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Level 3 – Intermediate
Conker fighting goes international
Every autumn British schoolchildren play conkers. They have been doing it for hundreds of years. It is a national game that everyone in the UK has played at one time in their life.
Until recently the game was still largely unknown outside the UK. But more people than ever before are playing the game. And it now looks as if it is going to become an international sport and perhaps even an Olympic discipline!
But this year the men's world championship title was won by... a German. It is only the second time that the championship title has left Britain. This year the World Conker Championships were held in Ashton, Northamptonshire. A crowd of 5000 spectators watched Mr Helmut Kern from Germany beat Mr Paul Moody from London in just 90 seconds and become the 1998 men's world champion.
So what is conker fighting? Conkers are the shiny, hard, brown fruit of the horse chestnut tree. They fall off the tree towards mid-October when they are ripe. In order to play the game you first make a hole in the conker. You put a piece of string about 50 or 60 cm long through the hole and make a knot on one end. You will then have a conker on the end of a piece of string. In a typical conker fight there are two opponents, each with a conker on the end of a string.
The aim of the game is to hit your opponent's conker with your own and knock it off its string. Players take it in turns to do this until one of the conkers is damaged and comes off its string. The player with the conker still on its string is the winner.
There are lots of different ways of making conkers stronger. Some people put them in vinegar. Others bake them in a warm oven for several hours. And like in any other game there are also lots of ways of cheating!
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Answer the questions below to check how well you understand the text.
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C2 Mastery
