World conker champion found with steel chestnut, cleared of cheating

[flagged]

I love how your comment is assuming that anybody here who's not British must be American. I'm Dutch and had never heard of conker before either.

I think the assumption is more that someone who's offended that the Guardian didn't explain a mainstay British playground game to their readers...

Is probably from the USA.

The commenter asks if the game is well known in Britain / Ireland itself.

I don't see the commenter expressing displeasure but rather only curiosity

Mainstay? First I'm hearing of it. I thought it was an onion article at first. It's really hard to tell when British people are serious sometimes. "Conker King"...like, WTH?

The Dutch are direct.

In Britain you’re not allowed to be.

>Mainstay? First I'm hearing of it.

You say this as if you were British, but then the rest of your comment seems to suggest that you're not (in which case it's not surprising that you might be unaware of some aspects of British playground culture).

I honestly can't believe you're British and have never heard of conkers.

It is a part of our culture, like pubs, pooh sticks, morriss dancing or cheese rolling.

It would be a totally valid citizenship question.

Maybe you're a city child?

> Or are you expected to have to google it?

It's clearly the implication that you shouldn't have to Google for it. That isn't directness, it's passive aggressiveness, which the Dutch are not stereotypically known for.

“That’s an odd name! I’d a called em fuzzwozzers.”

It certainly is a mainstay. A yearly treat which children love. In Ireland I was taught this song in school: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=bhebvq0O4GY (and I still remember all the words)

> Mainstay?

For sure it is. Every boy (and probably some girls, but never seen myself) plays conkers and likely puts their life in great peril climbing horse chestnut trees to gather the best conkers before anyone else gets them.

When I think back now to some of the massive (old) trees I used to climb and the action of shaking the branches to try to get the chestnuts to drop (whilst the branch is breaking underneath you, 100ft up), I’m surprised I’m here to talk about it!

This is a serious business.

I’m not even British but I’ve read enough novels to know of those things.

American here. I first heard the word conkers from Hitchhiker Guide to the Galaxy, but this was pre Google, so I just figured it was some scifi word.

Then I learned that it was a game from an episode of Kipper the Dog, in which his cheeky friend Tiger cheats at the game by painting something to look like a chestnut.

Don’t rope this persons antics in with all Americans. Just sounds like a negative person in general. They exist all over the world.

And you are? The one who deals out the stereotypes?

> instead of expressing displeasure at the imagined expectations imposed on readers of the article

Well it is the author's expectation, isn't it? I also left the article wondering what in the world conker was. I don't think it matters where the game is from or where the reader lives. It's just good writing to do a bit of explaining for the foreign readers, of which The Guardian knows they have.

It's the guardian. You're not the target audience. Not everything is about america.

What is a pooh stick and is it related to a poop knife

Now imagine adding an explanation of american football rules on every article about it, of which there are probably hundreds written a day.

I have no clue about american football rules - I barely know the sport exists, the ball has a funny shape, and that it's popular in the states. Still it would be absolute nonsense to explain their basics every time someone talks about them and I won't expect anyone to do so. Explanations like that will just annoy the vast majority of readers, who will have a preexisting interest in the sport and thus will already be familiar with the rules.

That said, I had even less of a clue what the hell conkers is. Luckily I have basic technological literacy and was able to find the wikipedia article[1] in a fraction of the time it takes one to complain.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conkers

To be fair it was written in English.

I wasn’t annoyed at all and I don’t think I expressed disdain. You misjudged the tone I was going for.

We have conkers in London.

You and your friends get a stick each, together you drop it off a bridge over a stream (upstream side), then you run to the other side of the bridge, whichever stick appears first is the winner.

I live in Belgium, near the Dutch border. I can confirm that the Dutch can be passive-aggressive.

I'm pretty sure it's you assuming that the comment is assuming that.

Not to disparage your heroics, but I am fairly sure you weren't 100ft up, and the tale grew taller in the telling.

Conkers is good fun. Though a bit dangerous for modern sensibilities perhaps.

Morriss dancing isnt a real thing. It is just something silly invented by the BBC as a self-deprecating joke, like Canadians street vendors selling fried beaver tails.

No one said it was true for every game. Conker is more akin to corn hole than football, but maybe even more obscure.

I think the assumption is that the assumption assumes asinine intent akin to adopting ambiguous alliteration.

Some trees are pretty damn good for climbing. It scares the shit out of me now, but I’m fairly certain I’ve gotten to some 7-10 meters up. That’s only like 30 feet though, I don’t think I’ve even seen trees that were 100ft high xD

> That isn't directness, it's passive aggressiveness, which the Dutch are not stereotypically known for.

No need to be passively aggressive if you can be actively aggressive ;)

I don’t think the capability precludes it from being something they’re not stereotypically known for.

It's not obscure in the UK. You can find any number of equally 'obscure' cultural practices referenced in American newspapers without explanation. It's unreasonable to expect a British newspaper to be free of British cultural background assumptions just because it's viewable by an international audience.

You know, conkers is exactly the sort of sport that makes a good anime. Everyman protagonist finds the world's hardest conker, takes on a series of increasingly absurd super-conkerists, Baki the Grappler style, with frequent informational asides about the art and science of conkers, and eventually faces the mysterious Conker Lord ... who turns out to be his long lost older brother!

It appears that about 38% of visits to their site come from the UK, so it might be that the majority of their readers aren't familiar with conker. https://www.similarweb.com/website/theguardian.com/#geograph...

I guess your point makes sense, though. There isn't the obligation to explain anything. I just personally think it's good writing to anticipate what your readers may not likely understand.

Is no one allowed to mention stereotypes, because there's no defined authority? The Dutch being direct is about as uncontroversial as you could get.

In any case, the comment I replied to already made the claim. I deliberately weakened it by saying it was a stereotype rather than talking as if it were unconditionally true.

The NYT has 150 million monthly readers globally of which 27% are international. I still wouldn't expect it to insert helpful explainers every time it mentions a cultural phenomenon specific to the US.

Maybe, but I took a guess based on how high horse chestnut trees can get. I’m almost sure I am underestimating. The best ones I used to climb were those that lined the entry to a country estate and they were clearly very old and were absolutely huge.

A horse chestnut tree can reach heights of approximately 30 to 40 meters (about 98 to 131 feet) [1].

I used to go pretty damn far up, one time really shitting myself up as the thinner weaker branches started breaking away as I was climbing higher.

It genuinely felt like, even if probably not entirely true, that I was sticking my head out of the top of the tree before it started giving way. It’s a memory that will stick with me forever!

Of course I can’t prove this, but it’s not entirely implausible that a very old horse chestnut tree could be over 100 feet high and it’s not entirely implausible that it’s possible to climb up a tree of that size. So I guess either take my word for it or not, your call ;)

[1] https://directree.org/horse-chestnut-aesculus-hippocastanum/

Please don't respond to a bad comment by breaking the site guidelines yourself. That only makes things worse.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

p.s. Also, if you're talking about https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41844648, I don't think you've characterized that comment accurately or fairly. As the site guidelines ask, "Please respond to the strongest plausible interpretation of what someone says, not a weaker one that's easier to criticize. Assume good faith."

I've been to this, it's great:

https://strawbear.org.uk/

It's a load of different morriss dancing troops dancing around the town with a parade with the lot of them. And there are a lot. Bloody freezing some years though!

Also, in the same vein, this weekend I think there's the annual Sea Shanty festival in my home town.

https://harwichshantyfestival.co.uk/

The videos are quite bad at conveying how great some of the groups are, especially sitting in a smallish pub with a pint listening to some amazing singers do sea shanties. Quite magical.