Hound Goes To Cambridge

Have checked trains and prices as follows:

Hoping this comes out ok but DIY otherwise.

The would seem the most cost efficient way of doing things.

Hence if everyone can tap their way to East Croydon ready to go by 9.31am next week, 31st July that sounds the way to go. We have approx. £135 of Hound funds so that can cover the train fares which I'll buy if everyone confirms. Probably going to be Platform 2 but these things can change. Activities for the day can be decided en route, the forecast looks decent.

I also have a CamCard which offers various discounts on the cultural stuff.

Any questions?

Summer Hound

Such a nice day last Thursday that Graham, Daren and myself took it out into the pub "garden" before the quiz. Well, yard the noise of the air conditioning unit and smell from next door's curry house. But still a mighty fine evening.


We're up to P in the list of celeb pictures and things. Good spot to pick out this geezer.

A considerably younger and with more hair version of Patrick Stewart. Plenty of them evaded us, think maybe we stretched it to about 6.

The story that caught my eye on the current affairs round was the Lewis chesspiece sold for £735,000! A single chess piece! Not much use without the other 31; if only they knew a reproduction set was available on Amazon for £145. Some people will just buy anything.

£735,000 please.

Round 3 was Wimbledon based, fairly standard stuff, think we only failed on the name of the ladies ingles trophy, the Venus rosewater dish. Round 4 was on this week in history and we marked the 91st anniversary of sliced bread first being marketed in Chillicothe Missouri. But what else could it be?

Ten pointers, ah here controversy reigned.

Ok, we didn't know the 2nd event in the decathlon, though thinking it through maybe I should have done as I saw some of the decathlon at the 2012 Olympics. But controversially, what was the sportswear firm set up by Herr Dassler in the 1930s?

https://fortune.com/2013/03/22/the-hatred-and-bitterness-behind-two-of-the-worlds-most-popular-brands/

Quite the story and while I can't remember the exact question wording, I think either of Adidas and Puma would have been correct answers. The given answer was Adidas though, we had Puma.

Onto the old chain letters round this has got decidedly more trixie recently; all good but we lost the thread somewhere around Endive and didn't get it back until Slash. The guitarist that is.

Jeopardy and we had 8 good answers. I figured Ellen de Generes' partner was Portia something but where will the 2022 Winter Olympics be? Japan was probably the best guess but we settled for 8, just as well as Beijing will host.

Well too much to do with the slightly controversial answer and it was third in a tight finish.

Right, I'm away next week and in 2 weeks, The Hound will host so get yourselves all down there. Until then...

4 becomes 3 Hound

No win for a while, early match tension dispelled by a clean sweep on the pictures. All starting with M....

Current Affairs all good too until last 2 Q’s. Muirfield finally accepting women as members and Spinach mooted to join nandrolone and co on the banned substances list for athletics etc.

Good to have Steve on board for the Films round but still let 2 go. Near miss on identity of actor playing Rooster Cogburn in the 2010 remake of True Grit. Jeff Bridges not Josh Brolin who was also in the film. Not sure how I didn’t manage to even consider the following as the country music legend who was the subject of the biopic I Saw The Light. Hank Williams of course.

Tough This Week in History round, we mixed all of the following...

Robert the Bruce/William Wallace

Roy Rogers/Hopalong Cassidy

Jamaica/Republic of Ireland

Martin Luther King/Malcolm the Tenth.

I know what you are thinking. How?

A stinker in the 10 pointers. Who immediately followed Stalin as the leader of the Soviet Union in 1953.

Georgy Malenkov for a couple of hours. Ok nine days. Don ‘t think anyone got it.

One better in the Chain Letters round this week, it is becoming more challenging, which is good. We had first and last letters for both misses. Rhinestone is a synthetic diamond substitute, and persimmon is also known as the Sharon Fruit. After an area where it is prevalent in Israel, not an Essex Girl.

Looks good enough to eat doesn’t it.

Intelligence received indicates we are well behind Les Anoraks so Old School performance required in the Jeopardy round and we didn’t disappoint.

Steve Rogers is also known as Captain America in the Marvel world and more surprisingly Mark Spitz’ golden location were enough to stop the enemy and Robson’s recollection of  the following Shakespearean character’s occupation the toughest for us.

Bottom from MSND was a (basket) Weaver. Also took some debate to identify Churchill as QEII’s first PM.

Home and Dry. 19 on music round, not sure what we missed.

See elsewhere for a possible Hound outing to Cambridge, punting and all.

The Four Hounds of the Quiz

A quick blogette before the cricket kicks off, Daren, Graham, Pete and myself taking our positions in the corner ready for action.

Names are up to "O" on the connection for the picture round, this fella proving to be the only sticking point.

Johnny Foreigner type who gets killed off in the first half an hour wasn't going to cut it. Om Puri would have done.

Onto news and apparently similies are banned in Bradford schools which must restrict essay writing somewhat. Also Jimmy Dyson gave /315m to his former school and Scholsey has been found out for betting on football, successfully apparently. Yep, slow news week.


Next round and famous "Browns". Rounds like these always offer the opportunity for quizzing bingo and Errol, Capability and Gordon had us well on the way to a call but this fella proved a stumbling block.

The geezer on the left obvs. Frankly the picture doesn't help and if I didn't know I now. Bryan Brown so no full house for us.

This week is history was Round 4. The hotline from Moscow to Washington proved to be rather unimaginatively named the "Moscow-Washington hotline", otherwise we did ok here. And well played to G force for knowing the dog in trap 1 wears a red jacket. Even if red isn't really him.

Link-ups were going well until we were tripped up and sent off course by a shelled gastropod. Still don't know what the answer was but it cost us 3 questions, maybe.

Jeopardy, as it so often does, started well but in what film does Fred Astaire dance on the ceiling? And what is the largest county in Eire. We had possible answers but swerve territory. Here's Freddie.

Royal Wedding it seems. Glad we didn't go for that.

Well, post the music a tie-break resulted but the Hound weren't in it. Bah! Well played though to King Kong Balls. Right, looks like England are going to have a bowl.

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!