of 4 teams got it right.

Short break as England flail defensively and a close offside call is given after VAR intervention. Cue the hardest Chain Letters round ever bar none. Pretty much all food and drink based we didn’t get...

The second one is a Mexican dish using corn based dough and wrapped in banana leafs called Tamale. The final one apparently stinks to high heaven in its uncooked form, but gives a similar flavour to using garlic or onion. Siobhan suggested that we get both the words fetid and fetish from this condiment which is also known as Devil’s Dung! We also missed cappuccino due to having the wrong first letter and a lack of understanding of coffee in general.

It would have taken an immaculate Jeopardy round to rescue this one and five questions answered even though correct ain’t immaculate. We might have had an outside chance if we had anything on 

Danny Dyer’s character name in Eastenders but we didn’t. I thought that he was a Mitchell but it was Mick Carter, well avoided. We skirted around the correct answers for the others that we skipped and probably wouldn’t have got them all. 

We only missed Alana Morrisette’s song name in the music round, it was Hand in My Pocket.

Final Scores were Anoraks 120, Hound 125, Lady & Tramp 141, King Kongs Balls 144. Given that Anoraks crashed and burned in the Jeopardy round we definitely flirted with last place. However they did deserve this fate for thinking that Daniel extracted a thorn from a lions paw! 

Wizz Hound

Briefest of blogs this week due to exam marking commitments but to confirm the Hound fund stands at £140.80 after last week's fund. Assuming we're quorate next week there's another £25.50 to fund a couple of rounds after a stunning Hound win. If one question clinched the deal, it was getting Wizz Air being Hungary based not Iceland as put by the Anoraks to complete the Jeopardy. Go Hound!

Winning Hound

Well, a lot to get through this week. The quiz won't take long though as I have no notes and no memory.

Though I do remember this fella turned up in round 1 which was mainly Ds.

Key point though was Hound win, we didn't attempt the jeopardy, settling for 8 but with a gun against our heads we'd have got it so that can't be bad.

Right, onto the Maundy Thursday research that was promised around the A25/Redhill to Guildford trainline. Frankly Friday wasn't the warm sunny day for the cycle ride around the Surrey Hills that I was hoping for. But off I headed regardless. Much of it was new territory for me and the road signs weren't helping.

But I headed off regardless, covered a fair few miles and propose the following:

Kick off with the 11.30 train from Redhill to Shalford. Shalford has 3 pubs all within 0.3m of the station, The Seahorse, The Queen Victoria and The Parrot. Something for everybody. Arrivees from Sutton can intercept at Dorking or go straight there via Guildford.

Other stations with pubs are Chilworth, with the Percy Arms very close and Gomshall with the Compasses and Gomshall Mill both within about 0.2m of the station. Fine places all of them.


Now extending options further, the Number 32 bus follows the route and brings in fine places like Shere and the Drummond at Albury. E.g. from Chilworth.

You'll see they don't run desperately late but have the advantage of depositing us in Dorking to finish rather than the more distant Dorking Deepdene.. More great pubs are further out in the sticks. I tapped the Uber App though when I was out to be greeted with nothing, we ain't in London here. The absolute finest though was one I passed on the bike between Albury and Shere, the William IV. Magnificent.

Something to consider I trust, feedback welcome.

In other news Daren, Graham and myself are chewing over a Hound USA road trip. More to come on this.


Stay frosty.

Vintage Hound

D2 managed to lose the requisite 2 lbs last week so we were 3.

Pictures beginning with E, nowhere to go wrong really.

Only 2 missed in the current affairs round, one about 3 schoolgirls defacing a banknote with the president of Burundi on it, and one about a large ‘donation’ to secure a place at Yale uni.

Heaven or hell round we missed 3. Sean Lock compared ‘TV Heaven, Telly Hell’ on C4, the 3rd Hellraiser film was called ‘Hell on Earth’, and this superhero is called Hellboy.

Full marks on questions about 2008, and thanks to a Lewis Hamilton question D2 bagged the right year. Oh, sorry we missed Usain Bolt setting a 100m world record, we put Maurice Greene.

Hardest ten pointer was nailed, David Bowie and Guy Pearce both played Andy Warhol on screen.

Chain letters no problem except we didn’t know Mrs Doubtfire’s Christian name, Euphegenia!

For the second week in a row we went all in on the Jeopardy, but this time we got it. We weren’t totally sure that eBay uses the slogan buy-it, sell-it, love-it but not many other contenders and it was right. The one that really sealed was identifying ‘Rollercoaster’ as a number one hit for...

 B*witched. Anoraks busted on this one. All bar one in the music round and a win with a score of 174.

A nice bottle of red shared at the end. Maundy Thursday is fast approaching and Robin is the routefinder for a propose A25 crawl ending in Dorking.

Another possible road trip was also raised, to be discussed further.

Pre Cheltenham Hound

Not quite the first quiz for me for a while but I've missed more than I've made recently so great to be back there. Chelsea took the starring role in the pub though so we were all relegated to back round the pool table.

Just Graham and myself so a picture round on film characters was hardly up our alley. Not so tough though and we took a relieved 9, just Charles Xavier, unsurprisingly, escaping us.

Onto current affairs and this got very guessy. So its 2 locks of hair that the British Museum is returning to Ethiopia, Air India who require announcers to hail the Motherland (Jai Hind!) and the new Barbie doll is none of LGBTQ+ but merely Maori. Rather a let down. But we plumped successfully at a few including which sleb is accused of not sending some kids to school.

Rather unconventionally, music would prove to be round 3. Fairly standard fare, we only really had to get out the guessing trousers for which Spice Girl released an album called Schizophonic. Well, this one.

So next up was guess the year. Having got a good handle on it with when the Rubik's Cube was launched, none of the other questions really helped that much, other than maybe nudging us back so we went with a traditionally one year out approach and 1979. Some tougher questions in there, a theme that continued with the ten pointers. It was Eric Bana who played the Hulk, or rather confusingly, his character of Bruce Banner. Pyrosis is heartburn as well which we may have had before, not literally though.


So halfway and behind the 8 ball, would the link-ups round help? Well we linked them up but probably not really, working out a tomato could be a nightshade plant finally joined the dots.

What a useful plant!

So we needed to nail the Jeopardy, well 3 questions vexed us:

- which is the only World Capital that begins with I?

- what reality programme did Mark from Take That win in 2002?

- Whose oppo includes Sandman and Green Goblin?.

Well, it took a world tour for Graham to arrive in Islamabad but the other two were 50/50 at best so we parked it. Bah.

Some more modern music for a change, Maroon 5, Rita Ora, which probably helped us as much as everyone else and a Hound 2nd resulted, fair play to the team with Pete's brother in law for bagging the jeopardy.

Ok, next week, it all happens.

4 Days of Cheltenham!
No pub quiz! But apparently a really good Irish Band instead
Mansfield away at Crawley!

Not sure I can wait that long.