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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

#561

Post by WesolyKubeczek »

cryptonector wrote: post #557
WesolyKubeczek wrote: post #171

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For me, the whole notion of there being a professional conkers league, and its longtime judge, real old chap, using a steel replica to cheat, reads like something Douglas Adams could invent.

Wait, he.. he didn't?

He didn't, but the mere fact that conkers are serious enough business that championships among adults even exist, that there are people for whom the game means so much that they engage in it for life, that one of the more prominent of the bunch even makes a conker of steel, and then an accusation of using it to cheat is raised — there should be a movie or a story about this. This is a quality urban legend material. Today it may be a nothingburger, but as years go by, it inevitably gets smoothed and a bit embellished here and there — just a little bit, you understand — and then the next Douglas Adams puts it in a setting where it is super hilarious and unmistakably British.

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

#562

Post by Duanemclemore »

dspillett wrote: post #289
Symbiote wrote: post #174

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Would the word not be in a dictionary?

It would, but depending on the dictionary there might not be much, if any, context about the game. You could get a simple “Concker(n), colloquial name for the seeds of the horse chestnut tree” or “Conckers(n), traditional game played mainly in the British Isles with seeds of the horse chestnut tree” – a concise definition of the what without any detail of the game or its cultural significance (it was a big thing for…

This was actually before I started elementary school. Once I did start school I recall looking it up and not finding anything in the dictionaries to which I had access in a midwestern small town - school, local public library etc. I assume if I had checked the big pedestal dictionary in the public library I would have found it. But being very young I didn't think to. When I reread it a few years later (still very young) I just got the context that it was a kids game and moved on. I wasn't ever so desperate to know that I went avidly looking for an answer. But when my aunt went to London I did think to ask so I got an answer.

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

#563

Post by AnimalMuppet »

thruway516 wrote: post #555
AnimalMuppet wrote: post #508

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A quick look says that Wikipedia disagrees with you. It's homegrown. If you claim otherwise (and claim that Wikipedia is an inadequate source), that's fine, but show your evidence.

What Wikipedia article are you looking at? Even the article on 'Association Football' which I assume is referring to the modern organized form of the sport that did develop in the UK has a long history section referring to the many origins of 'football' or 'soccer'.

From the Association Football article:

"Association football in itself does not have a classical history.[26] Notwithstanding any similarities to other ball games played around the world, FIFA has described that no historical connection exists with any game played in antiquity outside Europe.[3] The history of football in England dates back to at least the eighth century.[33] The modern rules of association football are based on the mid-19th century efforts to standardise the widely varying forms of football played in the public schools of England."

So, yeah. There are similar games. But the game in England is not an import.

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

#564

Post by mbo »

bee_rider wrote: post #82
mbo wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>It seems like a bad move to have a participant responsible for drilling the holes and attaching the strings. Part of the "point" of conkers is that conker-prep is just as much as a skill as the technique during the hitting phase. I think this was just poor scrutineering (or corruption) on the organizers side.

That would make sense to me, but it seems like maybe it isn’t how they did it? > Jakins was responsible for drilling and inserting strings into other competitors’ chestnuts as the competition’s top judge, known as the “King Conker”.

Ridiculous. A perversion of the true spirit of conkers.

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

#565

Post by fauria »

sedatk wrote: post #546
fauria wrote: post #398

Conkers is a traditional children's game in Great Britain and Ireland played using the seeds of horse chestnut trees—the name 'conker' is also applied to the seed and to the tree itself. The game is played by two players, each with a conker threaded onto a piece of string: they take turns striking each other's conker until one breaks. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conkers

I thank you on behalf of every non-Brit in the universe.

You are very welcome sir. I must say I'm not English, I'm Spanish actually. Congratulations on your Street Coder book, sounds like great reading material for junior engineers, I'll give it a read, seems promising. Regards.

