Thinking allowed

towards spliced Surprise

Recently anoth­er tower in the area has held a monthly prac­tice for bud­ding Sur­prise ringers. We’ve been prac­tising Cam­bridge and York­shire with the inten­tion of even­tu­ally ringing them spliced togeth­er, but we’re not quite at that stage yet. Those attend­ing have included a suit­able mix of expert and novice Sur­prise ringers — it would be next to impossible with all novices!

A neces­sary step in spli­cing these meth­ods is to learn what each place bell does, and which place bell it becomes after­wards. For­tu­nately the order in which place bell suc­ceeds place bell is the same in both Cam­bridge and York­shire: 2, 6, 7, 3, 4, 8, 5, and back to 2. In addi­tion the work of the 3rd place bell is identic­al in both meth­ods, and most of the oth­ers start and fin­ish with sim­il­ar bits of work. As usu­al in ringing, what has to be done is to mem­or­ize com­pletely these pieces of work so that they can be instantly recalled and inter­changed, so in an attempt to do so I have set down here, from memory, what each bell has to do in each method.

Cam­bridge York­shire
2nd place bell
  • second half of the frontwork
  • dodge 3–4 up
  • double and single dodge at the back
  • dodge 5–6 down
  • treble bob down and up
  • triple dodge 5–6 up
  • double and single dodge at the back
  • dodge 5–6 down 
and become 6th place bell
3rd place bell: 
  • dodge 5–6 up
  • back­work
  • dodge 5–6 down
  • dodge 3–4 down (at the start of 3–4 places down) 
and become 4th place bell 
4th place bell: 
  • fin­ish 3–4 places down (after first dodge)
  • treble bob at the front
  • treble bob at the back 
  • fin­ish 3–4 places down (after first dodge)
  • lead and dodge
  • 3–4 places up
  • treble bob at the back 
and become 8th place bell 
5th place bell: 
  • single and double dodge at the back
  • dodge 3–4 down
  • first half of the frontwork
  • make seconds over the treble 
  • single and double dodge at the back
  • triple dodge 5–6 down
  • treble bob down to the front
  • dodge up with the treble and make 2nds place 
and become the 2nd place bell 
6th place bell: 
  • straight down to the front
  • treble bob up
  • 5–6 places up
  • dodge 7–8 up 
  • straight down to the front
  • second half of the frontwork
  • 5–6 places up
  • dodge 7–8 up 
and become 7th place bell 
7th place bell: 
  • lie at the back
  • dodge 7–8 down
  • straight down to the front
  • treble bob at the front
  • 3–4 places up 
  • lie at the back
  • dodge 7–8 down
  • 3–4 places down
  • dodge and lead
  • 3–4 places up 
and become the 3rd place bell 
8th place bell: 
  • 5–6 places down
  • treble bob down (incl dodge and lead)
  • dodge 5–6 up 
  • 5–6 places down
  • first half of the frontwork
  • dodge 5–6 up 
and become the 5th place bell. 
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