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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
by School-Cotton 2y ago
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 instantly obvious to even a casual observer that the look and sound were wrong. So maybe I’m still missing something.
- lock_enthusiast 2y agoI feel there is enough in the article to build an image of the game in your head: I'm imagining a game game where two people trying to destroy the other person's chestnut by whirring and hitting the chestnuts on the end of strings. Now I'm going to go check my mental image against wikipedia.
- Nursie 2y agoThat's more or less it. You make a hole through your 'conker' (horse chestnut, not the edible type) and thread a string or a bootlace through it. Then you take turns. One holds their string still and lets the conker hang down, the other gets a swing at it with their conker. Whoever's conker lasts the longest is the winner. There were all sorts of rumours about baking them, or soaking in vinegar or what have you to harden them up, but effectively it's the sort of game that a bunch of kids can play under a horse chestnut tree with relatively few props. Using a steel 'ringer' in that circumstance would be the worst sort of unsportsmanlike behaviour.
- riffraff 2y agoHo do you drill the hole? I'm having trouble imagining kids with needles in their pockets, do you do it with a pencil or toothpick? We've got a ton of horse chestnuts in my neighborhood but I've never heard of this game and I'm eager to introduce it to my kids. Also, doesn't the conker spiral around your hand hitting it and hurting you?
- LandR 2y ago> your hand hitting it and hurting you? WHen you were a kid, accidentally hitting yourself or the other person was just part of it!
- looperhacks 2y agoI'm not from Britain, but we used to craft with chestnuts. We always used a small hand drill (Wikipedia tells me it's called a gimlet). I assume it's the same in Britain
- tankenmate 2y agoHorse chestnut shells are very hard, normally you would drill the hole.
- Nursie 2y agoA gimlet? Hammer and a thick-ish nail? Honestly I can't remember how we used to do it. Might even have used a hand drill at some point. They're fairly soft when you've made a hole in the shell, so you might get away with a screwdriver? When at school we probably made do with a compass (the drawing kind), as we all had them. I'm sure that resulted in a pretty high rate of conkers being destroyed before they could be strung, and a lot of ruined compasses. > Also, doesn't the conker spiral around your hand hitting it and hurting you? Generally not, though the game isn't without its minor hazards :) There's a (very sweet) video here that seems to do a good job of showing the process and the game - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cLGuZZraIqg https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cLGuZZraIqg Through the exact rules are up to the players and I personally consider the "stamps" rule they mention to be foul play :)
- riffraff 2y agocompass makes a ton of sense, and that is indeed a sweet video, thanks for sharing!
- dageshi 2y agoWe randomly had something like this in our kitchen draw... https://www.amazon.co.uk/SpitJack-Trussing-Butchers-Roasting-Stainless/dp/B07W951V8S https://www.amazon.co.uk/SpitJack-Trussing-Butchers-Roasting... Attach string, push through, detach string and remove.
- hackernewds 2y agoI'm having the utter best time as a 12 year old replacing conker with something less wholesome
- pixxel 2y agoIf my memory serves me: you used to announce your conker as a “two-er”, or “three-er”, for example, to inform your opponent how many conkers your particular conker had previously claimed. If your opponent decided to challenge you and won then they would claim your “three-er” and add its win total to their own. So a “two-er” would become a “five-er”.
- Nursie 2y agoThis is really probing the dusty, cobwebbed corners of my memory but yes, I have a very vague recollection of a 'six-er' being somewhat special...
- flir 2y agoThe phrase "a sixer at conkers" is floating to the surface. Was it that once you reached six, you stopped counting? Or do you retire it, undefeated?
- Ntrails 2y agoI also recall this, but suspect sometimes numbers may have been inflated...
- lisper 2y agoHere's a video that explains it: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cLGuZZraIqg https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cLGuZZraIqg And one from the championship: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k5t6ej8Jzew https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k5t6ej8Jzew And here I was thinking that curling was the most ridiculous-looking sport in the world. I stand corrected.
- RandomThoughts3 2y agoI don’t think conker players pretend it’s a sport. It would ihmo be more accurate to call it a game.
