xkcd: volume 0

The cover of the book

This is one of 52 incomplete explanations: The article is missing a lot of information and links about the book. IF YOU HAVE THE BOOK, explain how the pages are counted in the book! (They're ternary-like, except when 2 is reached, it always overflows onto the digit with the next highest magnitude and increments it by one... Please help decode each part of the Cipher, and reorganize it into a more readable format (possibly a table, if somebody is up to the task).) If you can fix this issue, edit the page!

xkcd: volume 0 is a book by Randall Munroe released on August 24, 2010. It features a collection of comics personally chosen by Randall from the initial 600 entries of the webcomic. These comics were assembled from high-resolution original scans and include the original or, sometimes, a different title text. The book is available to read in full on the Internet Archive.

xkcd: volume 0 is the first xkcd book! It features selections from the first 600 comics, including various author and fan favorites. It was lovingly assembled from high-resolution original scans of the comics (the mouseover text is discreetly included), and features a lot of doodles, notes, and puzzles in the margins.

—Randall Munroe, Source

The book is published by Breadpig, a company founded by Randall's friend Alexis, and their portion of the profits will go to build a school in Laos through the charity Room to Read.

Transcript

This is one of 27 incomplete transcripts: Expand on the back If you can fix this issue, edit the page!

Front cover

[A bit above the middle of the page, there is the title of the book with the subtitle in a smaller font size below it. Neither the title nor the subtitle are capitalized.]

xkcd

volume 0

[In the bottom right of the page stand Megan, on the right, and Cueball, on the left, holding hands. Cueball looks away from Megan, to the left, and Megan looks away from Cueball, to the right.]

Back cover

[There are several otherwise nondescript gray rectangles on which the characters stand on. Red spiders are present throughout the panel.]

[Two of these rectangles are attached from the area around the right corner and going off of the cover, in an L-shape. Black Hat stands on it, taking notes on a journal. Twenty-three red spiders lie on the object. Nine of them are clustered in the inner L corner, four of them forming chains. An additional red spider has just fallen off of the object from the right.]

[To L shape's right, in the air, Cory Doctorow in his red suit is shown punching a red spider.]

Cypher

The book also contains many puzzles within it, usually in red.

The bottom of page one has the following characters:
CNEG BAR BS RVTUG VA URK: RR AVAR RVTUG SVIR BAR BAR RVTUG.

The text is encoded in a Caesar Cipher, shifted 13 letters. It translates to:
PART ONE OF EIGHT IN HEX: EE NINE EIGHT FIVE ONE ONE EIGHT.

This revealed the first part of the hex, and alerted readers to the fact that there was more encoded text..

The bottom of page two, under the strip Chess Photo, has

http://xkcd.com/chesscoaster/

On page 10, next to the comic Centrifugal Force, there is a drawing of Cueball leaning out of a hot air ballon above three mountains.

The bottom right of page 11 contains Cueball sitting next to a block of characters that is four characters tall and eight characters wide. The characters are

I0TAE/KE[New line]
20IBSWIY[New line]
ODE65TN8[New line]
CO25.RAP

[Note: I could not differentiate the 1’s from the “I”’s and the 0’s from the “O”’s in this section, so this transcription may not be entirely accurate.]

Page 12 contains a drawing of Cueball holding a cat next to the comic Cat Proximity. He is saying

KITTY KITTY KITTY

On page 111, below the comic Useless, there is the text
CY-O CMLROOCXN. YR M.AOGP. NRK.W ABE ,CYDRGY M.AOGP.M.BY YD.P. JAB X. BR OJC.BJ.V <D.B CY JRM.O YR NRK.W ,.-P. ANN CB YD. EAPTV [[TCBO.F

This text is the result of changing text from a QWERTY keyboard to a DVORAK keyboard. When decoded, it reads:
IT'S IMPOSSIBLe TO MeASURe LOVe< AND wITHOUT MeASUReMeNT THeRe CAN Be NO SCIeNCe> WHeN IT COMeS TO LOVe< we'Re ALL IN THe DARK> --KINSeY

On the bottom of page 1000, near the comic M.C. Hammer Slide, there is a drawing of Cueball doing the M.C. Hammer slide in a hamster ball with the caption M.C. Hamster written below it.

