Herculeberry Hound...

2nd nights quizzing in a row. After Quiz Bingo at the Wattendon Arms, where we reduced the average age of the clientele, back to the relative normality of the PA. Robson and I present and largely correct. As the temperature falls here, a warm welcome to any Caribbean readers we may have this week, I can almost taste the nutmeg. Any answers not revealed in the blog can be found at the end.

Picture round was musical trios...

... We got them all, Anoraks missed no 3. 5 and 10 the only ones that made us think.

Par score of 7 for Current Affairs. I’d heard the lost submarine story but never noted it’s nationality. What subgroup of shoppers are put off by self-service checkouts according to the Housing Association? And, who will perform their first Changing of the Guard imminently? Daren scored a point in his absence as we applied his, if in doubt on supermarket questions default to Asda, successfully to a question about proof of ID for tasting mince pies. A good bit of detective work to get Joey Barton as footy player turning down £0.5m for IACGMOOH. Said he would only eat witchety grubs for £1.0m. 

No connections round this week. Occupations of fictional characters and British comedy for rds 3 and 4 respectively. What is the occupation of the following;

John H Watson

Ebenezer Scrooge

Kermit the Frog

Barbara Gordon

Hot Lips Houlihan

Samwise Gangee

Mary Poppins

Alfred Pennyworth

Dr Daniel Jackson

Derek Wilton

Who knew this fellow had a job?

We got 7 with reasonably generous marking. British comedy proved easier. We only missed an Allo Allo reference relating to the catchphrase ‘You stupid woman’. I got Shameless as the comedy drama set on The Chatsworth estate, and Robson pulled out Carry on Screaming as The one where Harry H Corbett plays the lead. 

Ten pointers. A slightly fraught 3 minutes, but fortunately R was on fire for 2 of them. Pulling out Elton John’s middle names from thin air followed by Julienne for the method of cutting foods into thin strips. Nobody else got all 3, don’t think any others got this fellas middle name....

Chain letters nearly went awry due to my insistence that Gulles means yellow in heraldry. It doesn’t and the other answers fitted much better with red. Jeopardy questions got harder as the round progressed. First 6 never taxed us much, then we got Canada as only hosts not to win a summer Olympics gold medal, and Gold as the metal known as Tears of the Sun by the Incas. Two great swerves for 9 and 10, What part of the body contains the pisiform and hamate bones? And Who was the first woman inducted into the Rock’n’Roll Hall of Fame in 1987?

19 from 20 for the music, and a good 8 point win over King Kong Balls, who seem to be now consistently raising their game. 3 other also rans, including Anoraks bemoaning too many popular culture questions. Unusual that for a pub quiz! 

Missing answers as follows..

Picture 3 - Depeche Mode.

Picture 5 - Nirvana

Picture 10 - Andrews Sisters.

Submarine - Argentinian

Shoppers - Elderly

C of Guard - Royal Marines I think.

Occupations;

Doctor

Moneylender

Theatre Manager

Librarian/Superhero

Soldier/Nurse

Gardener/Farmer

Nanny

Butler

Archaeologist 

Salesman/shopkeeper

Elton - Hercules

Pisiform/Hamate - Wrist

First Woman.. - Aretha Franklin

Always good to win as a duo, and relatively sober as well.

G-Force.

Wake Hound

Well and truly bear-trapped this week. Fair play to Gerry, we didn't see that one coming at all. This picture may help, of which more later.

The pub seemed largely taken over for a wake for someone I'd suggest was not that old and Irish. In case one of the team falls under a bus this week, here is where we'd rather not have our wakes:

Daren - Purley Arms
Graham - Kenley Hotel
Myself - Midday Sun
Peterkins - Foxley Hatch

Yes, Peterkins made a rare guest appearance, and very useful he proved to be as well. We generally got into the spirit of things and I think drank a bit more than usual. No excuses though.

Graham had fun with the first round which was Commonwealth flags and a rare improvement on our usual 8 or so. Onto current affairs and while we knew Greggs replaced Jesus (not the bloke who plays for Man City) with a sausage roll we didn't know that it was a horse arrested in Brazil for kicking a car. Police suspect foal play.

The suspect.

Was it Gordon Ramsay who had a go at being served up with bits of foam on a plate? Sounds like him but don't recall the answers and inevitably it was a packet of nuts that had to be withdrawn from sale because there was no "may contain nuts" warning. Also it was Bobby Mugabe placed under house arrest. Or should that be horse arrest?

The third round was unseen which rather plays havoc with my plan to include a picture with each round. But the usual suspects were there, 'Er Indoors from Minder, Maris Crane and Howard's mum from TBBT.

The connections round was proving a headscratcher. What connects Milan, Tiger Bay and Bordeaux? The poetry that is Hit Me With Your Rhythm Stick. First two lines:

In the deserts of Sudan and the gardens of Japan
From Milan to Yucatan, ev'ry woman, ev'ry man

Great stuff and well played to Peterkins for picking it out.