- lisper 2y agos/sport/organized competitive activity/
- conductr 2y agoI’m American and never heard of this sport in my life yet article painted a similar picture in my mind.
- raffraffraff 2y agoIt's not a sport, it's something that kids used to do pre 1950s. People were poor, didn't have manufactured "stuff", so they made their own toys out of simple things like stones, sticks, old wheels etc Football was likely popular because a single ball could keep a while bunch of kids happy for an afternoon (if someone could actually afford a ball). I'm almost 50, and to me the image of boys playing conkers only comes from books or TV based in early 1900s UK. I've never actually seen anyone play it. And nowadays people don't really grow up at all. They continue playing right into adulthood and old age, with luxury toys.
- hnlmorg 2y agoMy kids play conkers. They also have games consoles and other luxury toys. Kids just love to play.
- jamiek88 2y agoI’m 47 and played conkers in school on merseyside. The local ‘conker trees’ were famous!
- OJFord 2y agoI think whether or not you grew up with a significant local population of 'conker trees' probably had a lot more to do with it than age. I'm younger than you (and didn't grow up 'poor') and we played too, 'pre-50s' is ridiculous.
- komadori 2y agoI grew up in the 90s and we played conkers. The main detail I remember was that soaking them in vinegar was supposed to make them stronger!
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- cultofmetatron 2y agosoo.. bayblade with nuts?
- mikeodds 2y agoInnate knowledge to Brits, similar to knowing a swan might break your arm
- DougN7 2y agoLol, I don’t understand what THAT means! A swan might break your arm?!?
- throwup238 2y agoIt’s the British version of an urban myth. It’s like an urban myth… but more British.
- seanhunter 2y agoI emigrated to Britain. These sorts of things mystified me for the longest time. Yes. Picture some British parents and their child on a walk near a pond, river, canal or whatever. The child sees a swan. The parents will say something like "don't get too close dear, it could break your arm". Swans are aggressive so it's probably not terrible advice, but not because they go around breaking people's arms specifically.
- MonkeyClub 2y agoAnecdotal reports, all of them true I'm sure: https://www.theguardian.com/notesandqueries/query/0,5753,-24008,00.html https://www.theguardian.com/notesandqueries/query/0,5753,-24... Lovely read!
- beezlewax 2y agoYe and the queen eats swans for breakfast or something like that.
- Nursie 2y agoAll swans are owned by the crown and the monarch has the exclusive right to kill and eat them. Or at least that's the way I heard it, come to think of it I have no idea at all if that's true. Stops people killing and eating swans though. Not that many would anyway these days.
- Finbarr 2y agoYes, it is. It’s a game most news-reading-age adults will have played when they were at school as children.
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- saretup 2y agoIf it is a serious game, I’m surprised they don’t examine the chestnuts first
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- 0110101001 2y agoThe alleged cheater was also the head judge of the tournament.
- triceratops 2y agoFurther evidence that it isn't a serious tournament. In what other sport does the referee also play?
- fy20 2y agoIt's a game you play as a kid. This is the first I've heard of there being a professional league. On the other hand, we also have competitions such as cheese rolling (trying not to get killed by a giant cheese wheel rolling down a hill), so I'm not that surprised. https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/live/uk-england-gloucestershire-69065807 https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/live/uk-england-gloucestershire-6...
- ackbar03 2y agoI know the version where you try not to kill yourself chasing the cheese. Are you saying there's one where the cheese chases and tries to kill you?
- isodev 2y ago> Is this game well-known enough in Britain and Ireland I’m from elsewhere in Europe and I know about it from high school and it’s also something that pops up in the world sports section on news websites every now and then.
- tomxor 2y agoYes. Although the last time I played or heard anyone discuss conkers as a game was in the 1990s at school. My dad seemed to find the concept of fake conkers amusing enough to take it upon himself to craft me a resin filled one, although it didn't fool any kids. In more recent years a bus driver complained to me conkers are not legal tender as I placed some down while in search of change. Around this time of year you will find most people have their pockets filled with conkers. </dev/random>
- tankenmate 2y agoAs well as the old myth that putting a conker in the corner of a room will ward off spiders building a web there. The veracity of which, attest to I cannot.
