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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

#461

Post by Loughla »

aeneasmackenzie wrote: post #452
zabzonk wrote: post #443

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Things from my youth, as well as conkers: - marbles (can you get them anymore?) - kick the can (where would kids get cans today?) - British bulldog/chain tig (far too dangerous) I can't remember the rules of these, but they were very popular in the early 1960s, when I played them.

Elaborate marble runs are very popular, although many people use steel balls instead.

Marble runs are wildly different from marbles we played when I was a kid.

One is an engineering (lite) exercise, the other is a game of vague dexterity to take someone else's marble collection.

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

#462

Post by lukas099 »

thruway516 wrote: post #440
oblio wrote: post #256

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Football/soccer is a British import likely 'invented' somewhere else

How do you know?

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

#463

Post by Loughla »

divs1210 wrote: post #422

Pinewood Derby vibes

I remember being so upset as a kid that my pinewood derby car never looked as good as anyone else's and that it never won. I didn't realize as a youth that the parents had built the other kids' cars, whereas I built mine entirely on my own.

Now that I have children, they, too, are feeling the grim disatisfaction of a stacked competition by losing to the other kids' parents in the pinewood derby.

I genuinely credit that experience with my attitude toward life (don't take anything too seriously, because everything we do is temporary, competition (I will work on my own when possible, to do my best, and if I win it is a reflection on my own skills and abilities), and helped me understand that no matter how good I am at something there is always someone who takes that thing far too seriously and will cheat to win.

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

#464

Post by thatguymike »

zabzonk wrote: post #53
thatguymike wrote: post #26

I'm surprised they pick their conkers out of a bag. The whole fun when I was a kid was competing for who could find the toughest conker. Common cheating methods included putting it through the tumble dryer to dry it out (Mum didn't love that) or soaking in vinegar. If you're pulling conkers out of a bag I think each match is basically a coin flip, unless there's much more technique I'm missing?

As someone that played it over 60 years ago, there is quite a bit of technique involved - for example, aiming to hit the opponent's conker accurately and hard.

Wouldn't that newton's-second-law your own conker just as hard though? As the aggressor you get to choose the points of contact, which must be where the accuracy comes in. If you can strike your opponent downwards you're more likely to knock them off the string and lead to Stamps.

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

#465

Post by _heimdall »

School-Cotton wrote: post #455
_heimdall wrote: post #396

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You clearly understand that there's a difference between the colloquial name and the scientific definition. In the context of the GP comment, the discussion was related to nuts that are poorly named (like peanuts and tree nuts that are actually seeds). Strawberries aren't berries and tomatoes are. You can say that's wrong all you like, but in the context of how they are botanically classified rather than what we name…

The botanical classification is irrelevant outside of papers in botany journals. If I made up a new, niche meaning of already-existing words, and tried to claim everyone else was using them wrong, you would think I was crazy.

> If I made up a new, niche meaning of already-existing words, and tried to claim everyone else was using them wrong, you would think I was crazy

People do this all the time, though it makes me feel old rather than crazy.

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

#466

Post by robin_reala »

joncrocks wrote: post #346
ljf wrote: post #324

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Interesting, as conkers are seeds (not a nut) - so shouldn't be an issue for someone with a nut allergy - though no doubt some people are allergic to them.

It's not quite that simple. The line isn't quite as hard between seed and 'nut'. Namely people may commonly refer to things as a nut when it is a seed. e.g. a Peanut is a seed, as are almonds, cashews, walnuts.

On this subject, I’d recommend Richard Osman’s lecture on nuts for “The Unbelievable Truth”: https://www.reddit.com/user/pfobwpfo/comments/18ohqi2/nuts/

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

#467

Post by School-Cotton »

_heimdall wrote: post #465
School-Cotton wrote: post #455

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The botanical classification is irrelevant outside of papers in botany journals. If I made up a new, niche meaning of already-existing words, and tried to claim everyone else was using them wrong, you would think I was crazy.

> If I made up a new, niche meaning of already-existing words, and tried to claim everyone else was using them wrong, you would think I was crazy People do this all the time, though it makes me feel old rather than crazy.

Imagine if someone said "this chair is an object", and you told them they were wrong, because in Object-Oriented Programming, an "object" is an abstract entity in a computer program, not a thing in the physical world.

They have never heard of object-oriented programming and yet, they're not wrong. You're the one who is wrong by assuming the terms made up by a niche field override common language used by everyone.

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

#468

Post by cjs_ac »

Loughla wrote: post #459
DoughnutHole wrote: post #408

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Honestly the focus on financial stratification here highlights the differences between what class means in the UK and the US. In the US class distinction is (almost) entirely down to money. If you’re rich you can buy nicer things than someone poorer and so you can be immediately sorted into a higher social class. In the UK just because you’re rich that doesn’t make you upper class. British society is riddled with sub…

Do you know of some examples of dress, language, or social cues? Would it be possible to 'fake it' do you think? I find it fascinating that being viewed as nuveau riche is a bad thing or 'lesser than' old money, when the money all buys the same access and privilege. In the states we have New England waspy types that have families that go back to the mayflower or whatever. But it's pretty easy to ingrain yourself in t…

You can't fake your way into the upper class in the UK, because they all know each other already. As for behaviour, dress and speech, the standard books are:

* Noblesse Oblige[0] Mostly about vocabulary, and very outdated (1950s)

* The English Gentleman[1] Only about aristocratic men, and comedic in style

* Class: A View from Middle England (Jilly Cooper) Very 1970s

* Watching the English[2] Not specifically about social class, but class comes up a lot.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Noblesse_Oblige_(book)

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_English_Gentleman

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Watching_the_English

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

#469

Post by foldr »

lukas099 wrote: post #458
dansitu wrote: post #424

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not sure where you've been eating, but even Birmingham—my unfashionable British hometown—has nine Michelin star restaurants within a short drive. I grew up in the UK but I've lived for 15 years all over the US, and it's always confused me that Americans are convinced that British food is bad. On a whole, British supermarkets have far better produce, in both quality and diversity. UK restaurants run the gamut from cut…

I think the trope is that British cuisine , that is, dishes that are uniquely British, are bad. Not that there isn’t good food there. Being a rich country, an empire, and part of Europe means you can have many, many different cuisines there though, and like you said many are very good.

Requiring something to be "uniquely British" to count as British cuisine seems like a pretty high bar. Are burgers and apple pie "uniquely American"? Not sure – and who even cares?

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

#470

Post by dave333 »

Played conkers as a kid around age 7-9. We had several horse chestnut trees along our road and I would search in amongst the leaves everyday on the way to and from school. Drill a hole in each and thread about 18 inches of string through the hole and tie a knot so the nut cannot fly off when you swing the nut at your opponent's conker. Challenge others in a duel to the death of one or other of the conkers. Draw lots for who gets first swing. Loser holds the conker out dangling vertically at the end of the string. Other player takes a shot by holding their conker in their fingers well above the other players and pulls down sharply on the string releasing the conker from the fingers in such a way that it hits the dangling conker hard. Assuming both conkers survive you reverse rolls and continue. Winning conkers names increment so a one-er, two-er, three-er and so on. I once had a seventeen-er but the accumulated battle damage eventually spelled disaster.

The World Championship seems very fishy to me - firstly someone involved in setting up the conkers (inflating the footballs) should not be a competitor. Second having been caught with a steel imitation conker in his pocket how can he be cleared? He can't prove he didn't use it surreptitiously and so should be disqualified.

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