Conkers

The name may also be influenced by the verb conquer, as earlier games involving shells and hazelnuts have also been called conquerors.

[4] Another possibility is that it is an onomatopoeia, representing the sound made by a horse chestnut as it hits another hard object, such as a skull[citation needed] (another children's "game", also called conkers, consists of simply throwing the seeds at one another over a fence or wall).

[citation needed] In D. H. Lawrence's book Sons and Lovers, the game is referred to as cobblers by William Morel.

It was also played in Queens, the upper West Side of Manhattan, in the Mohawk Valley area of upstate New York and in Westmount, Quebec and other English-speaking parts of Montreal into the 1970s.

A hole is bored in a large, hard conker using a nail, gimlet, small screwdriver, or electric drill.

In some areas of the United States and Canada, conker victories are counted using the terms one-kinger, two-kinger, etc.

[10] A similar Puerto Rican game (played with the smaller seed of the jatobá, Hymenaea courbaril) is called gallitos (meaning small roosters or cocks, as in cockfighting).

[11] In 1965, the World Conker Championships were set up in Ashton (near Oundle) Northamptonshire, England, and still take place on the second Sunday of October every year.

The Mexican Jorge Ramirez Carrillo took the place of a contestant who was unable to arrive on time at Ashton, and defeated the 1975 champion at the finals.

Eamonn Dooley from Freshford in County Kilkenny, Ireland broke the world record in 2000 by smashing 306 conkers in one hour.

[12] In 2004, an alternative World Conker Championships was first hosted at Pill Harriers Rugby Club, Newport, Wales.

[18] The TV programme Top Gear later staged a game of conkers using caravans suspended from cranes.

[19] After putting on safety goggles, presenter James May commented "I now feel perfectly happy about being hit in the face by a caravan."

Top Gear, along with other media commentators, wrongly stated that the wearing of goggles during the game was due to an official Health and Safety Executive (HSE) edict when it was in fact due to a myth which started when a headmaster bought goggles for children to use as a parody of health and safety regulation[20] and sponsored a conkers tournament.

[21] In 2004, several schools in Britain banned conkers due to fear of causing anaphylactic shock in pupils with nut allergies.

Health advisers said that there were no known dangers from conkers for nut-allergy sufferers, although some may experience a mild rash through handling them.