The Neighborhood Guessing Game is back — as promised — with updated rules for the new year!

The basics remain the same: Look through the interior photos in this post and try to guess what neighborhood the pictured property is in. Add your guess in the comments.

But here’s one of the things that’s changed slightly: From now on, the winner will be whoever names the correct neighborhood and backs it up with the best explanation.

Also changed: the rules for people who already know the pictured home — or who happen upon it on HAR or anywhere else during the course of the game. If you know the property, you now have only 2 options: 1) gloat about it privately; or 2) send us an email to prove you know the correct answer, then add a comment with the wrong answer but a convincing explanation — just to lead the other players astray.

If you do a particularly good job with option 2, you’ll get special recognition for your efforts. Please don’t try any other options if you’re already familiar with the property, because you’ll likely only ruin the game for everyone else.

That’s it! Are you ready to play?

***

Are you adding up all those clues? Can you put them together?

Let the guessing begin! Answers — and photos of the exterior — on Thursday!

Update: Here’s the tell-all!

Photos: HAR

01/06/09 4:45pm

20 Comment

  • OK. This is one of the later ranch-style houses in Riverside Terrace. Note the large square windows and the corner windows in Gavin’s room. Note also the old-fashioned though well maintained master bathroom with its mirror wall and verdant tile. Note the mature oaks outside and the large picture window in the living room. But the kicker is that large corner fireplace with its oversize painted brick chimney. Mid-1950s with some definitely quirky (MCM meets art deco?) details, nicely updated wood floors and ceilings, interesting small kitchen. Probably smaller than it looks unless there are a lot more pix we didn’t see here.

  • Wow, Marmer starts 2009 STALKING 2008 Best Sleuth Winner Miz Brooke Smith with a vengeance. The trouble for me is she is probably right.

    Note to self: Going to need to do a better job than guess Meyerland this year. :-)

  • A respectable update of a classic 50’s rancher that, before the credit crunch, was probably destined to be torn down, but now has a reasable chance for survival (for a few more years at least). Not sure what to make of the kitchen’s lack of upper cabinet doors (watched too many Design to Sell episodes I would guess), or the faux drop ceiling, but ahhh those corner windows, itsy-bitsy crown molding, and green tile betray this home’s location. The only area I know of that is so corner-window crazy is the Knollwood/Linkwood/Woodshire/Woodside part of the inner loop. All of those ‘hoods run together, so I cannot get any closer than that!

  • Miz Brooke Smith had a wrenching headache last night and so agrees with Chris this morning. I would narrow the area to south of Braeswood between Buffalo Speedway and Stella Link. The living room-dining room-kitchen layout, quality and nature of the wood floors, old-fashioned wooden bathroom cabinets & knobs, proportion of door to 8′ ceiling height, and tell-tale brass-colored doorknobs also speak of this time & place. Same goes for the view out the window through mature oak limbs to the one-story brick rancher across the street (both of which — house & roadbed — doubtless have their share of historic clay-gumbo cracks and seams). The handsome re-do includes new windows, and perhaps a built-out sun room and porch off the kitchen, overlooking the backyard deck?

  • Heh. Not stalking Miz Brooke. I only wish I could do as well as she does, even with a headache. And in spite of my androgynous user name, which is a very very old UNIX holdover which I maintain for sentimental reasons, let me re-iterate: I am a guy.

  • I’m really not real-estate-saavy enough to play the game well under the new rules. So that sucks for me! Good luck to everyone else.

  • @Carol: Sure you’re savvy enough! Anyone who knows a few Houston neighborhoods is.

    Please note that it’s still okay to guess a neighborhood without providing any explanation at all. If you’re the only person to guess that neighborhood, you win! If someone else gives the same correct answer, but adds any kind of explanation at all — even a bad one — then that player wins.

    Simple “Meyerland” guesses still work!

    Unless you’re already familiar with the pictured home, the only difference between the new rules and the old rules is how the winner is chosen if more than one person guesses the correct neighborhood. It used to be that the first correct guess won. Now players who chime in later can still win if they can provide a better explanation for their choice.

  • meyerland… because i said so!

  • I am going to guess one of the few non-McMansions left in Afton Oaks.

  • Marmer, sorry about the gender issue.

    Gus, thanks for the explanation because the new rules worried me a bit due to not knowing neighborhood names (which there is no map from which to learn).

  • ok – MY new rules! No more reading other comments before I write my own – it always sways me. OK.

    that bathroom – are those tiles or faux sheet tiles? the cabintry in the bathroom and the kitchen is so 40’s or 50s. The house is very nicely furnished. The fireplace is surprising! I’m not familiar with this type of house at all – it’s not West U or southwest Houston I don’t think because I think I would have seen one like it before. I’m going to say…I want to cheat and read the comments because I don’t have a clue here. ok, I will resist the temptation. I going to say this is around the Galleria, Chimney Rock, Richmond area. the house is very yuppie, very cutely furnished so they must like living close to the loop. that’s the best I can do here without reading the other comments!

  • And you know – I’m still hurting I didn’t get named as a good commentor so I’m going to be trying harder this year! Hence, my new rules for myself. And now that I’ve read the comments, I’m sorry I didn’t go with my first instinct to name Knollwood, for the 50th time!!!

  • Bellaire — outside the loop. Pink brick veneer on the outside — hence the painted fireplace on the inside.

  • Oh. And that first photo — with the mirror. That’s really sneaky.

  • I’d like to try the neighborhood South of Holcombe/Bellaire and West of Stella Link behind the Palace Lanes (Lanark St). Are there any of the old houses left there? I haven’t peeked around that hood since friends moved away several years ago. The kitchen seems too small for the Linkwood and Afton Oaks guesses and it doesn’t jive well with the rest of the house. Now if this isn’t the correct neighborhood I’ll second guess and go for the Antoine/43rd street areas off 290. The kitchen would definitely be typical of east of 290 along the Verdone and DeMilo Street neighborhood – near Scarborough HS.

  • I just had a thought, this reminds me of a friend’s home in Willowbend. But, it may be to small, so how about eastern Westbury, whatever the area off Bellfort west of Post Oak is called.

  • I’m sure someone has already taken this week’s ribbon with a Knollwood guess (although I’ll say Braes Heights or Ayrshire for good measure). However, applause to this homeowner for keeping that great green tile in the bathroom. It makes me feel misty with nostalgia. My Aunt Margaret’s house had an almost identical bathroom.

  • Ok, ok. Knollwood BECAUSE . . . 8 ft ceilings, minimal or no crown mouldings, long, narrow living room and dining room combined, long, narrow SIDEWAYS den looking out to the back yard, bright 50s tile in a small bathroom (although that may be new?), small rooms, mature trees. That “two windows in the corner of the second bedroom” says, “Hello, ranch style in Knollwood!”

    But I do not know what they did with that kitchen. I don’t recognize that shape. Really screwed it up.

  • Hmmm, a tasteful little ranch house with big open windows that has been updated with some nice paint, but no serious dollars spent updating the kitchen or bath. There appear to be trees outside the windows, not a lot line hugging teardown McMansion. Can’t send little Gavin to the nasty public schools in Spring Branch or HISD this house is zoned to, and too late to get him on the waiting list for River Oaks Elementary or Hunters Creek Elementary even though he is only two and a half. With the recession and all, there’s no $$ for private school tuition, so it’s time to sell the charming ranch in Robindell, Long Point Woods, or Royal Oaks / Shadow Oaks and move to the burbs.