Talk:1750: Life Goals

Explain xkcd: It's 'cause you're dumb.
Revision as of 08:37, 25 October 2016 by Elektrizikekswerk (talk | contribs)
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Wow. These pages get a ton of edits in a relatively short timespan, when you see them go live, one at a time. It's awe-inspiring. Jacky720 (talk) 00:28, 25 October 2016 (UTC)

The last line is actually a real punch-line... 162.158.201.78 14:51, 24 October 2016 (UTC)

With "Unfortunately (the two protobirds) lived in different time periods, so we can only speculate which one would win a fight.", as per current explanation text, I first of all thought 'the latter, as it was alive and the other had already died' (so maybe not a fair fight, but definitely indicates a survivor), but I'm not entirelysure whether I'd even overcome an Australopithocus (despite the height advantage), if I ever suddenly encountered a suitably enraged (and live) one whilst not equipped with my own contemporary tools, so maybe I ought to be less certain about the other fight if it happened in sight of an artist... 141.101.98.48 14:54, 24 October 2016 (UTC)

I'll call John Hammond. Jacky720 (talk) 00:28, 25 October 2016 (UTC)
We can easily speculate, and just as well as if they lived during the same time. We would have as little chance of guessing who would have won just because they might actually have had such a fight in reality. I think the flying petrosaurs with a wings span four times the length of the feathered (and only proto bird) would have won. The petrosaurs where not the kind that went on to becoming birds as far as I know. --Kynde (talk) 21:01, 24 October 2016 (UTC)

A lot of these are proper nouns and so shall not be used in scrabble. 108.162.215.224 16:21, 24 October 2016 (UTC)BLuDgeons

A first-fight is how all Scrabble games end in languages that have composite words like Danish or German. That or knockout. Footnotefontsizeselection, quizmasterfluffer, telemarketercounterharassment... 173.245.48.104 17:02, 24 October 2016 (UTC)

Whoever added "you could put an E tile down upside down" should win a prize. Maplestrip (talk) 17:57, 24 October 2016 (UTC)

I'm gonna go out on a limb and say this isn't actually about the last three letters of the alphabet, but about the five "power letters" in Scrabble (hence the last line): J, K, Q, X, Z. Schiffy (Speak to me|What I've done) 18:09, 24 October 2016 (UTC)

I would agree that there is a couple of other letters but there is hardly enough Q, K and J to make it worth mentioning... --Kynde (talk) 21:01, 24 October 2016 (UTC)
But it's about Scrabble point count, not just letters toward the end of the alphabet. The fact that many rare (and thus high-ranking) tiles happen to be toward the end is irrelevant. The focus is on high-ranking Scrabble tiles, no matter where in the alphabet they are.
My impression of the comic was not that it was just about Scrabble (too many words are impossible under typical Scrabble tile distributions) or specifically the last three letters of the alphabet (there's a decent amount of Qs in the comic), but the difficulty in reading/pronouncing the words. I was following along fine at first, but by the end of the comic had no phonetics in my head to describe what I was reading. I think the title-text supports that interpretation. From xkcd's About page: "It's just a word with no phonetic pronunciation". 108.162.210.196 05:01, 25 October 2016 (UTC)

I thought I might as well verify this, though, so I put the words (without "Mister") onto a letter frequency counter, then looked up the letter frequencies in English on Wikipedia to compare to the average frequencies. The letters that appeared at least 1% LESS often than expected were C, D, E, F, H, I, N, O, R, S, T, and W, and all of these letters are worth fewer than 5 points in Scrabble. (E, N, and S appeared more than 4% less often, and these are very common letters worth very few points.) The letters that appeared at least 1% MORE often than expected were J, K, P, Q, X, Y, and Z. All of those are worth multiple points. Only two of those (P and Y) are worth fewer than 5 points, and Y is worth 4 points, very close... and its unique position as the only vowel worth more than 1 point elevates its status somewhat. P was only slightly over 1% increased. (All tiles except X, Y, and Z have less than a 2% increase. Y has a 7.66% increase, while X and Z each have an increase of about 14%.) It's true that X, Y, and Z show the most dramatic increase (though E shows nearly as dramatic a decrease), but the analysis certainly shows that Randall might have had some bias toward using J (1.33% increased), K (1.45% increased), and Q (1.39% increased) as well as the obvious X, Y, and Z. 172.68.79.81 04:26, 25 October 2016 (UTC)

I didn't feet that the release schedule (or the lack of such) of the What if? mentioned is in any means important for the explanation. So I removed it... Elektrizikekswerk (talk) 08:37, 25 October 2016 (UTC)