[r-t] A Ringing Puzzle

[Matthew Frye]

On 5 Jun 2014, at 13:19, "King, Peter R" <peter.king at imperial.ac.uk> wrote:
> Or on some concept of value or worth. This is too subjective to be useful. Personally I might not feel that Stedman is "worth" ringing for 3 hours, but plenty of people do so "worth" has no place.

Where I have so far mentioned worth, I have never intended it to be something to be defined. It was always intended (by me) to be entirely subjective and unfixed, and encompass as broad a range of motivation as possible. So if I'm organising a peal of Stedman, it is entirely fine if you don't feel it is worth ringing it for 3 hours as long as I do.

Date touches are actually quite a good example of "worth" (as opposed to "taste" which is what many contributions on this have really been about). Most date touch compositions wouldn't be touched with a 6ft pole by most normal ringers; they're usually unwieldy, often have odd starts/finishes, and are rarely musical master-pieces. But if you're trying to hit a certain length, all the normal criteria fly out the window and a composition that looks like it usually wouldn't be worth ringing may be entirely appropriate and worthwhile for reasons entirely apart from music, elegance or taste.

MF