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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

#521

Post by pavon »

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 was curious, and looked in my paperback Merriam Webster american english dictionary that I used through out school and received about the time I first read HHGTTG. Conker is not present.

The big honking dictionary on a pedestal at the high school library probably would have had it, and if that was not enlightening then the library in the closest city that we visited monthly would have good encyclopedias that probably would have described it. But I don't remember the conkers reference catching my imagination, and probably wrote it off as a silly made-up sci-fi word.

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

#522

Post by aspenmayer »

School-Cotton wrote: post #467
_heimdall wrote: post #465

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

Clearly they're wrong because this chair is a table.

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

#523

Post by klondike_klive »

andrewaylett wrote: post #488
bitbasher wrote: post #481

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As someone that roasts and eats chestnuts, it's kind of odd to play with them. I suppose you ate many and also played, or are they simply not eaten there?

Conkers are horse chestnuts, rather than sweet chestnuts. Similar name, unrelated tree.

Is it really unrelated? The leaves and nuts seem so similar.

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

#524

Post by klondike_klive »

sourcepluck wrote: post #342

Can confirm that we had very elaborate rules for our conker championships in school in Ireland in the late 90s and early 00s. The lore ran deep too - conkers were varnished in different ways, hardened in front of fireplaces, secret conker trees were coveted, rules were sometimes broken, airplanes were usually not allowed, disputes were not always mitigated, the occasional teacher grumbled. Fun was had.

I seem to remember that conkers with a flat side and sharp edge were called cheesecutters.

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

#525

Post by OJFord »

OJFord wrote: post #257
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…

Yeah, like saying 'tetherball' or 'keep-away' to someone in the US; which I only know from a Monk episode I watched last night. I didn't know and wouldn't have guessed there were world championships, though.

Missed the edit, but just to add 'keep-away' is 'piggy-in-the-middle' in the UK, and I don't know if perhaps you have it too but 'swingball' is a similar game to 'tetherball' but played with a tennis ball & (typically not tennis, but just cheap plastic thing for the purpose) racket.

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

#526

Post by _heimdall »

School-Cotton wrote: post #467
_heimdall wrote: post #465

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

Chairs and OOP have nothing to do with each other. Fruits, seeds, etc are plants and fall into botanical definitions.

I get the point that we call them berries even if they aren't, but your comparison to OOP is apples and oranges.

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

#527

Post by tim333 »

edm0nd wrote: post #519
aeneasmackenzie wrote: post #453

Earlier quoted context omitted.

“The taste of their food and the beauty of their women made British men the best sailors in the world.”

The UKs genetic pool is so small its really interesting how many "unattractive" people they have there because of it.

I'm not sure you can blame a small gene pool. The UK has had people coming and going from all over.

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

#528

Post by bee_rider »

smolder wrote: post #302
shermantanktop wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I don’t really know that it is cheating to get a “win” label. Maybe it is just a distraction or fun flashing lights.

Do you remember being a child and just playing with action figures? It was harmless and fun. I wonder where we lose that ability to just chill and have fun without a challenge.

Actually, a lot of people seem to just spend a lot of time watching TV, which is also fun without challenge.

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

#530

Post by jvvw »

ss64 wrote: post #441
cjs_ac wrote: post #356

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 spec…

'Watching the English' is nearly 40 years old now and a lot of things have changed. M&S is no longer hugely more expensive than other stores, for food I think Waitrose has taken its place. Also this article is veering into the idea that class is all about money, which may work in the US but is far from being true in the UK.

There is an updated version by the way. Don't know if that bit has been updated.

I still think doing your whole food shop at M&S is 'higher class' than doing it at Waitrose, but it's weird because of the M&S Simply Food shops which are more geared I think to somebody in a city buying a day or two's food.

And you are right, class is much much more complicated than just money :-)

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