explain xkcd - User contributions [en]

3248: 182.8 Meters

2026-05-21T07:58:05Z

Penguin Zero:

{{comic
| number = 3248
| date = May 20, 2026
| title = 182.8 Meters
| image = 182_8_meters_2x.png
| imagesize = 265x345px
| noexpand = true
| titletext = They rounded down to 182.8 instead of rounding up to 182.9 because 182.9 might make the statement incorrect.
}}

==Explanation==
{{incomplete|This page was created recently by a 1.8288 meter high individual. Don't remove this notice too soon.}}
This is a comic in the [[:Category:My Hobby|My Hobby]] series, this time the hobby of reverse-engineering original units from oddly specific measurements in another unit. Unlike in many of the My Hobby cartoons, where Cueball's hobby is something eccentric or prankish, in this situation he uses his hobby simply to understand the origin of someone else's unusual phrasing. A fathom is a unit of measurement used to measure how deep water is. One fathom is equal to six feet.

When presenting measurements where perfect accuracy is not required, such as in casual conversation or when giving simple presentations to the public, speakers will often use approximations, such as rounding to the nearest whole number, or the nearest ten, or using only the most significant digit. When translating these approximations into other measurement systems, however, people will often treat them as precise, and use the standard conversion formulas to get an exact value. This leads to examples of {{w|false precision}}, where the presentation of a measurement implies more information than is actually contained in it.

100 fathoms is actually 182.88 meters, however as the title text explains, they rounded down in order to prevent a possibly incorrect statement. This is a comical attempt at mitigating the false precision; it retains the overly-precise 2.8 meters that the initial statement was too approximate to imply. A more reasonable attempt to translate 'the bay is more than 100 fathoms deep' might be 'the bay is more than 180 meters deep;' this stays close to the initial measurement while rounding to the nearest ten, to convey that the measure is approximate.

==Transcript==
{{incomplete transcript|Don't remove this notice too soon.}}

:[Hairbun stands at a podium to the left, gesturing toward a sign. Four visitors stand nearby observing: Ponytail, Cueball, Megan, and White Hat. Cueball has a thought bubble.]

:Hairbun: In some places, the bay is more than 182.8 meters deep.
:Cueball: (thinking) '''"''More than''"?''' Why would they use that for such a precise...
:Cueball: (thinking) ...Aha! 100 fathoms!

:[Caption below the panel:]
:My Hobby: Reverse-engineering original units

{{comic discussion}}<noinclude>
[[Category:Comics featuring Hairbun]]
[[Category:Comics featuring Ponytail]]
[[Category:Comics featuring Cueball]]
[[Category:Comics featuring Megan]]
[[Category:Comics featuring White Hat]]
[[Category:My Hobby]]

3235: Types of Board Game

2026-04-21T05:45:26Z

Penguin Zero: Added descriptions for some categories, and adjusted the 'Boring' category, as there seem to be better examples than Monopoly.

{{comic
| number = 3235
| date = April 20, 2026
| title = Types of Board Game
| image = types_of_board_game_2x.png
| imagesize = 501x1161px
| noexpand = true
| titletext = I can't believe Candles of Vienna caved to commercial pressure and added the Goku expansion.
}}

==Explanation==
{{incomplete|This page was created by a member of the Congress of Vienna in 1814. Don't remove this notice too soon.}}

This comic is about types of board games.

