Of all the world championships for eccentric hobbies and “sports,” the World Worm Charming Championships may be the obscurest of all. Worm charming, also called “worm grunting” and “worm fiddling,” is not exactly a widely practiced activity – in fact, most people have never even heard of worm charming – so the fact that there is a world championship for worm grunting (not just, say, the occasional neighborhood worm charm off) should come as a bit of a surprise. On the other hand, humans are a competitive beast, so we suppose that for any activity that can be made competitive there will be competitions, and for any competitions for which there is enough enthusiasm there will be world championships. And hence the World Worm Charming Championships.

One of the more enigmatic questions we ever received arrived in our inbox recently: “what tools to us for worm grunting what is a flat bar.” This perhaps might be rephrased in the following way without doing injustice to the reader’s intent: what tools are used for worm grunting, and what is the worm-grunting tool known as a “flat bar?” Assuming this is the correct interpretation, we think we can answer our reader’s question, as we do know a bit about worm grunting, which, as the above title implies, is also called “worm charming” and “worm fiddling” (although there are slight differences between the terms).