- fer 2y ago> Although the last time I played or heard anyone discuss conkers as a game was in the 1990s at school. Same, but with peonzas/trompos[0]. It's interesting since it's also about breaking the other player's item thanks to the inertia provided by a string. In short, they're hardcore spinning tops: large, generally with a metal tip, spun much faster due to the string winding, and as mentioned, the objective is to crack the other player's. [0]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trompo https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trompo
- beAbU 2y agoI did not know it was possible to break those things to be honest. We made a circle with a string or something, and then let the two spinning tops (as we called them) duke it out, and the loser is the one knocked out of the ring. Ours were made from a very tough plastic, either nylon or HDPE.
- bee_rider 2y ago> The 23-year-old said: “My conker disintegrated in one hit, and that just doesn’t happen … I’m suspicious of foul play and have expressed my surprise to organisers.” It seems the suspicious was pretty quick.
- School-Cotton 2y agoIt’s just crazy that someone would cheat at something so low-stakes with such a high probability of being caught, but I suppose I shouldn’t be surprised.
- aniforprez 2y agoPeople cheat on online cooperative computer games like Helldivers with almost no rewards for being performatively better other than a few imaginary in-game points. People can be weird about the smallest things
- bee_rider 2y agoCheating at a PvE game like Helldivers is basically a victimless crime (I don’t do it, but I can see why people would).
- a_t48 2y agoCheating with only your friends - yeah, mostly. Cheating with randos sounds like it would lead to boring gameplay.
- wcfields 2y agoLike, you can cheat at Solitaire, but why?
- shermantanktop 2y agoHey, dopamine is dopamine. This ain’t stolen valor or a plagiarized thesis.
- krispyfi 2y agoI only know of the game because the Conkerer web browser was named after it. http://conkeror.org/ http://conkeror.org/
- 1659447091 2y ago> 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. Sounds like a British version of pencil break - but with way more scandal, apparently
- aardvark179 2y agoI think most people would know just from the headline.
- FearNotDaniel 2y agoYes, conkers is sufficiently well-known enough as a children's schoolyard game that I would expect pretty much every newspaper-reading adult to have heard of it. The fact that there is supposedly an "adult" championship event would be a surprise to most. If you're looking for the "story behind the story", other than the fact that it's a seasonally-specific, light human-interest story: there is probably a slight cultural bias amongst those who most fondly remember the game towards the private-school-educated, upper-class types who combine nostalgia for imagined "glory days" with political conservatism, so this is a good opportunity for the left-leaning Guardian to hand-pick someone who appears to belong to that class and expose them as a ridiculously-dressed scoundrel with childish interests and suspect morals. The subtext is: these are the sort of idiots we want you to associate with Nigel Farage, Boris Johnson and co, and thus the Overton Window gets a tiny nudge in the opposite direction.
- willvarfar 2y agoThis is silly. Conkers aren't a rich person's sport, and this article in the guardian isn't pushing any political subversive subtext.
- bboygravity 2y agoNews is what you don't get to read. The rest are political ads.
- blitzar 2y agoI heard the conkers cheater was an illegal immigrant, the establishment covered it up and now they wont even report on conkers anywhere in the main stream media (/s?)
- ccppurcell 2y agoIt never occurred to me that conkers could be a class thing and you could be right. But let it be known that conkers was extremely popular at my state school; me and all of my friends grew up to be pretty left wing too by the way. Also they banned it at my school, along with pogs, yoyos, etc.
- el_oni 2y agoIt's sufficiently well known that as a British 30 something I understood what was being alleged just from the headline
- jareklupinski 2y agoin my schools, the closest analog was probably using the school-supplied sporks to engage in "Spork Wars" (not the best example but it will do https://youtu.be/vO7SclBfpZ8?t=145 https://youtu.be/vO7SclBfpZ8?t=145 ) though through the "draft" nature of which spork you would receive, we never had a controversy on the level of the article's: > "There are also suggestions that King Conker had marked the strings of harder nuts"
- fmbb 2y agoSwede here. I know from just reading the headline what happened. Byt then I’ve watched some British costume dramas.
