Talk:3014: Arizona Chess

Explain xkcd: It's 'cause you're dumb.
Revision as of 00:09, 21 November 2024 by 172.68.64.206 (talk) (North America vs. Europe)
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I added a basic explanation, how did I do? 172.70.115.129 14:56, 20 November 2024 (UTC)

pat pat Good job. Fephisto (talk) 15:28, 20 November 2024 (UTC)

I guess chess timers work based on the IERS. 172.71.223.126 15:32, 20 November 2024 (UTC)

See "chess clocks don't work that way" comment, below. If they did, they would almost certainly reference Zulu time, which doesn't recognize daylight saving or other local time adjustments. This would go badly for Cueball. Moreover, White Hat could be forgiven for thinking that he had won the game when the clock went "beep" in the third panel, because beeping/flag falling in a chess clock should signal end of match because Cueball's time had run out (the fourth panel asserts that Cueball's time did not, in fact, expire). A minor additional irregularity in what is already a seriously contrived situation. 172.68.23.91 20:34, 20 November 2024 (UTC)

If white hat had conserved 20 seconds through the course of the game, they would have won. Cueball must have been sweating if they were relying on this strategy. Radialsymmetry (talk) 15:35, 20 November 2024 (UTC)

Here's one building that might qualify (it appears to be a shed or outbuilding belonging to a house in Mesquite, Nevada): https://www.google.com/maps/@36.808703609641505,-114.05009436731552,55m
I believe that's the only one that straddles the Arizona border with a Pacific Time Zone state (California and Nevada), so (head-)canonically, that's where the comic is set. 172.69.6.190 (talk) 17:15-26, 20 November 2024 (please sign your comments with ~~~~)

No, chess clocks don't work that way. They are simple timers that do not refer to actual time of day in any way, any more than a stopwatch does. Randall just made it work that way for the sake of the joke. 172.71.194.17 (talk) 20:17, 20 November 2024 (please sign your comments with ~~~~)

North America vs. Europe vs. Australia

One difference between the way parts of North America change time and the way parts of Europe do is that the various North American time zones fall back/jump forward at 2AM local time, while European time zones all change at the same instant (01:00 UTC/WET (02:00 CET, 03:00 EET). That means that the same "trick" could work by sitting on the line between any American time zones at the changeover, but not by sitting on the European lines. 172.70.47.138 15:37, 20 November 2024 (UTC)

A related oddity occurs in the City of The Gold Coast, in Australia, which straddles the Queensland/New South Wales border. The border runs through a built up area, and as NSW has DST but Queensland does not, there are places that are, for one hour each year, in different years, despite being only a few metres apart. You can celebrate the New Year at a bar in Tweed Heads, then cross the road to a bar in Coolangatta, and celebrate the New Year all over again an hour later. I believe this is the only border in the world that runs through a built up area and has different timezones at New Year; New Year being in winter in the Northern Hemisphere means that such DST related anomolies are strictly a Southern Hemisphere phenomenon. 172.68.64.206 00:09, 21 November 2024 (UTC)

Should the comment about Hawaii be kept? It seems irrelevant. 172.70.111.129 15:42, 20 November 2024 (UTC)

removed youtu.be/miLcaqq2Zpk 16:15, 20 November 2024 (UTC)

Which songs would go well with this scene?

His World comes to mind... Caliban (talk) 17:13, 20 November 2024 (UTC)