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Signing UpStep 1The conker
The "conker" is the fruit of the horse-chestnut tree (Aesculus hippocastanum). Not actually a chestnut (conkers are, in fact, slightly toxic), it has been an important commercial tree, with uses as broad as raw materials for explosives to providing deep shade to keep beer-gardens cool enough to make winter ice last longer.
The conker got its name from the game, rather than the other way round - before the horse-chestnut was introduced to Britain, the game was played with acorns or snail-shells (the word conker actually means "hard", and comes from the same root as the French conque, meaning "conch (shell)").
The conker got its name from the game, rather than the other way round - before the horse-chestnut was introduced to Britain, the game was played with acorns or snail-shells (the word conker actually means "hard", and comes from the same root as the French conque, meaning "conch (shell)").
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See wikipedia.
The skin of the nut contains toxins that cause vomiting, but the peeled nut used to be boiled, dried and ground into a flour.
look for: Peterson field guides
Edible Wild Plants
eastern/central north america
by Lee Allen Peterson
a pretty usefull guide to have handy if you like those types of things but thats where i get the reason to belive they are poisonus. i got a copy at a borders book store for around $20.00.
They still used to eat the flour over here, though.
We used to make coffee out of acorns as well, but that was down to WWII shortages.
hmm im not shure if the book i mentioned earlyer is avalable in the UK or not i but still consider looking for it.
one: i live in the U.S. and you live in the UK, so it is possible that the "horse chestnut" could be two different things. to me i know it as poison but to you it COULD be perfectly safe.
two: DANDYBLEND IS HORRIFIC (dandylion coffee)
-that is all.
I can remember my grandmother teaching me all these things when I was really little :) great game- still haven't grown out of it lol!!
Nice instructable by the way!
What games did you play?
I'm kidding, of course. Nobody ever got punched in the face :).
(We were some pretty creative kids)
-Y
In America, there isn't really an equivalent, given the lack of quality conkers lying about. The closest game in spirit would be pencil fighting, in which the defender holds his pencil between thumb and forefinger in both hands and the attacker flicks their pencil in an attempt to break the defending pencil in two - which was really just an excuse to not do homework.
Maybe that should be an 'ible.
-Y
C4 by itself is far more destructive.
Step number 4 on our tour of Instructables: our esteemed British friend explaining to a numpty that C4 is a more powerful explosive than conkers.
No, it's not all that unusual, why do you ask?
Right, next up we have a real cultural experience - a duck into the K*nex Ghetto...not even the
policeadmins go to this part of town...- Players took alternate turns, regardless of whether the last swing was a hit or not.
- "strings" was called "snags" and rather than just deciding whose turn it was the players would tug hard on their string in an attempt to pull their opponents conker off the string (or the string out of their hand), thus facilitating a "stampy" opportunity.
- conker scores were not cumulative. If a "sixer" beat a "niner" it just became a "sevener"!
But all the same, a great instructable - brings back great childhood memories!
Nice to see some one bother to catalogue the games 'everybody knows the rules of' . the problem is that not everybody does know them, It is imporant that someone writes them down before there are so few people who DO know, that you lose half the rules or the finer points.
The call for 'strings' that I knew was 'tangles one, two, three. In Birmingham, both methods of scoring were used, which lead to considerable confusion! Also it was considered bad form to deliberately tangle the string and attempt to pull the other conker off.
A player had won when there was no conker remaining on his opponent's string, This meant that it was possible for a very damaged conker to win a fight, only to be completely destroyed on it's next hit.
Any treatment such as holding conkers over from one year to the next, baking or pickling was considered legal, but injecting epoxy resin between the shell and kernel was a definite infringement of the rules, as was having an overlarge knot at the bottom of the conker. This was because you could use it to hit your opponent's conker, rather than letting your conker take the impact.
I had never heard of the 'Stampsies' rule, that would have been regarded as the worst form of cheating imaginable! Likewise 'Scrambles' was new to me.
There are loads of games I played as a kid that are dying a slow death now, partially due to schools being over cautious with health and safety, and partially due to the rise of computer games, (don't get me wrong I LOVE computer games, I spend far too much time with them), but even when I was young there were games that were slowly dying out, Marbles are still out there, but who knows how to play 'Cat's Cradle' now ?
In that case, consider yourself obligated to produce an Instructable!
I do not think conkers grow anywhere near me, but I have a whole bin of slightly past there prime hazelnuts, would they work?
Thanks