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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

#301

Post by flir »

nanna wrote: post #297
red_admiral wrote: post #262

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is a very, very British thing. A generation or two ago, almost everyone played it at school and it was Very Serious Business. I guess you needed something to occupy yourself before Pokemon Go was invented.

I have fond memories of playing conkers in primary school. Sometimes you got a rapped knuckle but children's sports is full of cuts and grazes, and it didn't hurt as much as slaps anyway. The main issue was that some kids would inevitably harden their conkers by putting them in the oven or lacquering them, and so on. But spotting that was part of the charm.

Being of a geeky bent, I tried them all. It never worked. They go brittle and shatter, or they go soft and fall apart.

(When I was a kid, conkers were so prized we chucked sticks at them to try to get them to drop. So it was a bit of a shock to me when they started just being left where they fell. Kids today, off my lawn, uphill both ways, etc etc).

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

#302

Post by smolder »

shermantanktop wrote: post #64
wcfields wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Like, you can cheat at Solitaire, but why?

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

I think it's a special kind of person that gets a kick from "winning" at something that's not a challenge. You might as well write "winner" on a t-shirt in marker and wear it.

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

#303

Post by aembleton »

k7sune wrote: post #33
nealmueller wrote: post #10

The World Conker Championships is an annual event held in England, where competitors from around the world play the traditional game of conkers using chestnuts. Each player threads a chestnut, known as a conker, onto a string and takes turns striking their opponent’s conker, aiming to break it. The tournament follows a knockout format, with players advancing until a world champion is declared. The event has been runn…

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…

The strings and the conkers are supplied by the organisers. Contestents can't use different types of string.

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

#304

Post by conkers »

riffraff wrote: post #106
Nursie wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's more or less it. You make a hole through your 'conker' (horse chestnut, not the edible type) and thread a string or a bootlace through it. Then you take turns. One holds their string still and lets the conker hang down, the other gets a swing at it with their conker. Whoever's conker lasts the longest is the winner. There were all sorts of rumours about baking them, or soaking in vinegar or what have you to ha…

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 a corkscrew then threaded a shoelace through it.

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

#306

Post by dspillett »

gandalfian wrote: post #222
nickcw wrote: post #197

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I used to play conkers at school in England, however my children didn't. The reason? Schools have banned the game of conkers due to health and safety reasons. I asked my 17 year old this morning and he had never even heard of the game of conkers. So I think the age of conkers is passing, alas.

I understood that was a myth created from a few isolated instances and the medias general desire to wind people up. I don't know why it has died out mind.

It is a myth that it was banned nationally for health & safety (“nanny state”) reasons, as was incorrectly reported in the press (mostly in the red-top papers), but some schools certainly did ban the game.

This was usually because it became a tool for bullying: deliberate hand hits in games, deliberate hand hits in other contexts with complaints of an attack fobbed off as “we were playing conckers and there was an accident”, and so on.

Also like any playground sport there were gambling issues (I'm not sure if they were serious issues, or just if some schools took them too seriously, but I remember there being a glut of warnings about it when I was in secondary level education, around the same time as some bullying concern related bans).

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

#307

Post by dcminter »

amiga386 wrote: post #293
russellbeattie wrote: post #233

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was about to post the same thing! I've thought about this literally for decades. I also had to wait for years to learn what conkers are - and I'm still confused. I'd love to know the context/history/culture that DNA was referring to because it doesn't make any sense to me as written So conkers are chestnuts on a string used for childhood smashing competitions. Ooookay. But why would Yooden Vranx have "lots of" ches…

It's a childhood story dressed up in sci-fi. If an American child had told it, they might have said they demanded baseball cards, and the amused captain would have given them food, booze and "lots of baseball cards, of course". Children all over the world occasionally make demands of adults and are thrilled when the adults oblige them; their bold dare paid off! Children make up games at school, so when all the chestn…

Re your last note (which is hilarious) I was hugely amused to discover that many Americans reading in Potter about Filch "punting" the kids across the temporary swamp assumed he was kicking them over rather than using a flat bottomed boat. Understandable but much funnier than the original intended.

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

#308

Post by sersi »

loup-vaillant wrote: post #265
raffraffraff wrote: post #147

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> And nowadays people don't really grow up at all. They continue playing right into adulthood and old age, with luxury toys. It would be nice if we stopped stigmatising play. Growing up doesn't mean we stop playing. Acting grown-up might mean stop playing, but it's just that — an act, and a likely childish one. Real adults don't give up on what brings them joy.

Back when I was a teenager, I used to also have similar thoughts as the person you replied to about not playing with toys because it was childish behavior.

Luckily, I grew out of that and I do not feel self conscious when playing as an adult or being goofy.

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

#309

Post by Super_Jambo »

misja111 wrote: post #305
noobermin wrote: post #295

[flagged]

I love how your comment is assuming that anybody here who's not British must be American. I'm Dutch and had never heard of conker before either.

I think the assumption is more that someone who's offended that the Guardian didn't explain a mainstay British playground game to their readers...

Is probably from the USA.

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

#310

Post by cultofmetatron »

lock_enthusiast wrote: post #4
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…

I feel there is enough in the article to build an image of the game in your head: I'm imagining a game game where two people trying to destroy the other person's chestnut by whirring and hitting the chestnuts on the end of strings. Now I'm going to go check my mental image against wikipedia.

soo.. bayblade with nuts?
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