[r-t] Yorkshire Surprise Minor, etc

[King, Peter R]

>As I believe current thinking is that the universe is less then 10^8 years old

This is getting a bit off ringing but the  age of the earth is about 4.6 x10^9 years old and the age of the universe about 13.8 x10^9 years.

As to the rest of the stuff discussed under this title. First some kind of taxonomy is useful if for no other reason than just a short hand that everyone understands. Whilst place notation may be completely unambiguous it is a bit of a mouthful to ask for a touch of x36x14x12… when you just want to ring some Cambridge minor (and yes the surprise is nearly always understood although I did once ask for some Oxford having just rung kent and someone tried ringing double oxford). But as with such classifications it is open to ambiguity and cases which don’t quite fit (is a panda a bear or a raccoon?). So that’s fine. Classify what is obvious and then either allow things to be in more than one class or agree that which it is in either arbitrary or general consensus puts it in one rather than another. But the taxonomy should only be useful for classifying records and some way to help people look up methods that might have some relationship to things they know. I don’t think this should be codified into what can and cannot be done.

What started this was the observation that contracting Yorkshire Surprise gives a delight method. Is this a problem? I actually think that (certainly on 6 and when ringing handbells) the distinction between TB delight & Surprise is useful and quite clear. Since there are almost certainly other methods (including delight ones) that when contracted would give the same thing then why not consider that the “parent” or “child” depending on which way you are going. Whilst the distinction is useful I would also add that being a “surprise” method doesn’t make it in any way superior or more interesting or worthy (not that I agree with these subjective values anyway) than a treble bob method. So ring “whatever it is” and don’t worry about calling  it surprise.


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