Of the ten pointers, the question of who was Time Magazine's "Most Important Person of the Century" was the only one that really vexed us but we went correctly with Einstein for a decent first half.

Link-ups and I've just got some scruffy notes here which probably means it went well but Overlook led to Komodo Dragon which is surely worth a picture.

Grr.

Jeopardy. Well we kind of did a lot of the hard work. It was Des Lynam who followed Richard Whitely in Countdown and GCHQ is in Cheltenham and while Blinky, Pinky, Inky and Clyde sound like 4 characters from Made in Chelsea, they are indeed the ghosts in Pac Man. But, so blind-sided were we that while Roger Bannister broke the 4 minute mile in 1954, rather bafflingly one of his pacemakers on the day, Chris Chataway won the SPOTY, for doing what looks like not very much. At least Nigel Mansell had a decent tache.

So that was us out of it, one of those occasions we hold up our collective hands and acknowledge we were bested. Think we won the chocolates again, down to me knowing when the structure of DNA was discovered. At least a university education is worth something.

D2 is on his hols next Thursday so we're going to try the quiz at the Wattenden Arms next Wednesday, up in darkest Kenley. Discuss via here or the Whats App group for details. Just called them and confirmed, quiz from 8.30pm.

And the winning Hound is....

A lot to get through, so let’s get cracking. Pictures of posters for musical plays. I haven’t got them but the following were 2 of the toughest...

This one was Glengarry Glen Ross. I insisted it was on the tip of my tongue all the time. It wasn’t! Crocodile was actually a vulture as well.

We ummed and ahhed between Ladykillers and Mousetrap, both Daren’s suggestions. In our defence the words were removed.

The one that looked gangsterish was a The Great Gatsby.

No Siobhan this week, possibly a good thing after her damning indictment of our previous week’s current affairs effort. Julie setting and asking the questions this week. Happy to tackle subjects S usually avoids, hence dead Italian chef and a delicately phrased Kevin Spacey question. We were firmly back in 7 out of 10 territory.

Food & drink for Rd 3. The fruit tra
ditionally found in a Sussex pond pudding is a lemon, Mary Berry dies a version with apples which was our answer but not traditional. Also Chilli Con Carne is Texan not Mexican. At least one of our team had sensed a bear trap there. Not me, but I got matar as being Indian for peas.

Ok. Now pay attention. Rd 4 was the chain letters round NOT connections. A round usually reserved to kick off the second half. We missed a couple, wrong cathedral for biggest bell, St Paul’s not St David’s and Yucca is somehow related to asparagus.

We missed the first ten pointer. Which animal is mentioned most often in the Bible. Others had heard

 the question before, we hadn’t. Our choice of ass apparently only comes in fourth. Sheep was the






answer.

 

Second half kicked off with Science & Nature. David from Lady & The Tramp, looking I have to say less than his usual sartorially eleganct self, arrived having crucially missed the first half. The rest of 

his team successfully managed to hoodwink him into thinking that this was the connections round. Even better after a few questions they managed to convince him that the connection was scouting. I this K2 was a knot, Troop works anyway, and something else was a kind of tent. Our only clean sheet of the day, fairly perfunctory.

By this time news was reaching us by electronic means that a Hound victory had taken place elsewhere. 

Tina Hound had won Surrey and East Sussex Behind the scenes Employee of the Year! And here is 

the tipsy recipient herself all the way from a Golf Club in Reigate. A look at the award...

Not much later a taxi/limo arrived fir Mr & Mrs S, leaving Robson and I to both try and rescue the Jeopardy round, and to minesweep G&Ts and Kronenbourg left behind.

We failed on the former, having no idea how many units of alcohol are recommended as a weekly 

maximum for ladies by the UK govt.  the advice could have changed whilst we were quizzing quite frankly. We blew out by putting skin as the only organ on the human body that is able to regenerate. The required answer was liver, which was mentioned, but the question should perhaps have said 

internal organ? Another fairly dubious question asserted that the tortoise is the animal that usually lives the longest. Could write a thesis on this one, there is A jellyfish species believed to be immortal (still subject to predators and natural disasters but none known to die of old age). Clams have been recorded at 507 years old.

Maybe I’m just a bad loser. A new PB of 620 points, but still 70 short of The Anoraks winning score in 3rd place. Think we got a Bruno Mars song correct, another first.

This fellow and his well dockumented shortcoming also featured..

Oh yes, and ther were egg sandwiches.

G-Force

.

Spooky Hound

Three of us this week. Although Kevster and I arrived first, Daren clearly had a head-start on us elsewhere and wasn't to be trusted as scribe so Kevin took the honours. Also a change of scenery, Halloween celebrations required a 7 foot dummy next to our normal table which made annoying noises around every 30 seconds so we moved elsewhere. The next team just unplugged the darn thing. I don't known, grown men dressing up in "scary" costumes. Not always a fan of Americanisms but "lame" sums this all up quite nicely.

