Buckle up, because a cheating scandal is roiling England. The accusations revolve around a winner of the World Conker Championships, and if he used a metal conker to defeat his opponents’ conkers.

If you’re not a resident of the British Isles, you might be confused by many of those words.

A conker is a buckeye chestnut that falls from trees and can be found all over Britain and Ireland in the fall. (For the sake of simplicity we will be using the English term throughout this story, so this is the last time you’ll be seeing the word chestnut.)

The competition, also known as conkers, goes like this: Holes are drilled through the conkers, and strings are threaded through each one, with one conker on a string for each competitor. Two opponents face off, with the goal of destroying the other person’s conker with your own by whipping one against the other. Last person standing with an intact conker wins.

Children in Britain play the game in playgrounds and parks in the fall. And once a year, several hundred adults gather for the World Conker Championships in the tiny English village of Southwick, which has about 160 residents. This year, the competition drew 256 contestants and about 2,500 spectators, said Charles Whalley, one of the championships’ committee members.

But this year, the men’s competition has become embroiled in controversy. The title on Sunday went to David Jakins, 82, who won for the first time after many decades of taking part in the annual tradition.