{| class="wikitable"
| Boring || This is a very simplistic and boring board game style, where the players simply move around the board aimlessly. The simplest forms of these games, such as {{w|Candy Land}} or {{w|Snakes and ladders}}, require no decision-making at all, with players simply moving as the dice or cards direct them.
|-
| Abstract || This board game has more abstract tones, with less of a tangible goal.
|-
| Hyperspecific Theme || This board game takes place on a specific date and time, and appears to have little room for flexibility. The {{w|Congress of Vienna}} was a gathering of diplomats from many different countries at the end of the Napoleonic Wars. There exists an actual board game about the Congress of Vienna, see https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/296578/congress-of-vienna, but it has nothing to do with lighting candles.
|-
| Overcomplicated || Twilight Imperium is a fairly complicated board game (complexity rating 3.46 / 5 on BoardGameGeek.com). Cones of Dunshire is a joke board game that was shown on the TV show ''Parks & Recreation''. Combining them would be extremely strange.
|-
| Cooperative || Cooperative board games center around players attempting to reach a common goal, winning or losing together. Many feature impediments to communication that make this more difficult; for instance, players may have secret cards they are unable to reveal before playing, or be restricted from saying certain words. The game in this panel appears to forbid all communication between players except for hand gestures. The punch line likens it to a very mundane activity, sorting a junk drawer, made artificially more difficult due to silence, and suggests the game is just as boring.
|-
| Branded || Some board games are published and marketed as tie-ins to other forms of media, using settings, characters, or events from the source to appeal to its fans. The theming often has little to nothing to do with the gameplay, as the many branded variants on Monopoly can attest. The game in this panel is themed after the sitcom {{w|Friends}}, with the unlikely addition of Son Goku from {{w|Dragon Ball Z}}.
|-
| Party || Various board games intended for adults have swearing in them, one of the well known examples being {{w|Cards Against Humanity}}, which is known for its rather vulgar language at times.
|-
| Social Deduction || {{w|Social_deduction_game|Social deduction games}} revolve around the players attempting to deduce the roles or allegiances of other players, based both on special abilities provided by the game and the players' native abilities to tell which of their fellow players are being dishonest. Commonly, they involve an 'uninformed majority,' who do not know the allegiances of other players, attempting to discover the 'informed minority,' who know the members of their team. The minority is often framed as 'evil,' with the ability to 'kill' other players and remove them from the game; their victory condition often revolves around killing most or all of the 'good' players. The game in this panel revolves around finding a 'secret murderer,' but evidently has required clarification that discovering a ''real'' murderer does not count, implying that one or more of the participants has actually killed someone in real life.
|}

==Transcript==
{{incomplete transcript|Don't remove this notice too soon.}}

[There are 8 cells, each with a different type of board game.]

Boring

Megan: Each turn, roll a die and move your token. Turns proceed clockwise around the table until we get bored and go home.

Abstract

Cueball: Each turn, you can place any number of red triangles or blue squares on a hexagon, or move any hexagon to a...

Hyperspecific Theme

Megan: It's October 2, 1814. The Congress of Vienna convenes. You are each in charge of distributing and lighting candles for the opening ball, which was held at these three locations...

{{comic discussion}}<noinclude>

3127: Where Babies Come From

2025-08-12T01:23:16Z

Penguin Zero:

{{comic
| number = 3127
| date = August 11, 2025
| title = Where Babies Come From
| image = where_babies_come_from_2x.png
| imagesize = 652x362px
| noexpand = true
| titletext = Historians: Contemporaneous documentation of the initial events is often sparse, and in fact people often get testy and uncooperative when we urge better documentation for the historical record.
}}

==Explanation==
{{incomplete|This page was created by a low-impulse ejection. Don't remove this notice too soon.}}

Children are often curious, and ask a lot of questions about the world around them. One such question that tends to come up at some point is "where do babies come from?" and it's notable as one that many adults are uncomfortable giving correct answers to, because of the common reluctance to discuss sex-related matters with youngsters for a variety of reasons. While children are sometimes told that there's a baby inside a pregnant woman's tummy, the issues of how the baby got in there, or how it's supposed to get out, are often dodged. There are a variety of common myths about where babies come from, as told to children, such as "brought by a stork" or "found in a cabbage patch". This comic presents a variety of answers to that question, supposedly from the point of view of specialists in several different areas of science, some of which are incorrect, others of which are allusions to the process of conception or childbirth expressed in the vocabulary of the specialist's field.

==Transcript==

Various experts answer the question “Where do babies come from?”

(Each person is listed horizontally)

Hairy [Geneticist]: Recent admixture event, roughly 0.001 Kya.

Ponytail [Astronomer]: Low-impulse ejection from a parent body.