So the quiz, this fella anyone?

Not exactly mainstream. Think we got the other nine but "celebrity" chef is pushing it with this bloke. In this country anyway. Wolfgang Puck in case you were wondering. The current affairs, well more on this later but there were a few punts where we did back the wrong horse. So soap and not toilet paper was said by Ryanair to be non-essential and it was the Canvey Island not the Isle of Sheppey who declared independence. Or something.

Round 3 was triple words, so Wet Wet Wet, Spend Spend Spend and the like. Think we managed her to get the right answer for the wrong question, not knowing that 69 Paradise Passage (really) referenced Gimme Gimme Gimme the TV show and the Abba song in question was actually Money Money Money. Spot a pattern?

Bonus round here, as we didn't go last week Siobhan gave us that picture round for our amusement, so away go go.

Connections and a fairly tame link of hats, "balmoral", "sun", "halo" and the like. On the ten pointers, credit for whoever said that Dandy Horse was the forerunner name to the bicycle, know if wasn't me.

Onto link ups and somewhere along the line, we had credible answers and they did link-up but a few of them were wrong. So Tonto's horse was actually called Scout and indeed cocoa is mainly grown in the Ivory Coast and Ghana. But there were some good answers as well. Onto jeopardy and this was one we didn't know.

Handsome chap I thought. Goes by the name of a caracal, think bird was the only answer postulated. And Eric the Eel, knew he was central African and with a gun to my head would have correctly gone Equatorial Guinea but no confidence. Ah, Marge Simpson, another picture I think.

Now I've seen the Simpsons quite a lot but didn't know she wears a green dress. At least I knew I didn't know it but there we are. Music, I think we got nine songs and artists and had gone to the gents by the time the Maltesers question came.

Well, we din't win. And frankly we wouldn't have won with an optimised jeopardy round either, one for the Busters.

Much of the rest of the evening was spent debating whether UHNW (ultra high new worth) was better than CNW (colossal net worth). Yep, it had come to that; in the words of Siobhan, we were horrendous at the current affairs.

Just Call Us Hound

Right, pre quiz activity had a few chunk of putting the world to rights this week. So in no particular order:

- Works bashes once you've left, pop in but they've moved on, so have you
- EU - a good idea at one point, all went a bit far
- Bitcoin - we missed the boat on that one

Plus we're all doomed, but at least we have the Hound blog.

First an update from the Scout quiz last Saturday in two part pictorial form. Exhibit A:

Half time and in fourth, allowing for jokers, just about disputing the lead.

Onto this week and it kicked off with a bunch of chanteuses.

It was the lovely Alesha who vexed us the most, well done Kevster there. And just to prove we're not racist, she came in at Number 2.

Current affairs stuff and given the team's proclivities, I suggest high-tailing down to Morrisons for some of this:

I can't wait.

Next round was nicknames, aka if you like. This time we were foxed by Jacob Gerschovitz and felt if this was George Gerschwin trying to sound less Jewish, he wasn't making a very good job of it. So we went for Liberace, Władziu Valentino Liberace as it happens. It was indeed George.

Onto the connections and the answers "Oven" and "Disposable" led me to the rather unimaginative theme of "gloves", later to be confirmed by the no more cryptic answers of "rubber" and "gardening". We still managed to confuse ourselves on the role of Parker in Thunderbirds, who apparently doubles as a butler and chauffeur, butler gloves being akin to those worn by a snooker referee.

Well done to Graham for bagging Little Jimmy Osmond as the youngest number one singles artist in the UK on the ten pointers, the other two didn't trouble us. Oldest equivalent anyone?

Right, back to last Saturday.

A rip-roaring second half saw us storm to victory, but notice the first and second columns. although credited for the correction that the brown is indeed worth 4 in snooker (3 really?), it wasn't felt appropriate to adjust our total. We really do have to watch that lot. Felt the sausage and mash let them down as well.

Connections looped around the way they should, Olivander's wands linking back to Espana with Butch Cassidy in between (Last lime - Oh, good. For a moment there I thought we were in trouble). So as ever, the Jeopardy was going to matter. No amount of time would tell us what musical "Gypsies in the Wood" came from. Where's Pete when you need him. We had credible but not much better than 50/50 answers for Prince Phillip's birth island (Corfu) and what a Brannoch device does (measures shoe size). So we settled for 7.

Onto the nearest the pin and either Graham's maths or US Presidents knowledge let him down and we shared someone else's minstrels. So final orders of business:

- Hound win by 3, hurrah! I have the £50.
- There's another Anorak charity quiz near Tattenham Corner on the 21st, suspect I'm unlikely for that.
- We were behind at half time, don't underestimate the importance of music and getting those extra answers these days.

Thunderous applause....