World conker champion found with steel chestnut, cleared of cheating

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?

Vinegar makes it stronger? I would naively expect the opposite.

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.

I wouldn't be surprised if many of the "techniques" softened it but made it more resistant to shattering.

An extremely hard but brittle conker would probably make for poor results.

Interesting. I can certainly see how brittleness is probably fatal. But a soft one won't be any help at breaking your opponent's conker, either, right? Unless speed of your conker can overcome the increased inefficiency of transmitting energy into the opponent's...

Everything can be a sport if you try hard enough.

I varnished mine

Everything can be a sport if you can bet on it.

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.

Conkers are usually oblate spheroids and the dangling one has its largest radius spot on top usually - thinking back I never thought to string one differently not sure if that was allowed. So the person taking the hit can aim to hit with the shortest radius section of their conker on the flat spot of the other. There's also the skill of an accurate hit - someone who misses a lot or hits away from center glancing blows is not going to win very much.

> Wouldn't that newton's-second-law

Contradict/confirm/what? Please clarify.

While obviously all three laws do apply to a usual conker match (if not, the radiation from the plasma sheath and relativistic shrapnel is probably the bigger concern that the result of the match), I think the third law is the one you mean: For every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction.

Also the nut being hit is restrained by the string whereas the hitting nut can go in any direction or simply rebound. Cracks may start at the hole in which case being hit is worse than hitting on average.