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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: 0.001s | 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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WesolyKubeczek ◴[15 Oct 24 07:08 UTC] No.41845754[source]▶
For me, the whole notion of there being a professional conkers league, and its longtime judge, real old chap, using a steel replica to cheat, reads like something Douglas Adams could invent.
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1. cryptonector ◴[15 Oct 24 21:28 UTC] No.41853304[source]▶
Wait, he.. he didn't?
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2. WesolyKubeczek ◴[15 Oct 24 22:02 UTC] No.41853564[source]▶
He didn't, but the mere fact that conkers are serious enough business that championships among adults even exist, that there are people for whom the game means so much that they engage in it for life, that one of the more prominent of the bunch even makes a conker of steel, and then an accusation of using it to cheat is raised — there should be a movie or a story about this. This is a quality urban legend material. Today it may be a nothingburger, but as years go by, it inevitably gets smoothed and a bit embellished here and there — just a little bit, you understand — and then the next Douglas Adams puts it in a setting where it is super hilarious and unmistakably British.