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 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,
Thank you for your tireless documentation effort :)
[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
| |
| Randall Munroe <[Randall's email redacted]@gmail.com> | 17 February 2025 at 19:02 CET | |
| To: FaviFake <[email redacted]@gmail.com> | ||
FaviFake,
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.
(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 | ||
- 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.
|
Since I haven't heard back, I sent another email with a few of the quickest and smaller questions below. |
| FaviFake <[email redacted]@gmail.com> | 13 March 2025 at 19:40 |
| To: Randall Munroe <[Randall's email redacted]@gmail.com> | |
| Hello Randall,
Hope you're doing well! I'm just following up since it’s been a little while. In the meantime, we gathered some simpler and more administrative questions from the community—ones that might be easier to answer than the previous one. Below are just a few of them—let me know if you'd be up for answering any!
Thanks again for your time, and no worries if you’re too busy! We truly appreciate any insights you can share. Kind regards, | |
Your suggestions! What should I ask?
|
|
Format your suggestions like this: '''SUMMARY OF SUGGESTION --~~~~''' :Explain in more detail your suggestion. Add new suggestions below the other ones. |
|
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? |
✓ Done ibm_hc_2 and ibm_hc_3 (newly-discovered comics) and comic 36: Scientists --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.
Why were the first comics uploaded seemingly at random? --FaviFake (talk) 21:51, 22 February 2025 (UTC)
- Initially, randall posted his comics to LiveJournal (learn more here). The new xkcd website opened on January 1, 2006, and the backlog of 41 comics from LiveJournal from 1: Barrel - Part 1 to 44: Love was transferred on the same day, but in a completely different order. The only comic that has the same number on both sites is 3: Island (sketch), while all the other comics were uploaded seemingly at random. Also, only eleven of the original comic titles were reused of the new site, and even among the last eleven comics posted on both sites, only six used the same title.
✓ Done When was Blue Eyes released? --FaviFake (talk) 11:01, 23 February 2025 (UTC)
- xkcd's Blue Eyes puzzle is a logic puzzle posted around the same time as comic 169: Words that End in GRY. Randall calls it "The Hardest Logic Puzzle in the World" on its page, but whether it really is the hardest is up to speculation. This is incorrect, as the comic was available long before October 11, 2006. The earliest date we have is October 24th, 2004 (see fourth link on the page), and the earliest version of the comic is from November 4th, 2004. Additionally, both the puzzle and the solution (here's an earlier version of the solution)were modified and updated several times since its release.
✓ Done What happened to the transcripts in the JSON interface --Kynde (talk) 17:38, 23 February 2025 (UTC)
- On the about page of xkcd there is a description of where:
Is there an interface for automated systems to access comics and metadata?
- Read more here Transcript. And on this page there is a description about how the json info got messed up after 1608: Hoverboard and how they completely ended after 1677: Contrails which had the transcript of 1674: Adult.
