World conker champion found with steel chestnut, cleared of cheating

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.

I was about to post the same thing! I've thought about this literally for decades.

I also had to wait for years to learn what conkers are - and I'm still confused. I'd love to know the context/history/culture that DNA was referring to because it doesn't make any sense to me as written

So conkers are chestnuts on a string used for childhood smashing competitions. Ooookay.

But why would Yooden Vranx have "lots of" chestnuts on his spaceship? And why "of course"? Was that something that should be expected from an adult, or maybe specifically a captain of a ship? And why would a child think chestnuts were as special as the weird galactic stuff?

To this day, I think he was referring to something else which got lost or changed in the editing process. Maybe there was a side bar about "cosmic conkers" that got omitted, but the later reference was kept. Something.

Your mistake is trying to find logic in something Douglas Adams wrote.

It makes no sense for alien spaceships to carry conkers. That's the joke, a small dig at people believing the local stuff they're used to is universal.

Don't take this the wrong way, but I don't think you understand Adams. He was incredibly logical. That was his genius: He would extrapolate on every topic to their logical conclusions - from computers to science to religion.

When he was being absurdist, he was very clear about it. Like you said, he was writing about conkers as if it's just the same in the rest of the galaxy, which is definitely absurd. But in order to ground that absurdity, the rest has to be normal. He doesn't just drop in complete nonsense.

So the question remains: What part of British culture or Adams personal history am I missing where it's logical for an adult to happen to have a bunch of chestnuts on hand to give to children?