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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

#411

Post by lmm »

thih9 wrote: post #154
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…

Can you cheat by purposefully missing the opponent’s conker? Thus reducing the total impact on conkers in this match vs conkers in other matches and getting an advantage?

You take it in turns to hit, moving yours on their turn is cheating. Given that you have a lot more control over what kind of hit happens on your turn than on theirs, skipping your turn is never going to give you an advantage (unless your opponent is somehow anti-competent).

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

#412

Post by [deleted] »

oblio wrote: post #256
xg15 wrote: post #244

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> conquer countries 10x your size > invent 20 sports the entire world plays I mean, the two are kind of related, causally...

Football wasn't spread (just) through conquest. The UK never conquered Argentina or Brazil yet if you'd look at football fans in both countries you'd think Argentina or Brazil not only invented football itself, but they also built an entire cult around it :-p

[deleted]

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

#414

Post by wezdog1 »

noobermin wrote: post #299
oblio wrote: post #236

The British are living proof of the fact that amazing things[1] can be achieved when the place you live in is extremely boring. [1] For varied definitions of "amazing", such as "conquer countries 10x your size", "invent 20 sports the entire world plays", etc.

So the bit about UK food being attrocious is unfortunately true from my limited experience but the country itself has a lot of beauty, I think, as long as you look in the roght places.

Such an overused stereotype

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

#415

Post by 1oooqooq »

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 also though i was on conckernews. the same colorscheme doesn't help!

i guess HN is out of kleptocoin or infinitesimal LLM overoptimization war stories today and had to find something to plug the top story spot.

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

#416

Post by _heimdall »

barrkel wrote: post #372
_heimdall wrote: post #370

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This rabbit hole goes deep. Berries are particularly poorly named - stawberries, blackberries, and blueberries aren't actually berries but tomatoes and bananas are.

This is only a problem if you mistake words for scientific classifications, instead of ways to convey meaning between communicating humans. Very few people using the word "berry" are discussing scientific classifications. It would be worse, not better, to make terms more scientifically precise. Berry refers to small juicy fruits, often in bright colors.

I was sticking with the context of the GP though. Maybe its pedantic to point out that many berries aren't technically berries, but that's much the same as the point that many nuts are actually seeds.

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

#417

Post by ThePhysicist »

_fat_santa wrote: post #390

Apparently he was cleared of cheating: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zJKIbq2FuG8

That's the most hilariously British thing I've seen in a long time. Their expert is even wearing a melon hat with a string of chestnuts to the live interview.

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

#419

Post by zemo »

russellbeattie wrote: post #233
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…

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…

> why would Yooden Vranx have "lots of" chestnuts on his spaceship? And why "of course"?

hmmm, these might be what they call "jokes"

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

#420

Post by twic »

louthy wrote: post #349
datavirtue wrote: post #328

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Mainstay? First I'm hearing of it. I thought it was an onion article at first. It's really hard to tell when British people are serious sometimes. "Conker King"...like, WTH?

> Mainstay? For sure it is. Every boy (and probably some girls, but never seen myself) plays conkers and likely puts their life in great peril climbing horse chestnut trees to gather the best conkers before anyone else gets them. When I think back now to some of the massive (old) trees I used to climb and the action of shaking the branches to try to get the chestnuts to drop (whilst the branch is breaking underneath…

You know, conkers is exactly the sort of sport that makes a good anime. Everyman protagonist finds the world's hardest conker, takes on a series of increasingly absurd super-conkerists, Baki the Grappler style, with frequent informational asides about the art and science of conkers, and eventually faces the mysterious Conker Lord ... who turns out to be his long lost older brother!
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