Technological change is often responsible for the coinage of new terms for existing things that help differentiate the original form from a more recent one. For example: the term “acoustic guitar” was coined following the invention of electric guitars and “dumbphone” following that of smartphones. Terms such as these are known as retronyms.
As pointed out to me recently by my dear interlocutor and fellow shitposter Mr Crisp Shawarma, the meaning of the ‘onsight’ changed upon climbers starting to make use of chalk (a technology shock). Thereafter, the style of an ascent of a route from the ground to the top, first go, with no information from anyone else, came to depend on whether all the key holds are already covered in chalk from other climbers’ previous attempts. This even led some staunch traditionalists to advocate not using chalk in order to try and preserve the original meaning of the ‘onsight’. This reactionary movement did not achieve widespread success. Now everyone uses chalk.
To distinguish these styles one either needs to 1) subdivide ‘onsight’ into climbing a route in its ‘natural’ condition vs climbing it with the aid of someone else’s chalky tracks; or 2) consider the chalk as other-sourced information about the route and thereby warrant classifying such an ascent as a ‘flash’ rather than an ‘onsight’.
However, people do not tend to use the word ‘onsight’ in either of these ways, nor do they assiduously wait for the rock to be 100% free of chalk before attempting to make, ostensibly, an ‘onsight’ ascent. Nonetheless, a significant difference in style is apparent, we lack a suitable short-hand to describe the difference, and no suitable retronym has yet become established.
In summary, technology broke our terminology.
The introduction of near-perfect replicas into elite climbing has precipitated a similar crisis of terminology. If one of the new ‘virtual school’ of climbing elites drills a near-perfect replica of the boulder to the point of being able to climb the geology itself on their first try, is this a flash? Well, sort of. They haven’t actually pulled on to the geology before, so yes it meets the conditions of a flash. But then again the ascent is certainly less impressive than if they hadn’t prepared in this way and, moreover, a lot of style has already been sacrificed in the creation and enthusiastic engagement of a cartoon re-representation of the geology.
The possibility of such an ascent is a lot more likely than you might think. Indeed it may well not be long before someone uses 3D-printed copies of the key holds of the Joker/Ace at Stanage Plantation to train on before going on to climb the real thing on the first attempt.
However, unlike in the case of an ‘onsight’ with in-situ chalk, there is no convenient lesser category (flash) into which to relegate such an ascent. Based on the existing terminology it is either a flash or it is not.
In the face of this conundrum we have three choices. Firstly, we can stick with the single term, which necessarily loses its power to fully explain the style of an ascent. A second option is to scrap the term ‘flash’ and replace it with a retronym such “real flash”, “proper flash”, “rock-only flash”. To do so, however, would disenchant much of the magic from the original word and also surrender to the liquifying power of technological ‘progress’.
A stronger alternative is to invent an entirely new term to distinguish this new and theoretically possibile style of ascent.
According to the Oxford Thesaurus, a synonym of the word ‘flash’ is ‘rush’. Might I therefore tentatively suggest that we demarcate the currently theoretical edge-case of using a near-perfect replica to ascend a boulder problem on the first attempt as: rushing the boulder. This would integrate the notion that something important has been lost by resorting to a near-perfect replica. Indeed, doing it the old way would certainly take a longer time, and require a greater all-around mastery of climbing, involve making a potentially arduous journey, and contending with poor weather conditions and other natural, social and psychological challenges associated with climbing (let alone flashing) the geology. After all, taking the replica approach is to weight the significance of the wider, non-gymnastic challenges of the geology to zero, and to rush to the ascent as fast as possible, as if one were speed-running a video game using all the glitches and cheat codes available. You’ve still completed the game, that much cannot be denied, but the style in which you did so was poor.
“Sorry mate you didn’t flash it, you just rushed it.”
"First Try" is already in use at least in the american bouldering scene for ambiguous less-than flashes. The most common scenario is when one uses a rope or aggressive pad stack to touch and brush holds that normally would not be accessible from the ground. I've also seen it used to describe ascents of sit start problems when the climber had previously done the stand start.
As standards advance to where the most astonishing ascents of today are inevitably relegated to yawn-inducing warm-ups of the future, I submit a term I coined at least 40 years ago, to describe whenever this sort of annoying bragging and posturing rears its ugly head - it's all Moot Pointing.