User:FaviFake

Hey everyone! I got in touch with Randall Munroe himself!! Here's what you need to know.

I emailed him to ask for the official release date of 36: Scientists (see the trivia for more info). Surprisingly, he got back to me! You can read the conversation, with a summary of his messages, below. I'll keep you posted if I receive more messages! You can add this page to your watchlist to keep track of it. I haven't received his explicit permission to feature his messages in full, so it seemed ethical to hide his messages. My emails have not been altered, but in the copy-pasting, links have been removed. These emails were all hyperlinked, I now added back only a few links. The reason I waited a few days before publishing them is because I was very busy.

In his last email, Randall expressed willingness to answer a few more questions, particularly simpler, administrative questions (like the one he answered already), but kindly explained he prefers to avoid too much meta-commentary. Because I didn't want to come up with every question and I wanted to hear everyone, I'll try to send him some that you want, if he agrees to receiving more! You can add your suggestions here!.

Email thread

Question from the Explain xkcd wiki regarding one of your comics Email thread - 4 messages — Here's a screenshot of one of the emails, if you need some sort of proof.

FaviFake <[email redacted]@gmail.com>	14 February 2025 at 19:16 CET
To: Randall Munroe <[Randall's email redacted]@gmail.com>
Hi, I'm an editor at explainxkcd.com, which you probably know is the wiki that explains all your comics and provides as much info as possible on them. [In the copy-pasting, links have been removed. These emails were all hyperlinked, I now added back only a few links.] In pursuit of that goal, we have always had an unsolved mystery only you can solve. Comic 36: Scientists was originally posted as a duplicate of comic 10: Pi Equals. You corrected this sometime between April 23, 2006 and July 5, 2006 , when the current version showed up in the web archive (see the two links). The comic looks like one of your old drawings. So, explain xkcd thinks that when you realized your mistake (over three months after it was originally posted), you probably found an old unused drawing and posted it, to not make it stand out compared to the other comics from that time. This all means we have no date for this comic, since it could've been posted anytime between the two dates mentioned above. You can read more about this here. (If you're interested, we have a more comprehensive history of your webcomic here.) Could you kindly help us figure this out by checking when you released comic #36, so we can add an official date to it? This is one of the only official comics which we don't know the date of. Kind regards, FaviFake editor @ explain xkcd

Randall Munroe [Randall's email redacted]	14 February 2025 at 22:20 CET
To: FaviFake <[email redacted]@gmail.com>
FaviFake, [Randall replies, giving the official date when 36: Scientists was swapped: April 28th.] [He ends with:] Thank you for your tireless documentation effort :) [He signs] [Quoted text hidden]

FaviFake <[email redacted]@gmail.com>	15 February 2025 at 17:39 CET
To: Randall Munroe <[Randall's email redacted]@gmail.com>
Hello Randall, Thank you so much for your response!! I'm certain the rest of the community will be thrilled to have an official answer. Unfortunately, this is by far not the only "unsolved mystery" we have encountered in our research of your comic. Because we don't get to talk to you very often, I'd like to ask you if you can answer more of our many questions, if you're up for it. Of course, I do not want to annoy you or waste your time, so please let me know if this is something you'd enjoy! I will try to keep the questions entertaining for you. Kind regards, FaviFake [Quoted text hidden]

Randall Munroe <[Randall's email redacted]@gmail.com>	17 February 2025 at 19:02 CET
To: FaviFake <[email redacted]@gmail.com>
FaviFake, [He expresses willingness to answer some additional questions, particularly simpler, administrative questions (like the one he answered), but kindly explains he prefers to avoid too much meta-commentary] [He ends with:] And seriously, my heartfelt thanks to you and everyone there. It's such a privilege to make something that people think is worth so much effort to explain <3 —Randall [Quoted text hidden]

