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World conker champion found with steel chestnut, cleared of cheating

theguardian.com

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Re: World conker champion found with steel chestnut, cleared of cheating

#61

Post by ackbar03 »

fy20 wrote: post #48
Finbarr wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, it is. It’s a game most news-reading-age adults will have played when they were at school as children.

It's a game you play as a kid. This is the first I've heard of there being a professional league. On the other hand, we also have competitions such as cheese rolling (trying not to get killed by a giant cheese wheel rolling down a hill), so I'm not that surprised. https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/live/uk-england-gloucestershire-6...

I know the version where you try not to kill yourself chasing the cheese. Are you saying there's one where the cheese chases and tries to kill you?

Re: World conker champion found with steel chestnut, cleared of cheating

#63

Post by worthless-trash »

throwup238 wrote: post #60
Finbarr wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, it is. It’s a game most news-reading-age adults will have played when they were at school as children.

Geez, we just had tetherball. No one tried to destroy each other’s nuts.

They did at my school.

Re: World conker champion found with steel chestnut, cleared of cheating

#64

Post by shermantanktop »

wcfields wrote: post #49
a_t48 wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Cheating with only your friends - yeah, mostly. Cheating with randos sounds like it would lead to boring gameplay.

Like, you can cheat at Solitaire, but why?

Hey, dopamine is dopamine. This ain’t stolen valor or a plagiarized thesis.

Re: World conker champion found with steel chestnut, cleared of cheating

#67

Post by mbo »

bee_rider wrote: post #12

It seems like a bad move to have a participant responsible for drilling the holes and attaching the strings. Also I don’t understand the one paragraph aside about the American who is never mentioned before or after(?)

>It seems like a bad move to have a participant responsible for drilling the holes and attaching the strings.

Part of the "point" of conkers is that conker-prep is just as much as a skill as the technique during the hitting phase.

I think this was just poor scrutineering (or corruption) on the organizers side.

Re: World conker champion found with steel chestnut, cleared of cheating

#68

Post by zabzonk »

When I was a kid (many years ago) me and a friend once went "conkering" down quite a posh road with several horse chestnut trees on it. We had collected a few good ones when a guy came out of his house and called us over. We thought "Oh dear, get off my lawn time", but no! He had big bin full of conkers that he had picked up from his garden, and invited us to choose from them.

Re: World conker champion found with steel chestnut, cleared of cheating

#69

Post by nickyvanurk »

DougN7 wrote: post #16
mikeodds wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Innate knowledge to Brits, similar to knowing a swan might break your arm

Lol, I don’t understand what THAT means! A swan might break your arm?!?

In the Netherlands we are also taught a swan could break your arm if you get too close. I don't know if it's true or not because I've been too scared to find out.

Re: World conker champion found with steel chestnut, cleared of cheating

#70

Post by kimixa »

andrewflnr wrote: post #35
thatguymike wrote: post #26

I'm surprised they pick their conkers out of a bag. The whole fun when I was a kid was competing for who could find the toughest conker. Common cheating methods included putting it through the tumble dryer to dry it out (Mum didn't love that) or soaking in vinegar. If you're pulling conkers out of a bag I think each match is basically a coin flip, unless there's much more technique I'm missing?

Vinegar makes it stronger? I would naively expect the opposite.

I wouldn't be surprised if many of the "techniques" softened it but made it more resistant to shattering.

An extremely hard but brittle conker would probably make for poor results.

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