The following examples illustrate how the Richards Standard Scoring Scheme works. The pot names shown in bold are names invented by spotters which now make up the CPSA Approved Nomenclature. The pot names shown in brackets are common manufacturers' names. Brackets containing the abbreviation NKE indicate that there is No Known Equivalent manufacturers' name. Many more examples are given in the CPSA handbook - "Chimney Pot Spotting, A Leisure Pursuit."

Four Biscuitmen together on a stack like this do look a bit like a biscuit tin, but these pots were named after the Reading Football Team which was founded in 1898 and which in turn took its nickname from the town’s association with Huntley and Palmers. How there came to be one Tapir Snout with these Biscuitmen is a mystery, but since two different varieties of pot are present, a twenty point bonus is scored. Sadly ten points must be deducted because of the television aerial attached to the stack, which is a Vile Addition. The Tapir Snout is of course named after the flexible proboscis of the South American ungulate mammal.

The Cuthbertson’s Tweedler is in fact a Bovington with a Barrel Top (any other type of pot with a barrel top is known as a Bastard Tweedler). A Scottish spotter named Ian Cuthbertson claimed that the pots of this type on his house made a strange tweedling sound on windy days. This is how the name arose but few other Tweedler owners have reported the phenomenon.

Some spotters specialise in taking pot shots of a particular type. Spotters believe that one such specialist was Rudyard Kipling who is thought to have put together a fine collection of photographs of Cuthbertson’s Tweedlers. Many maintain that early drafts of his poem "If" included the lines

"If you can bear to see a Cuthbertson’s Tweedler broken,
and stoop, and build it up again with worn out tools"

but Kipling later decided that the sight of a broken Cuthbertson’s Tweedler was more than even a man could bear, and that anyway it didn’t scan properly.

Why the Two Banded Bandit is so called is not known (apart from the obvious presence of two bands).

Whether the cows of County Kerry were ever equipped with cowbells which looked at all like the pot on the nearest corner of this stack is far from certain, but if the bells were anything like this size it would surely have been possible to hear the cows across the length and breadth of Macgillycuddy’s Reeks.

There is a television aerial out of shot to the left. The Pixie Smoker is an unremarkable round pot hidden away at the back of this stack. The Treblin Can is like a Dublin Can only more so. The Dublin can is one of the few pots which spotters have the same name for as manufacturers. It is not tapered like the Treblin Can and has no ring below the bulbous top. This fine sixteen pot stack breaks the two hundred point barrier. Anything above this is pretty good going. Happy spotting!