- 256_ 2y agoI'm British. I only have a very vague memory of the game from my childhood. I didn't remember what the goal was, but I remembered you have to hit the opponent's one. I don't remember if I ever played it or not.
- ddmf 2y agoYou hold the conker in one hand and the string in the other with some tension and then release so it pings and bashes the other players conker, hoping to smash it off the string. Repeat until one conker is smashed into oblivion. If your conker wins against multiples it becomes named mythically: a twoer, a threer, and so on. I once had a niner. a fiver took it down.
- thih9 2y agoCan 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?
- bluehatbrit 2y agoI can't imagine so. A match is over when one persons conker is destroyed. If you were purposefully missing, you'd be throwing the game. Theirs would still take a battering from hitting yours as well.
- krisoft 2y agoBut then how would you smash theirs? That sounds a bit like cheating by staying at home and not playing.
- lmm 2y agoYou 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).
- physicsguy 2y agoYeah it’s a game you play as kids.
- harperlee 2y agoIt is in Spain, any self-respected pre-smartphone-childhood person has at the very minimum least seen this in action at the playground.
- echoangle 2y agoIs the game skill-based? How can you influence which chestnut breaks? Is the challenge chestnut selection? Or a specific swing method?
- beAbU 2y agoI find it highly suspicious that the reigning champion gets to drill the holes in the conkers. You can intentionally make some of them weaker by drilling closer to the edge or something. I assume the conkers are provided by the organizers, and the participants must select their conker from the collection or given one at random. Prevents tampering I guess.
- echoangle 2y agoI thought it might be like formula 1 where having the right equipment is part of the challenge.
- dagw 2y agoI assume the conkers are provided by the organizers Going around the conker trees in your area and finding the perfect conker is a huge part of the game. There is also a certain amount of pre-game 'modification' that are generally allowed, like soaking them in various solutions, or baking them in an oven. Having to use a provided conker would be like showing up to the Tour de France and being assigned a bike by the organisers.
- joncrocks 2y agoIndeed, but apparently this is the way it works. I suspect to prevent 'foul-play' - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_Conker_Championships#WCC_Rules https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_Conker_Championships#WCC...
- dagw 2y agoI stand corrected. Perhaps Tour de France should apply this rule as well to avoid foul play?
- b800h 2y agoYes, it's a quintessential childhood game here. You take turns to have a single swing at the opponent's conker, until one of the conkers is smashed off its string. Cheating is a bit of an art. Baking the chestnuts at the right temperature was one method; a friend of mine filled his conker with glue.
- ZiiS 2y agoMore UK people will have played conkers then soccer.
- MonkeyClub 2y agoMore Brits will have played football than soccer too, I believe.
- nickcw 2y agoI 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.
- martin_ 2y agoAlso played at school in England.... probably ~22 years ago now I'd guess! Sad to hear that era is over!
- schoen 2y agoWhat are the health and safety risks from this game? Do the chestnuts fragment violently when they break up?
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- 946789987649 2y agoaccidentally hitting each other
- schoen 2y agoI can't really visualize the amount of momentum involved, or how sharp the chestnut is. Is that specifically about eye injuries, or could it hurt someone some other way?
- lazide 2y agoIf you whip it above your head at a good 100-200 rpm, anything is possible.
- schoen 2y agoAfter writing the above comment, I watched videos of people playing conkers and now I understand how it could, in theory, cause an eye injury. It was hard for me to visualize how close the defender's conker is to the defender's body before seeing the video. I was somehow wrongly imagining that it was being supported on a much longer string or with the help of other objects somehow.
- ddmf 2y agogosh i remember those halcyon days back when I had a niner, sadly it was taken by a fiver.
- xg15 2y agoWas confused too. My first thought was about conker crafting [1] and I was puzzled that there was a world championship for it and people were serious enough about it to cheat - but then again, weirder things exist... [1] https://curiousandgeeks.com/conker-animals-autumn-crafts https://curiousandgeeks.com/conker-animals-autumn-crafts
- yoz-y 2y agoThey did play conkers with cranes and caravans in Top Gear, so I feel that at least a large portion of non Brits will know the game from there.
- vidarh 2y agoI'm Norwegian, but have lived in the UK half my life, since I was 25, and I'm aware of it, though have never seen it played. I think most people who have lived her for a while will at least have heard references to it.