Hairbun [Software engineer]: Off-by-one error in the population calculations.

Cueball [Geologist]: The area was originally a uniform plane, but the non-baby parts eroded at higher rates.

Megan [Meteorologist]: Moist ground-level turbulent mixing.

{{comic discussion}}<noinclude>

2887: Minnesota

2024-02-02T20:59:54Z

Penguin Zero:

{{comic
| number = 2887
| date = January 29, 2024
| title = Minnesota
| image = minnesota_2x.png
| imagesize = 673x260px
| noexpand = true
| titletext = In addition to 'squishy', after reviewing my submitted intraplate ground motion data, the National Geodetic Survey has politely asked me to stop using the word 'supple' so often when describing Midwestern states.
}}

==Explanation==

[[Hairy]], [[Ponytail]], and [[Cueball]] are in a business meeting of an unknown nature, but one which (it transpires) is unrelated to either geography, geology or geopolitical boundaries. Hairy asks if anyone has any other concerns, a common enough question to ask when trying to ensure that nobody at the meeting has still something to say that had not already been covered directly by the agenda or the resulting discussions.

Cueball voices an opinion on Minnesota. Due to the {{w|post-glacial rebound}} present in Minnesota, this US state is apparently slowly decreasing in size. The humor comes from the fact that this may be a genuine concern to Cueball, but is completely unrelated to the topic of the meeting, is not really a 'problem' that has any practical significance, and in any case there is also no reasonable way to prevent this. And yet Cueball clearly finds it important enough that "all meetings should be about Minnesota" until the 'problem' is solved.

The title text implies that Cueball has also brought this issue up to the {{w|National Geodetic Survey}}; rather than commenting on his data or findings, they have simply requested that he stop using suggestive language in his papers ("supple" and "squishy" are sometimes used, especially in erotic literature, to describe certain body parts).

The Midwestern states, particularly in areas like the {{w|New Madrid Seismic Zone}}, are subject to the movement of tectonic plates well within a tectonic plate boundary. While these areas are typically less active than boundary zones, they can still experience significant seismic activity. The flexible way the Earth's crust in these regions responds to tectonic stresses – gently stretching and flexing over centuries in response to deep stresses – could imaginatively be described as "supple."

Minnesota's northern border is legally defined in part by reference to geographical features, most notably {{w|Lake of the Woods}} and a chain of rivers and lakes connecting it to {{w|Lake Superior}}. As such, movement of these features due to glacial rebound may indeed be reducing Minnesota's size at a very gradual rate. Minnesota's southern border, in contrast, is legally defined as a line running at 43º 30′ N, which would not be affected by the motion of the land. Indeed, it is possible that glacial rebound is effectively moving land out of Iowa and into Minnesota, again at a very gradual rate.

==Transcript==
{{incomplete transcript|Do NOT delete this tag too soon.}}

:[Hairy standing in front of Ponytail and Cueball, who are sitting behind a desk]
:Hairy: Does anyone have any other concerns?
:Cueball: I'm concerned that Minnesota is getting shorter.

:[A map of Minnesota beside Cueball, with arrows pointing from the northern and southern borders towards the middle]
:Cueball: Because of post-glacial crust rebound, the northern border is moving toward the southern border. It's less than an inch a decade, but I still don't like it.
:Cueball: Minnesota shouldn't be squishy.

:[Hairy again standing in front of Ponytail and Cueball at the desk. Ponytail is looking at Cueball, whose finger is now raised in the air, gesturing]
:Hairy: Okay. Does anyone have any concerns related to the topic of this meeting?
:Cueball: All meetings should be about Minnesota until we resolve this.

