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World conker champion found with steel chestnut, cleared of cheating

(www.theguardian.com)
424 points notamy | 2 comments | 15 Oct 24 03:12 UTC | HN request time: 0.018s | source
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Duanemclemore ◴[15 Oct 24 05:49 UTC] No.41845323[source]▶
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 really weird parts of the Galaxy - lots of conkers, of course, and we had just the most incredible time."

Of course in this well pre-internet age I had to wait literal YEARS to find out what conkers actually WERE. Luckily my aunt was an anglophile and went there six or seven years later. Before she left I asked her to find out what conkers were for me. When she returned she told me what they were and... to be honest I was kinda bummed out it wasn't something more elaborate.

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Symbiote ◴[15 Oct 24 07:12 UTC] No.41845773[source]▶
Would the word not be in a dictionary?
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1. dspillett ◴[15 Oct 24 09:35 UTC] No.41846733[source]▶
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 a short time each year back when I was of school age, and had been for generations).

“when I was very young and read the Hitchhikers Guide for the first time” suggests this was quite some time ago, so further lookups might have required a physical trip to a library, rather than just clicking a link or throwing a term at an online search engine.

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2. Duanemclemore ◴[15 Oct 24 22:24 UTC] No.41853751[source]▶
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.