- samuelec 2y agoI'm puzzled as well, what the heck the article is talking about and why it's posted here?
- OJFord 2y agoYeah, 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.
- OJFord 2y agoMissed 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.
- Aardwolf 2y agoI only know about conkers due to photonicinduction's youtube video where they play conkers with two CRT televisions attached with ropes to the ceiling However even without knowing that I think reading the article makes it clear enough what it's about and that a steel chestnut shattering the other one seems like an unfair advantage :)
- red_admiral 2y agoIt is a very, very British thing. A generation or two ago, almost everyone played it at school and it was Very Serious Business. I guess you needed something to occupy yourself before Pokemon Go was invented.
- nanna 2y agoI have fond memories of playing conkers in primary school. Sometimes you got a rapped knuckle but children's sports is full of cuts and grazes, and it didn't hurt as much as slaps anyway. The main issue was that some kids would inevitably harden their conkers by putting them in the oven or lacquering them, and so on. But spotting that was part of the charm.
- flir 2y agoBeing of a geeky bent, I tried them all. It never worked. They go brittle and shatter, or they go soft and fall apart. (When I was a kid, conkers were so prized we chucked sticks at them to try to get them to drop. So it was a bit of a shock to me when they started just being left where they fell. Kids today, off my lawn, uphill both ways, etc etc).
- nanna 2y agoCheaters never prosper!
- wslh 2y agoIn many places the cup-and-ball [1] game was/is popular. It's incredible to think now about games that doesn't require batteries and USB ports. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cup-and-ball https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cup-and-ball
- BlueTemplar 2y ago"A generation or two ago" roughly corresponds to the Tamagotchi era too.
- 2y ago
- MasterScrat 2y agoHere's how it looks like apparently: https://youtu.be/hXUbTKd6pmo?t=29 https://youtu.be/hXUbTKd6pmo?t=29
- ndndjdjdn 2y agoYes. Usually conkers were banned at school. So we had to play space invaders, for which you need a tennis ball not an Atari.
- mhandley 2y agoYes, it was a big deal when I was in school in the 70s. Everyone played. There were never any conkers left unclaimed under any Horse Chestnut within a mile of the school. We all tried lots of tricks - soaking in vinegar, baking in the oven - practically anything was allowed, but I'm not sure any of it made a difference. It could be pretty painful as getting your hand hit by a high speed conker was common occurrence, but I don't recall anyone getting any lasting injuries.
- ben_w 2y agoIndeed, it was still popular in the 80s and 90s. I assume still is, given the Guardian is a national newspaper.
- Wildgoose 2y agoSo well known that it was even famously used in an advert for a kid's chocolate bar: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nC9BBLSZZdQ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nC9BBLSZZdQ
- traceroute66 2y ago> 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? Absolutely. Very well known. My Youtube-fu is not with me, so I can't seem to locate this video on Youtube, but see this BBC Archive footage from 1971 that was posted on Instagram[1] from a BBC News Report entitled "Conkers is no longer a kids' game." [1] https://www.instagram.com/bbc_archive/reel/DA7zkmkAShz/ https://www.instagram.com/bbc_archive/reel/DA7zkmkAShz/
- fedeb95 2y agoit's pretty easy to infer by the article. Or ask GPT-n to do it.
- oneeyedpigeon 2y agoIn Britain, it's very well known by those of us who are 40+, and I think even younger people will at least have heard of it, even if they haven't played it themselves. It was an absolute staple of playgrounds in the 1980s. There's a rich history of supposed 'cheats' — boiling the conker in vinegar was a classic. And, note, conker, not chestnut (two different things).
- yabatopia 2y agoHere are some pictures of a previous championship: https://www.theguardian.com/technology/gallery/2015/oct/12/50th-world-conker-championships-ashton-conker-club-southwick-in-pictures https://www.theguardian.com/technology/gallery/2015/oct/12/5... .
- entropyie 2y agoYes it is, everyone I grew up with in Ireland played conkers.
- eru 2y ago> 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? I got the gist just from reading the headline, yes. And I'm not even a limey, I just lived there for a few years.