{{comic discussion}}

[[Category:Comics featuring Cueball]]
[[Category:Comics featuring Hairy]]
[[Category:Comics featuring Ponytail]]
[[Category:Geology]]
[[Category:Geography]]

Talk:2887: Minnesota

2024-01-31T02:56:13Z

Penguin Zero:

Does NGS's request about "supple" have to be "rather than" commenting on the data? It could be in addition to it. [[User:Barmar|Barmar]] ([[User talk:Barmar|talk]]) 19:38, 29 January 2024 (UTC)

Where do I find the latitude and longitude gain or loss of arbitrary points not relative to the African Plate but to the rotation axis and whatever is the official longitude? Does the official prime meridian move every time the European plate moves or is it fixed to Greenwich Observatory? {{unsigned|Oxygen|19:46, 29 January 2024}}
:Based on {{w|IERS Reference Meridian}} article, I think I can answer that with definitive "maybe". I mean, it's not fixed to Greenwich (is actually 100m apart of it) but I wasn't able to decipher what exactly they are doing regarding tectonic shifts, just that they were thinking about it. -- [[User:Hkmaly|Hkmaly]] ([[User talk:Hkmaly|talk]]) 20:39, 29 January 2024 (UTC)

Personally, my go-to "other question" is "what is the square root of pi?". Tends to get a fun mix of answers. [[User:PotatoGod|PotatoGod]] ([[User talk:PotatoGod|talk]]) 05:50, 30 January 2024 (UTC)
:Rhubarb. (OK - it's not quite square, and it's a stem, not a root, but close enough, and it does make a damn good pie.) [[Special:Contributions/172.69.194.36|172.69.194.36]] 09:27, 30 January 2024 (UTC)
::Not to be pedantic (or, to be self-pedantic, maybe this ''was'' indeed pedantry), but rhubarb is surely the square ''stalk'' of pie. Or you're eating it wrongly. [[Special:Contributions/172.70.90.137|172.70.90.137]] 10:03, 30 January 2024 (UTC)

Probably unrelated, but I've seen several 'scare' articles over the weekend that say the Moon is 'shrivelling', due to its core cooling. Tend to say something like that it has shrunk by 330ft (without indicating over what time period, or relating that distance to the much larger general diameter such that it makes this not exactly a visible difference if you were to stare at any given bit of surface). The 'scare' is that it'll make it impossible to settle the Moon (due to selenological settling, ironically), especially at its (probably valuable) South Pole. Apart from it not being new info (LRO provided "the Moon has been shrinking 150ft over hundreds of millions of years" data, last decade; and that could even be the exact same thing, only quoted as a rough radius change instead of a roughish diameter one), there's also various ways of adding resiliance to reasonable surface changes (e.g. the current Halley Research Base used by the British Antarctic Survey) if you need to. Obviously the recent topical interest in landings (current and nearish-future) could have brought it up as a bit of 'current' news. ''Maybe'' it then filtered through to inspire the comic's premise (after searching for a sort-of-equivalent Earthly effect that was even more ripe for absurdist humour)... Likely not, but still thought it worth a mention, as a footnote. [[Special:Contributions/172.70.86.68|172.70.86.68]] 15:02, 30 January 2024 (UTC)

Problem with comics like this is that I've now gone from not knowing the word "geodetic" at all to wondering why Alabama is the only one of the 48 contiguous states without [https://geodesy.noaa.gov/SPCS/images/spcs83-legislation-feet.png state plane coordinate system legislation from 1983]. [[User:Davidhbrown|Davidhbrown]] ([[User talk:Davidhbrown|talk]]) 16:35, 30 January 2024 (UTC)

I think some more detail on the borders of Minnesota as legally defined would be useful, but I'm not sure I have the complete picture. As far as I've been able to research, the northern border (with Canada) is in part defined by geographical features, such as Lake of the Woods, so the rebound would be affecting it, but I'm not sure to what degree. The southern border (with Iowa), on the other hand, is defined as a line
at 43° 30' N, which wouldn't be affected by rebound - in fact, it's plausible that the rebound would be pulling parts of Iowa into Minnesota. I don't think this marks any errors in the comic (which only states that that the northern border is moving towards the southern, not vice-versa), but some of the commentary may need to be tweaked or elaborated on. --[[User:Penguin Zero|Penguin Zero]] ([[User talk:Penguin Zero|talk]]) 02:56, 31 January 2024 (UTC)