- I would like to know if he noticed the messed up order of the transcript and if that was why he choose to end it completely? --Kynde (talk) 17:38, 23 February 2025 (UTC)
Why has there not been any new what if since comet ice? --162.158.41.44 17:14, 24 February 2025 (UTC)
- Don't really see why we need to ask him this, A. This isn't related to the wiki, and B. They wanted short, administrative questions 172.71.30.168 17:26, 24 February 2025 (UTC)
- I kinda like this one! A: I think it's partially relevant, we have and entire section dedicated to analysing the release schedule of new articles. B. That's true, but at least it's shorter than most other ones. Not a terrible question imo. --FaviFake (talk) 18:31, 25 February 2025 (UTC)
- I feel like the answer would either be unsatisfying, or unsurprising. Releasing too many articles may disincentivize people from buying the books, the YouTube page is better marketing, people aren't asking interesting questions, the increased popularity of the article has led to too many questions being asked and it becomes increasingly unfair to answer one over the other. There's a possible litany of reasons without considering other more personal reasons that Randall may not want to share. Also, (and this is my completely unfair opinion) I personally feel like any question asking "why?" is meta-commentary and out of scope. It also feels like entitlement when you ask why someone isn't giving you even more stuff for free. 172.69.23.94 19:25, 3 March 2025 (UTC)
- Yeah no you're right. Btw, the first part of your answer is great, you should consider adding it to the blog page! (or I can do if you don't mind) FaviFake (talk) 19:47, 3 March 2025 (UTC)
- Thank you! I don't mind you adding it, but I also don't want to burden you with it. I'll look the page over and see where it might fit. I appreciate you fielding the brunt of the community in this matter! 172.69.22.57 21:16, 3 March 2025 (UTC)
- Yeah no you're right. Btw, the first part of your answer is great, you should consider adding it to the blog page! (or I can do if you don't mind) FaviFake (talk) 19:47, 3 March 2025 (UTC)
- I feel like the answer would either be unsatisfying, or unsurprising. Releasing too many articles may disincentivize people from buying the books, the YouTube page is better marketing, people aren't asking interesting questions, the increased popularity of the article has led to too many questions being asked and it becomes increasingly unfair to answer one over the other. There's a possible litany of reasons without considering other more personal reasons that Randall may not want to share. Also, (and this is my completely unfair opinion) I personally feel like any question asking "why?" is meta-commentary and out of scope. It also feels like entitlement when you ask why someone isn't giving you even more stuff for free. 172.69.23.94 19:25, 3 March 2025 (UTC)
- I kinda like this one! A: I think it's partially relevant, we have and entire section dedicated to analysing the release schedule of new articles. B. That's true, but at least it's shorter than most other ones. Not a terrible question imo. --FaviFake (talk) 18:31, 25 February 2025 (UTC)
- Don't really see why we need to ask him this, A. This isn't related to the wiki, and B. They wanted short, administrative questions 172.71.30.168 17:26, 24 February 2025 (UTC)
Why has the Blag stopped.? --Kynde (talk) 14:11, 26 February 2025 (UTC)
- Seemed like it was a good place to write extra info, but it has been removed from the links on the front page 2023 even though the page still exist.
Do you read explainxkcd.com? --172.68.174.146 19:01, 27 February 2025 (UTC)
- We've probably all wondered: Does he ever read the wiki? if so, there are many directions this could go. Like: Has he ever posted anonymously (this could be asked without necessarily identifying which posts were his)? Ever find a explanation and laugh at how wrong it was? Ever find a explanation that had a funnier interpretation then he intended?
- Discuss it and vote - I doubt that counts as "administrative" but by not referencing any particular comic, we definitely avoid the "questions shouldn't require him to explain his comic more than he has already done." part. Anyway, feel free to reword/add parts/delete parts/hack the question up in whatever way you want. Consider this just me posting the idea for a question, and letting you guys do whatever you want with the idea --172.68.174.146 19:01, 27 February 2025 (UTC)
24's original caption claimed to have more to it, but the link isn't archived. Is there more? youtu.be/miLcaqq2Zpk 01:23, 4 March 2025 (UTC)
In 2256: Bad Map Projection: South America, which eleven islands are representing what I assume are the Philippines and Indonesia? --104.23.187.145 13:45, 1 March 2025 (UTC)
- Luzon, Samar, Mindanao, Sumatra, Java, Borneo, Sulawesi, and New Guinea seem pretty obvious, but what are the other three islands?
In 2951: Bad Map Projection: Exterior Kansas, assuming you didn't draw the map freehand, what function did you use to convert (actual distance from center point) to (distance from center point in the projection)? --104.23.187.145 13:45, 1 March 2025 (UTC)
- This information would be helpful for adding more states, territories, countries, and/or landmasses to the map.
Does he know that if a=1,b=2,c=3, etc. then x+k+c+d=42?Thehydraclone (talk) 19:49, 2 March 2025 (UTC)
- (Answer to life, the universe, and everything)
- This might be relevant, if you can find a citation for it...
