World conker champion found with steel chestnut, cleared of cheating

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.

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?

WHen you were a kid, accidentally hitting yourself or the other person was just part of it!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cLGuZZraIqg

And one from the championship:

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.

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

Through the exact rules are up to the players and I personally consider the "stamps" rule they mention to be foul play :)

https://www.amazon.co.uk/SpitJack-Trussing-Butchers-Roasting...

Attach string, push through, detach string and remove.

Not usually in my experience, the string isn't that short and you're holding it at one end. Injury is still possible though, but that's part of the fun!

You need to use a long enough string. Old cotton shoe laces are actually perfect as the aglets make threading that much easier.

The force of one conker against another is enough to sometimes make it spin round, but not enough to do any real damage. You just need a long enough string that your fingers are not in the firing range. Obviously there is a vanishingly small risk of a piece of conker ending up in the eye but I never witnessed that or any other injury happening. The biggest problem was usually upset kids when their prized conker got destroyed.

It does until you learn, usually quite quickly, to do it properly.

Hurting your opponent's hand is a different matter :)

That's brilliant. Why did this never occur to me? That's going on the list of things to tell my younger self when time travel becomes possible.

Was it that once you reached six, you stopped counting? Or do you retire it, undefeated?

You take a chestnut, and you hook the ice pick. You wait until nobody is in the kitchen, and then one kid presses down on the pilot-light button so that a long delicate blue finger of flame comes out, and the other kid puts the ice pick in the flame until it is red-hot. When it is, he bores a hole in the chestnut. You do as many as you can until somebody comes and asks you what you are doing, and then, according to your standing in the family, that day, you either plead, argue, or say, “Oh, jeez,” and slink away.