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

#566

Post by _heimdall »

School-Cotton wrote: post #553
_heimdall wrote: post #542

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you take the same issue with the original comment pointing out that what are usually called nuts are actually seeds?

> as conkers are seeds (not a nut) - so shouldn't be an issue for someone with a nut allergy I take issue with this, and in fact we can see how the pedantic scientific meaning caused confusion about the actual underlying facts: people with allergies to what are commonly called "nuts" can in fact be allergic to things that according to the pedantic scientific definition are "seeds". So the OP is actually wrong to say…

Yep that's totally fair, that could be confusing since "nut allergy" isn't based on scientific definitions.

Though it would make my day if someone tells me they can't have peanuts because of a legume allergy.

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

#567

Post by shermantanktop »

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.

Solitaire is a game, and many people see games in terms of gaining or losing either social status or self-image. But for single-player games:

- maybe "winning" is a special case of "completing"

- "playing a game" in a competitive sense is totally different than "playing" in an undirected sense; e.g. playing with Legos or playing with a cat. Or playing with matches for that matter.

- for me, i'd much rather write "winner" on a t-shirt and wear it than prance around in a t-shirt that I legit competed for and won, and I need the world to know that about me. What kind of fragile ego does that? I'm more likely to see that as a "special kind of person."

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

#568

Post by fastasucan »

russellbeattie wrote: post #548
pyrale wrote: post #473

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your mistake is trying to find logic in something Douglas Adams wrote. It makes no sense for alien spaceships to carry conkers. That's the joke, a small dig at people believing the local stuff they're used to is universal.

Don't take this the wrong way, but I don't think you understand Adams. He was incredibly logical. That was his genius: He would extrapolate on every topic to their logical conclusions - from computers to science to religion. When he was being absurdist, he was very clear about it. Like you said, he was writing about conkers as if it's just the same in the rest of the galaxy, which is definitely absurd. But in order t…

>What part of British culture

Conkers

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

#569

Post by zabzonk »

grues-dinner wrote: post #544
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.

> marbles (can you get them anymore?) Almost literally never been cheaper. Under £3 for 50 on AliExpress, free shipping if you buy 150. I don't know if a child gets or loses street cred for having more cheap marbles then you can physically carry in 2024, but they could acquire that many quite easily. > where would kids get cans today? Pretty sure cans still exist! They might be a little more likely to contain, say, o…

> Almost literally never been cheaper. Under £3 for 50 on AliExpress,

Oh, good to know.

Back when I played the most prized ones were steel ball bearings, which the NCO engineers filched them from the RAF Vulcan bombers. Us flight officers kids didn't get access to this stuff.

Somewhat interesting factoid (so I am told - be interested to see a real source), ball bearings were packed into the RAF nuclear weapons to prevent horrible accidents if the aircraft crashed (which quite a few did) - tales of crew skidding around on the tarmac after the balls were dumped after arming the weapon were not unheard of, but probably legend.

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

#570

Post by maxbond »

School-Cotton wrote: post #105
reaperman wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thank you. This is the kind of speed-of-correction (~20 min or less) that is needed for social media discourse to work effectively. Indeed, no evidence has been found, this was just a silly meme from Reddit which predated the Hans drama by several years. When the Hans drama happened, of course Redditors started making silly flippant references to this joke. But some people didn’t understand that those were references…

> Depending on how you balance/weigh personal harm to Hans Niemann vs. How FIDE’s response benefited championship-level players. It’s certainly a good thing that security is being taken more seriously now. And I have zero sympathy for Hans. He chose to destroy his credibility by cheating online and, regardless of whether he also cheated over the board or not, has only himself to blame for the fact that people don’t t…

To be fair, Chess.com said that they had identified 24 other GMs who they believed had cheated (who they declined to name). His cheating may have been more normal than is comfortable. It's entirely possible Carlsen was on that list; we just don't know.

Niemann seems like a jerk, but he's also just a kid. He was 19 at the time of the controversy. I've sure grown a lot since I was 19.

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