- Not very important question but very easy to answer and trivial, i like it. --FaviFake (talk) 15:59, 3 March 2025 (UTC)
- But I think this has already been debated wildly and he has explained why he chose this name extensively, and it seems like it was not for that reason. I find it very interesting though, but it also only works for English alfabet, in Denmark we do not use W when saying the alfabet (although we have it for loan words. We also call it Weekend in Denmark. That is an official Danish word). But the X would thus be one less and the sum 41 ;-) I do realize that he of course would have used the English alfabet, so if he actually looked for this he would also get 42. -- Kynde (talk) 19:20, 10 March 2025 (UTC)
There's a hidden search box in xkcd.com's source code. --Bytesizeinfo.com
- It's commented out, but you can reenable it with your browser's inspect tool, and it still seems to work. (It's in the footer, if you want to try.) Why is it commented out? It seems like a useful tool.
What was/is the purpose of https://xkcd.com/yes/ and https://xkcd.com/no/? youtu.be/miLcaqq2Zpk 03:32, 5 March 2025 (UTC)
- When I learnt of them, I tried various others (e.g. ".../maybe"), to no avail. But maybe there's something non-Yes/Noish that goes along with those two, thematically. So far, though, I've not worked out what they might be. 162.158.33.252 00:08, 9 March 2025 (UTC)
✓ Done Are results from the xkcd Survey ever going to be released? --172.71.254.92 01:53, 9 March 2025 (UTC)
- In xkcd.com/1572 there was a survey. Randall said that he would release the data, but it crashed google forms. Is there any way to get it back, and if so, will he finally release it?
Did you know that the chatroom in xkcloud; euphoria.io is living and growing under a new domain, leet.nu? Elaine Roberts (talk) 19:21, 11 March 2025 (UTC)
What checkmate did you intend to depict in 1112: Think Logically? 162.158.167.40 07:04, 10 March 2025 (UTC)
- We suspect scholar's mate, but there is at least one other possibility, specifically a variant of fool's mate (since Cueball could be moving his pawns towards Knit Cap Guy's king).
Is the board setup in 3045: AlphaMove based on playing AlphaMove against a specific chess engine? If so, which one? -unsigned!
- Can you elaborate? What's a board setup, what dow e exactly not know? --FaviFake (talk) 16:14, 11 March 2025 (UTC)
- Seems to me, it simply means "has that playing position (i.e. the current state) been reached by pitting 'the algorithm' vs. any particular genuine chess-engine". (Or otherwise. The alternative, presumably, that it was a 'hand-crafted' response on Randall's part... Or possibly a volunteer from amongst his acquaintances, either knowing something of what they'd be pitted against or not.)
- I suspect the answer will be frightfully unremarkable (if available and given), but I could also see it being a useful throw-it-in. (Better than "why's there a river running through the ocean?", anyway ;) ) 141.101.99.163 16:49, 11 March 2025 (UTC)
- Can you elaborate? What's a board setup, what dow e exactly not know? --FaviFake (talk) 16:14, 11 March 2025 (UTC)
ADD NEW SUGGESTIONS ABOVE THIS LINE
Out-of-scope questions
|
|
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 These questions are more like interview questions. |
Question about deleted comic
Why was what if? article Peptides deleted? --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". Anyone agree? --FaviFake (talk) 16:34, 21 February 2025 (UTC)
Question about deleted comic
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?
