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Comment by russellbeattie | Hacker News Reader

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.

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It's a childhood story dressed up in sci-fi. If an American child had told it, they might have said they demanded baseball cards, and the amused captain would have given them food, booze and "lots of baseball cards, of course". Children all over the world occasionally make demands of adults and are thrilled when the adults oblige them; their bold dare paid off! Children make up games at school, so when all the chestnuts fall off the trees, children make a game from the mass availability of chestnuts.

It's a British story - it's ostensibly space opera, but really it's more a space-themed Radio 4 comedy. It's British by default. Hence bypasses, council planning departments, stubborn bureaucrats, substances almost entirely unlike tea, solving problems by going to the pub, moaning about the weather, cricket stoppages, getting drunk, implacably morose people, smugly insincere corporate drones, being annoyed at overly flashy Amer... people like Zaphod, and so on. And conkers, of course.

It reminds me of the Twitter thread by an American who had never heard of boarding schools asking "what did you think in Harry Potter was magical but it turned out just to be British?" [to which someone said "Scotland" :(]

Re your last note (which is hilarious) I was hugely amused to discover that many Americans reading in Potter about Filch "punting" the kids across the temporary swamp assumed he was kicking them over rather than using a flat bottomed boat. Understandable but much funnier than the original intended.

> [to which someone said "Scotland" :(]

Savage reply.

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?

>What part of British culture

Conkers

> He was incredibly logical.

Oh, sure. But his writings weren't.

> But in order to ground that absurdity, the rest has to be normal.

Maybe we haven't read the same books ? I would not say that conkers are the only absurd element in the book (or even in the paragraph).

> "Don't take this the wrong way, but I don't think you understand Adams."

In my opinion (as a Brit who isn't an expert on Douglas Adams, but has read his books) the person you replied to was completely right and it's you with the misunderstanding.

> why would Yooden Vranx have "lots of" chestnuts on his spaceship? And why "of course"?

hmmm, these might be what they call "jokes"

Absurdist humour, Hitchhiker's is full of it, as is Discworld. Aggressive Britishisms as well (like conkers and tea references), like in the Cornetto trilogy.

This is honestly the first time I’ve seen ‘Aggressive Britishisms’, and I’m still somewhat perplexed at the concept.

Like I get it, theoretically. But…. Hmmm.

> But why would Yooden Vranx have "lots of" chestnuts on his spaceship? And why "of course"?

If you want a good in-universe explanation, here’s one: in the Restaurant at the End of the Universe, Zaphod’s grandfather says that he was friends with Yooden Vranx. He would anticipate the kids would drop by.

Getting a massive haul of conkers was almost as important as the game itself. So, that might add some context.

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