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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

#351

Post by philipwhiuk »

zarzavat wrote: post #231
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.

It's much more likely to have died out because of smartphones. The boredom of the pre-smartphone era led to all kinds of ingenuity. Kids were bored so they found ways to not be bored. Nowadays everybody is addicted their phone, simple pleasures such as violently smashing two nuts together no longer have the same pull.

Not for long. Schools are looking at banning smartphones.

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

#352

Post by waltbosz »

noobermin wrote: post #295

[flagged]

American here. I first heard the word conkers from Hitchhiker Guide to the Galaxy, but this was pre Google, so I just figured it was some scifi word.

Then I learned that it was a game from an episode of Kipper the Dog, in which his cheeky friend Tiger cheats at the game by painting something to look like a chestnut.

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

#354

Post by philipwhiuk »

kapitalx wrote: post #94

> Jakins was responsible for drilling and inserting strings into other competitors’ chestnuts as the competition’s top judge, known as the “King Conker”. So the "judge" who prepped the conkers for everyone and stringed them also competed in the competition and won

These things in the UK are generally simultaneously massively serious in terms of arbitrary rules and also massively not.

I suspect there are handful of entrants each year, a few obsessives and 'people around at the time it happens to be on. Hence this guy who has been around long enough he gets asked to help out.

UK law generally is based on previous screw-ups.

Doubtless next year they will add a rule, but in general abusing such power would fall under the general "good sportsmanship" rule and be dealt with far more seriously than just 'banned from a tiny competition with a grand sounding name'.

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

#356

Post by cjs_ac »

oblio wrote: post #335
cjs_ac wrote: post #319

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's this quote from Andy Warhol that I think has great explanatory power: > What's great about this country is that America started the tradition where the richest consumers buy essentially the same things as the poorest. You can be watching TV and see Coca-Cola, and you know that the President drinks Coca-Cola, Liz Taylor drinks Coca-Cola, and just think, you can drink Coca-Cola, too. A Coke is a Coke and no amo…

> The UK has the exact opposite of this. Everything that's for sale here is finely graded according to the buyer's budget and taste. Where someone chooses to do something as innocuous as their grocery shopping in the UK says an awful lot about them. Just sayin', I went shopping in... Denver? Let's just say that there was a mall with a bunch of shops and further down the street another bunch of shops. The public at No…

In Watching the English, Kate Fox gives a thorough explanation of how much she can pin down someone's social class by what they buy at Marks and Spencers (which is a department store that's branched out into groceries). I forget the exact details, but I think it was that doing a full food shop there made you upper-middle class, buying some food items there made you middle-middle class, and buying food items for special occasions there made you lower-middle class. Buying clothes from M&S makes you middle-middle class, and buying homewares makes you lower-middle class. The upper class don't shop at M&S at all, and the working class only buy clothes or homewares from there if they want something special. (I think - it was a while ago that I read it.) And that's just one shop.

Everywhere does social stratification, but nowhere does it like Britain.

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

#357

Post by philipwhiuk »

butterfly42069 wrote: post #131
ungreased0675 wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How is it banned? Banned in schools you mean? Because I can’t see how authorities could ban anyone from picking up a conker from the ground and tying a string to it. On a different note, if you’re just pulling a random one out of a bag, what is the competitive aspect? Is there a technique involved? Or just RNG?

It is banned in schools. As I said in another comment, that outlaws it for the vast majority of players at the place they used to play it. Believe it or not adults playing conkers or people playing conkers outside of schools isn't a common pass time. It is pretty much RNG, though you can massively nerf a conkers structural integrity by making the hole through the middle poorly, so there are some techniques. People al…

I doubt it's banned in all schools. It'll be banned in a few which made headlines.

The HSE is pretty clear it doesn't justify it:

> The HSE said the safety risk from playing conkers was "incredibly low and not worth bothering about"

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

#358

Post by philipwhiuk »

red_admiral wrote: post #271
timthorn wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is legal, but it also did get banned at my primary school. It continued to be played.

Conkers, bulldog, smoking behind the bike sheds (ok vaping these days), and porn (nowadays on screens rather than naughty magazines) ... a lot about British schools can be summed up in this quote: “What exactly are you so happy about?' Harry asked her.'Oh Harry, don't you see?' Hermione breathed. 'If she could have done one thing to make absolutely sure that every single person in this school will read your interview…

And they are generally banned in 1 school from one incident by one head trying to quell anger from parents.

The ban is generally lifted or just not enforced at all after a year or two.

For starters the playground monitors have more important stuff to do than remember the list of banned activities and try to enforce them.

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