- I like this one, but I'm not sure if it's as simple as he'd like. He'd need to explain why he created the comic, which he almost never does. But there might be a way to ask it in a way that allows him to reply without revealing too much info. Btw, you seem very active on this wiki, do you have anything else in mind? --FaviFake (talk) 20:11, 22 February 2025 (UTC)
- I'm not quite sure he likes questions about things he actually wished to delete... I mean seriously he tried to hide it but we got hold of it anyway? Also we know why he drew these, it was a game he played with family. He just did not mean to post the fourth one. There might be more, but he only posted the three because he could not cope with the cancer of his wife and did not whish to give up his schedule. So as he could not draw three comics fast enough for that week he used these instead. Asking into this would also remind him of his wife's cancer. I vote no to this as an e-mail to Randall! Kynde (talk) 17:24, 23 February 2025 (UTC)
- I like this one, but I'm not sure if it's as simple as he'd like. He'd need to explain why he created the comic, which he almost never does. But there might be a way to ask it in a way that allows him to reply without revealing too much info. Btw, you seem very active on this wiki, do you have anything else in mind? --FaviFake (talk) 20:11, 22 February 2025 (UTC)
Question about deleted comic
Why was No One Was Hurt replaced? 172.68.71.112 15:44, 24 February 2025 (UTC)
- No One Was Hurt was a comic that was replaced by Comic 2642, and while it's reasonable to assume that it's probably in response to some... unfortunate irl events, for documentation it would be nice to have an official, confirmed answer
Will we get more 5-part sagas? --Caliban (talk) 11:44, 23 February 2025 (UTC)
- Like Choices, The Race, etc.
- Not sure about this one, feels like we should be focusing on exclusively wiki data and such, this isn't an interview. 172.71.30.168 17:28, 24 February 2025 (UTC)
Machine details -- HyperBirbN3rd
- Is Machine going to have a finalized state? If so, when?
What inspired you to make Time? 141.101.109.166 (talk) (please sign your comments with ~~~~)
- Frankly I don't see this one either, see the one above 172.71.30.168 17:26, 24 February 2025 (UTC)
Are there comics you'd like to update in light of recent developments? 172.71.102.216 13:52, 25 February 2025 (UTC)
- Are there any existing comics you would like to update / sequel in light of recent developments (environmental, political, webtrends, demographic)? :The first thing that comes to mind is that 2024 was the first year above 1.5C over the pre-industrial average. [1].
Just wanted to note that some geography comics might be worth asking about XKCD Teaches Science (talk) 03:27, 24 February 2025 (UTC)
- I remember browsing pages on this wiki about 6 months ago and noticing that there were many explainations of maps or map like things where editors weren't sure which small islands or small countries since comic drawing is obviously not perfect. I don't remember which comics exactly and don't have time today to investigate, but I figured this observation is worth noting.
Did they notice? -unsigned!
- I noticed that in 1529: Bracket 'Jeff Gordan' was changed to 'Jeff Gordon' but apparently nobody noticed. When was the comic fixed?
Why have you drawn fewer multiple-panel comics recently? 172.70.214.113 07:38, 9 March 2025 (UTC)
Why are some of the april fools' comics late? - 172.71.146.108 18:55, 22 February 2025 (UTC)
- I'm fairly sure we've had this answered already ("things just weren't quite ready/more testing was needed") for some of the more technical ones, in some other place. Whether we can get more detail and for every not-on-time might be a matter of him having to remember the precise circumstances. And I also would feel uncomfortable if this turned into "why was <random non-April Fool comic> late?". Or early. (When doing Rightpondian book-tours, sometimes surprisingly early, but every now and then it seems he manages to release them from his native Leftpondia even early here in the Rightpondian day.) But this is far too much detail (and far too much expectation), of no importance so long as he continues to average out at three regular comics a week and if he wants to, and when he can, anything a bit more special.
- Consider this a downvote on bothering him with this question, but that's of course only my opinion, in leiu of anything more constructive to add ("What's your favourite cheese..?") 172.69.79.190 19:42, 22 February 2025 (UTC)
Why was there no special thing for comic 3000? DollarStoreBa'al (talk) 17:34, 24 February 2025 (UTC)
- This is something major as normally he makes special comics for these types of milestones, but the comic proceeded as if nothing happened. Why?
- A fair question, but a bit of a lower priority than anything else we can throw at Randall. 172.71.26.43 17:44, 24 February 2025 (UTC)
- I am still curious about this, though. If no other question is deemed as important, this is a good one to ask IMO. Trogdor147 (talk) 21:32, 24 February 2025 (UTC)