On page 1010, there is a drawing of Cueball on a one wheeler approaching a ramp to the right

On the page 1012, under the comic DPain Over Dt, there is the text in braille:
⠊⠞⠀⠞⠁⠅⠑⠎⠀⠍⠕⠗⠑⠀⠞⠊⠍⠑⠀⠞⠓⠁⠝⠀⠽⠕⠥⠀⠑⠭⠏⠑⠉⠞ ⠃⠥⠞ ⠇⠑⠎⠎ ⠞⠓⠁⠝⠀⠽⠕⠥⠀⠋⠑⠁⠗⠲

This is a line of text written in Braille. Translated to English, it reads:
it takes more time than you expect but less than you fear.

This is seemingly unrelated to the cipher, but it is instead a message for those attempting to crack it.

On page 1020, to the upper left of the comic Science Fair, there is a drawing of Cueball saying

I have a wave generator and
Peter Frampton’s talkbox. Ladies?

The following pages have the respective 2 characters in the upper right corner

101010 grey LY
101120 red IK
102000 red GU
110100 red EH
110102 red DO
110111 red CR

The bottom of page 10020 under the Dream Girl strip, has 772A3A35 DEF88CA7 0BDFD186 20B05684 934721F8 F64762FD
03F8D76B 3FA0CB8C 2756B2D0 A9F00A1B CFF1603E DB05426C

The bottom of page 10112 has a string written in binary, which reads:
0011001001011100000101100000110111100100001010100110011000010010110011

This, when put through a decoder, translates to

The bottom of page 111000 (2nd last page) says
123 B
followed by an arrow bouncing off a vertical line, and the string
VRDSTLRBYSMRLUVRXGCFHZWXKYNHYKLKWMCLRMFIKOZAIYXJWITOYOVN

Page 110120 contains the following poem rotated 90 degrees clockwise.
THE START OF THE TENTH-FAVORITE WORD USED BY BENDER
THE TOON THAT WENT SOUTH WHILE COMMANDED BY ENDER
THE NUMBER OF LIGHTS THAT PICARD SAID WERE ON
AND THE CLASS OF THE PLANET WHERE KIRK SHOUTED "KHAAAN!"
THE RINGS FOR THE MEN MINUS RINGS FOR THE ELVES
AND THE PRODUCT MOD 10 OF A FIVESOME OF TWELVES
THE END OF A CODE NES GAMERS KNOW
AND THE BASE USED TO MODEL HOW QUICKLY THINGS GROW
WHEN THEY'RE XOR'D TOGETHER THE CHECKSUM IS "E"
WHICH WILL TELL YOU YOU'VE GOT THE PENULTIMATE KEY

These various cyphers contained clues for several puzzles. The combination of them led to a final cypher: EE98511873CD4542DA101CBC735646B09BE32BE0D0E0C9A6CB4D62AE8662384F) And was successfully decoded by the XKCD Forums. The solution was a series of coordinates and a time: <3<3<3 2010-06-26 14:28:57 37.769573 -122.483123. This led to the middle of Golden Gate Park in San Francisco, 2010 June 26th at 2:30pm-ish. A group of about 100 XKCD fans showed up to the location and were rewarded with a limited edition copy of XKCD volume 0.

Not much else is known about the cypher and special edition, and due to the takedown of the XKCD Forums most of the information as to how the cypher was solved is lost to time.

See also

• pg 1 10: Pi Equals
• pg 111 55: Useless
• pg 1012 128: dPain over dt

And talk/discussion pages for

• pg 11002 144: Parody Week: A Softer World
• pg 11002 209: Kayak
• pg 11011 285: Wikipedian Protester
• pg 100000 282: Organic Fuel
• pg 100012 290: Fucking Blue Shells

Other pages also have extra text, drawings, or glyphs.