World conker champion found with steel chestnut, cleared of cheating

Post by ThrowawayTestr » Tue, Oct 15, 2024, 5:16 AM UTC

andrewflnr wrote: post #72

kimixa wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Interesting. I can certainly see how brittleness is probably fatal. But a soft one won't be any help at breaking your opponent's conker, either, right? Unless speed of your conker can overcome the increased inefficiency of transmitting energy into the opponent's...

Post by yashap » Tue, Oct 15, 2024, 5:19 AM UTC

FearNotDaniel wrote: post #75

School-Cotton wrote: post #2

Is this game well-known enough in Britain and Ireland that readers will know what on earth is being alleged just from reading this article? Or are you expected to have to google it? Apparently it’s a game where you take turns swinging a chestnut on a string and trying to hit the opponent’s chestnut and break it. Yes, I can see how a steel fake chestnut would be an advantage here, though I’m amazed it wouldn’t be inst…

Yes, conkers is sufficiently well-known enough as a children's schoolyard game that I would expect pretty much every newspaper-reading adult to have heard of it. The fact that there is supposedly an "adult" championship event would be a surprise to most. If you're looking for the "story behind the story", other than the fact that it's a seasonally-specific, light human-interest story: there is probably a slight cultu…

Post by Timwi » Tue, Oct 15, 2024, 5:20 AM UTC

1propionyl wrote: post #47

k7sune wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Considering that it's called a world championship, someone should study the sport in-depth! Are the players allowed to swing the chestnut in a circle like a sling? Can they use carbon fiber strings, or maybe some sort of elastic string to build up more energy? Or can the player use a heavy string so it can crack like a whip? Fancy arm/wrist/fingers movements to accelerate the chestnut in the last moment? What's the o…

This all kind of takes the fun out of it don't you think? Not every game needs to have the fun sucked out of it by endless optimization and instrumental play. Just conk some chestnuts. Simple as.

Post by Closi » Tue, Oct 15, 2024, 5:26 AM UTC

ccppurcell wrote: post #80

FearNotDaniel wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, conkers is sufficiently well-known enough as a children's schoolyard game that I would expect pretty much every newspaper-reading adult to have heard of it. The fact that there is supposedly an "adult" championship event would be a surprise to most. If you're looking for the "story behind the story", other than the fact that it's a seasonally-specific, light human-interest story: there is probably a slight cultu…

It never occurred to me that conkers could be a class thing and you could be right. But let it be known that conkers was extremely popular at my state school; me and all of my friends grew up to be pretty left wing too by the way. Also they banned it at my school, along with pogs, yoyos, etc.

Post by winwang » Tue, Oct 15, 2024, 5:27 AM UTC

qwertox wrote: post #89

hettygreen wrote: post #65

This article on hackernews reads the same as "Advancing Theorem Proving in LLMs through Large-Scale Synthetic Data" would on conkernews.

I'm also pretty disturbed by it being here. Even worse on place #1.