FaviFake <[email redacted]@gmail.com>	20 February 2025 at 18:07
To: Randall Munroe <[Randall's email redacted]@gmail.com>
Randall, Thank you for the kind words!! I really appreciate the offer. Next time, I'm thinking of asking the community for other simple and administrative questions, because I'm sure I don't represent everyone. I also asked for his permission to feature this conversation here: (Also, would it be okay to feature your responses on our wiki?) I had drafted the paragraphs below in advance and I'm not sure if they fall outside the boundaries you mentioned, but I figured I’d ask anyway since this is a topic the other editors are very curious about. Of course, no worries if you’d rather not get into the details! We have plenty of simpler questions we can't answer ourselves. Here you go: On June 17, 2009, you released Conservation (along with IBM's accompanying blog post), the first comic created with IBM for their "A Smarter Planet" blog. You used the filename conservation.png, as usual. On August 11, 2009, the second comic of the series, Prescriptions, was released (with its blog post), but this time you used an unusual filename: ibm_hc_1.png. We initially believed these were the only comics you created, mainly because they were the only ones featured on your page xkcd.com/asmarterplanet, but a little over a month ago we discovered two additional never-before-seen comics by experimenting with the image URLs for ibm_hc_2.png and ibm_hc_3.png. We believe you created these two comics as part of the IBM partnership, but for some reason they were never released publicly and were only accessible from imgs.xkcd.com. (Interestingly enough, they are still available!) Any additional info you can give us would help a ton! For example: their titles, when they were drawn or supposed to be released, or why they were never officially published. Thank you! —FaviFake

What I think I should reply back

• I first asked for permission to make the conversation public, so you all can read what he said. I wasn't told not to make it public, I just think I should ask for permission first. I'm not even sure if this was the right thing. If you have thoughts, please send them to me on my talk page!
• I didn't think it was fair to do everything myself, so I wanted to also hear what you wanted to ask! Randall asked for simpler, administrative questions (like the one he answered), and not ones that required too much explaining. Please add your suggestions to the section below!
• I think in the first message we should send some of the easiest questions to answer, quick ones like "when was this released", and then we can start to ask slightly more complex (but still administrative) questions.

Your suggestions! What should I ask?

Remember, he said only simple questions. I'm assuming he'd like questions similar to the one he replied to(short, sweet, no explaining needed), or questions that shouldn't require him to explain his comic more than he has already done. What's something relatively important that we don't know and that only Randall can answer in a few words?

Format your suggestions like this: At the bottom, add: SUMMARY OF SUGGESTION --signature * Explain in more detail your suggestion. * Discuss it and vote --signature Add new suggestions below the other ones.

The deleted what if? article Peptides --FaviFake (talk) 16:34, 21 February 2025 (UTC)

• what if? (blog) is a blog written by Randall with entries posted occasionally. On December 5, 2016, the article Peptides was published as number 153. However, it was removed the following day and was replaced by a notice: "Whoops. This article is still in progress. An early draft was unintentionally posted here thanks to Randall's troubled approach to git, and it took a little bit to get everything sorted out and rolled back. Sorry for the mixup!". No finished version of the article was ever published, and the URL was later reused for Hide the Atmosphere.
• I this this one is very interesting, but it might not be as administrative and short as Randall wants. He'd need to explain the reason why it wasn't published and why it looks like a complete article, not a "draft". --FaviFake (talk) 16:34, 21 February 2025 (UTC)

 ✓ Done ibm_hc_2 and ibm_hc_3, the newly-discovered comics --FaviFake (talk) 16:34, 21 February 2025 (UTC)

• I asked this one already, because I assume it's the most important one right now. You can see my question above.

What happened to Five-Minute Comics: Part 4? --Caliban (talk) 17:49, 22 February 2025 (UTC)

• A lost xkcd comic. He accidentally posted this instead of 940, and then erased all evidence of its existence by redirecting the direct image URL to a notice claiming it was a minor glitch in the universe. I'd get deleting the image outright, but just replacing it with what is essentially a sign to stop looking for it? Kinda weird. Also, how many more of these 5MCs has he made that are potentially lost media?

why ate some of the april fools' comics late? - 172.71.146.108 18:55, 22 February 2025 (UTC)