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mawnansmiff

Lifer
Oct 14, 2015
7,385
7,295
Sunny Cornwall, UK.
Here's one for the historians amongst you....
In what arena was distance travelled measured in the amount of pipe bowls smoked?
The first correct answer gets to sniff (sniff only, no smoking) my entire (but slowly shrinking) McClelland tobacco stash :puffy:
Regards,
Jay.

 

mso489

Lifer
Feb 21, 2013
41,210
60,433
Not ocean travel ... or it wouldn't make sense ... since wind and ocean conditions would extend or limit pipe bowls as much as distance. Maybe railroad travel?

 
In the novel, Sot-Weed Factor, about an idiotic man that inherits a tobacco farm in Maryland (not a very good read BTW), the characters riding as passengers across the pond spend the entire voyage talking and drinking in the cabins. Apparently days and nights start to blur, and the characters refer to amounts of time in pipes, 'three pipes till diner,' and such. It is fiction, and I don't read much about ocean travel, so... it was my guess.

Horses seem precarious for pipes. Coaches and trains would be the only other historical forms of travel that lend themself to pipes. Well, maybe walking.

 

workman

Lifer
Jan 5, 2018
2,793
4,219
The Faroe Islands
Because the OP has been binge-reading stuff about North American history lately, my guess would be something from 19th century America. Some kind of ferry on one of the rivers perhaps.

 

jazz

Part of the Furniture Now
Feb 17, 2014
813
65
UK
I'm sure I heard mention of this whilst watching something recently to do with the voyageurs of the fur trade. It may have been a Ray Mears programme about the canoeists of The Hudson Bay Company. I can't think what else it would have been if not for that.

 

mawnansmiff

Lifer
Oct 14, 2015
7,385
7,295
Sunny Cornwall, UK.
"Huh? Like if you lined up all the tobacco? Or pipes, or people?"



Come on Didi, you're an intelligent chap, the question and reward are simple enough for a four yearold to figure out.
Regards,
Julian.

 

cossackjack

Lifer
Oct 31, 2014
1,052
647
Evergreen, Colorado
Just surmising, but this sounds good to me...
Plowing a field with a team of oxen or horses & a walking-plow. The oxen could plow 1 furlong (1 furrow length or "acre's length", or 1/8 mile) before needing to rest & to turn the plow around.

An acre was 1 furlong long by 1 chain (66 feet) wide, or the area that could be plowed in 1 day.

The tobacco pipes of the time were small, so a bowl could be smoked whilst plowing a furlong.

 

didimauw

Moderator
Staff member
Jul 28, 2013
9,888
31,593
34
Burlington WI
Meh this is the reason I don't do cross word puzzles. You have to know things to do those. I'm more of a word search kinda guy.
Reword the question in word search for for me, and I got this!

 
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