Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

World conker champion found with steel chestnut, cleared of cheating

theguardian.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

281–290 of 601 posts

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

#281

Post by Wildgoose »

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…

So well known that it was even famously used in an advert for a kid's chocolate bar: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nC9BBLSZZdQ

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

#282

Post by zelos »

oniony wrote: post #228
riffraff wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ho do you drill the hole? I'm having trouble imagining kids with needles in their pockets, do you do it with a pencil or toothpick? We've got a ton of horse chestnuts in my neighborhood but I've never heard of this game and I'm eager to introduce it to my kids. Also, doesn't the conker spiral around your hand hitting it and hurting you?

We used to have a BBQ skewer that we used for various purposes, including adding holes to belts. We'd heat it up on the gas hob and then burn a hole through the conker. I actually still have the same one I've inherited in my kitchen drawer. If you have an awl, you could use that instead, but I'd recommend heating it to get a cleaner hole. You need to use a long enough string. Old cotton shoe laces are actually perfec…

We'd heat it up on the gas hob and then burn a hole through the conker.

That's brilliant. Why did this never occur to me? That's going on the list of things to tell my younger self when time travel becomes possible.

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

#283

Post by ben_w »

mhandley wrote: post #276
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, it was a big deal when I was in school in the 70s. Everyone played. There were never any conkers left unclaimed under any Horse Chestnut within a mile of the school. We all tried lots of tricks - soaking in vinegar, baking in the oven - practically anything was allowed, but I'm not sure any of it made a difference. It could be pretty painful as getting your hand hit by a high speed conker was common occurrence,…

Indeed, it was still popular in the 80s and 90s. I assume still is, given the Guardian is a national newspaper.

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

#284

Post by Sharlin »

cjrp wrote: post #251
BoxOfRain wrote: post #248

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm one of that 'too young to be a millennial, too old to be a zoomer' cohort and we definitely played it in the '00s, I vaguely remember the rumours of it being banned encouraged its popularity quite a bit. They also banned British bulldog around that time so we renamed it 'hot dog' and carried on!

Side note, if you were playing conkers in the 00s are you still too young to be a millenial?

Someone born in 1996 ± 2 years or so would easily have played conkers in the 00s and consider themselves a zennial.

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

#285

Post by Sharlin »

Symbiote wrote: post #174
Duanemclemore wrote: post #109

I learned about conkers when I was very young and read the Hitchhikers Guide for the first time... "We bust our way into a megafreighter I still don't know how, marched on to the bridge waving toy pistols and demanded conkers. A wilder thing I have not known. Lost me a year's pocket money. For what? Conkers. The captain was this really amazing guy, Yooden Vranx," said Zaphod. "He gave us food, booze - stuff from real…

Would the word not be in a dictionary?

I guess it just wasn't worth the effort to check, compared to how easy googling is. Lots of things were like that back then.

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

#286

Post by royletron »

raffraffraff wrote: post #147
conductr wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’m American and never heard of this sport in my life yet article painted a similar picture in my mind.

It's not a sport, it's something that kids used to do pre 1950s. People were poor, didn't have manufactured "stuff", so they made their own toys out of simple things like stones, sticks, old wheels etc Football was likely popular because a single ball could keep a while bunch of kids happy for an afternoon (if someone could actually afford a ball). I'm almost 50, and to me the image of boys playing conkers only comes…

I played conkers in the 90's, my kids (7 and 10) play conkers now. We even have debates on whether applying nail polish is considered cheating - it is, it totally is! What's more, I was brought up in a poor area of Manchester, they've been brought up in quite an affluent area of Oxfordshire - so couldn't be any different!

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

#287

Post by traceroute66 »

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…

> 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?

Absolutely. Very well known.

My Youtube-fu is not with me, so I can't seem to locate this video on Youtube, but see this BBC Archive footage from 1971 that was posted on Instagram[1] from a BBC News Report entitled "Conkers is no longer a kids' game."

[1] https://www.instagram.com/bbc_archive/reel/DA7zkmkAShz/

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

#288

Post by royletron »

gsck wrote: post #270
walthamstow wrote: post #150

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Don't make that silly face. If the wind changes, it'll stay like that forever.

Don't lean on your chair, I had a student who died doing that

Eating carrots makes you see in the dark

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

#289

Post by dspillett »

Symbiote wrote: post #174
Duanemclemore wrote: post #109

I learned about conkers when I was very young and read the Hitchhikers Guide for the first time... "We bust our way into a megafreighter I still don't know how, marched on to the bridge waving toy pistols and demanded conkers. A wilder thing I have not known. Lost me a year's pocket money. For what? Conkers. The captain was this really amazing guy, Yooden Vranx," said Zaphod. "He gave us food, booze - stuff from real…

Would the word not be in a dictionary?

It would, but depending on the dictionary there might not be much, if any, context about the game.

You could get a simple “Concker(n), colloquial name for the seeds of the horse chestnut tree” or “Conckers(n), traditional game played mainly in the British Isles with seeds of the horse chestnut tree” – a concise definition of the what without any detail of the game or its cultural significance (it was a big thing for a short time each year back when I was of school age, and had been for generations).

“when I was very young and read the Hitchhikers Guide for the first time” suggests this was quite some time ago, so further lookups might have required a physical trip to a library, rather than just clicking a link or throwing a term at an online search engine.

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

#290

Post by Theodores »

bee_rider wrote: post #15
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…

> The 23-year-old said: “My conker disintegrated in one hit, and that just doesn’t happen … I’m suspicious of foul play and have expressed my surprise to organisers.” It seems the suspicious was pretty quick.

Playing conkers at 23 years of age is a bit wrong. It is a bit like building LEGO kits as an adult, particularly wrong if the goal is to just build the design on the box and put the completed model on a shelf, rather than build your own creative masterpiece.

Please resist the urge to mod me down in flames for the above, but, in former times, buying LEGO at the ripe old age of fourteen would be a bit shameful in the school playground. Adults did not play LEGO then, it was the role of the father to read the newspaper and the role of the mother to be 'chained to the sink' in those days, with LEGO just for small children.

Conkers was very much for younger children, once an interest in the opposite sex, playing cards for match sticks or general juvenile delinquency was established, conkers was 'grown out of'.

Much like how fathers could teach their sons to beat up bullies, so it was that fathers could help with the technical aspects of conkers, such as getting the hand drill out (remember those contraptions, before battery power tools).

Conkers was a rite of passage, something that you would be expected to grow out of. It also came with a season, i.e. autumn, and the etiquette was to pick on someone of your own size. Hence, someone playing conkers at the age of 23 has not really got it right.

As for the guy with the steel conker, again we have a problem of age.

Now, as for playing with LEGO as an adult, or playing conkers as an adult, or, for that matter, the retro 8-bit computer scene, this is about regressing from the adult world of today, with all of its problems, and hiding in a recreated childhood. This is sort of understandable for people that were sent off to war, to see things they did not need to see. Those people kind of need the therapy that a return to the child world provides.

But nowadays, I see it as a response to the atomisation of community. If you are not spending your weekends with friends at pubs or at dinner parties, if you don't have an adult hobby such as with a lathe in a shed, if you can't afford big toys such as a boat, then childhood hobbies are a safe space to return to. Apart from anything else, you can buy all the LEGO that you could not buy then. Or, with conkers, you can find a social scene of like minded individuals and get a bit more scientific about winning.

Post reply on HN