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Talk:2626: d65536

2022-06-18T11:26:28Z

20040302: Dice-O-Matic mark II

I wonder: can we even make a fair polyhedron with 65536 faces? In Randal's illustration, the faces seem to be irregular hexagons. [[Special:Contributions/172.70.130.105|172.70.130.105]] 21:37, 30 May 2022 (UTC)
: This is better than my question, which was simply if you could tile a sphere with these. [[Special:Contributions/172.70.211.36|172.70.211.36]] 23:01, 30 May 2022 (UTC)
:Definitely possible, just create two identical right pyramids with a 32768-gon base and glue the bases together. [[User:Clam|Clam]] ([[User talk:Clam|talk]]) 23:53, 30 May 2022 (UTC)
: Would this design be fair? Consider a set of 256 lines of latitude overlapping another set, with the second set's polar axis at the equator of the first. Cut flat quadrangles between the intersection points of the lines of latitude. Doesn't use hexagons like the comic does though. [[Special:Contributions/172.70.110.121|172.70.110.121]] 09:41, 31 May 2022 (UTC)
:: Fairness is a given for pyramids (if that's what you're asking). As long as there's enough 'rolling energy' to get either of the pyramids 'facing up', any N-agon base to the pyramids should have enough indeterminate impetous to then finally roll around a bit to end up with any of those exposed faces on top.
::(Interesting to note that for odd-numbered N-agonal bases, like that in a D10, you need to offset the bases and instead of sticking to the triangular faces base-to-base you now have kite-shapes that interlock in a serration that is no longer strictly planar along the axis's perpendiculars.)
::That might need a selection of the pyramidal slope. A very wide pair of bases with very little tip-'elevation' (to fit tightly within an oblate spheroid) should transition very well between same-pyramid faces, like a bulgy button, but one with highly acute tip-angle (prolate, likewise) might find the dominant behaviour to be tip-to-tip tipping, more like a toggle-fastener. OTOH, for odd-numbered end-agons it would probably ratchett to subsequent sides as it tips back and forth so long as it has enough energy to it.
::If you're asking about lines of latitude intersecting, consider that near the poles of either latitudinal reference the division of the other reference-system is going to be spliced more irregularly and thus give varying degrees of stability to rest upon.
::(Also, do you have a latitudinal line that crosses ''both'' pairs of poles, or are you deliberately moving them by half a phase (1/512th of the relevent circumference) so that you at least don't have them entirely coincident.)
::I believe the suggested scheme would be to take a dodecahedron or icosohedron (either of the two duals can be used to start with) and then subdivide each face in such a manner that equally-sized (but differently distorted) hexagons – and 12 little regular pentagons of identical area fitting in at the old dodecahedron centre/the old icosahedron vertex – emerge from the required segmentation/vertex-truncation and readjustment the radiality of all new mid-edge vertices (or maybe the newer-edges' centres or the newer-faces' centres) to touch the unit sphere. If done symmetrically, it should be entirely fair.
::The face-count might be troublesome, though. The twelve necessary pentagonal faces leaves 65524 hexagons, to split evenly between* either 12 or 20 zones, and it should be obvious that neither is possible**, in whole numbers, given the starting point of 2n faces...
:::(* - you can, and probably will in this design, have some that cross between two of the top-level polygons, but you can fully 'donate' as many as you then fully ''get'' donated from the next face around, so it might as well be just counted as a group of whole tiles on an a set of Escher-like interlocking 'rough' polygons.)
:::(** - If you're using 12 zones, that's 3x4x(however many in the zone + one corner each) and there's no factor of 3 in ''any'' value that is 2n. Arranging into 20 symmetrical zones (5x4), you will find that 65524 isn't divisible by 5, either...)
::You could probably arrange an N-ahedron with the number of faces being 12+(12a) or 12+(20b), for some higher value (a bit of mental arithmatic suggests 65592 might be that value) and mark all the 'excess' faces (56?) with "Roll Again!". Or perhaps some pithy motivational slogans that also convey roughly the same meaning... :P [[Special:Contributions/172.70.162.5|172.70.162.5]] 11:32, 31 May 2022 (UTC)
::Postcript: Ok, so this is my idea for face-placing. Take a D8 (octahedron) and divide each of its 8 originally triangular faces into 8192 smaller faces (alternatively, start with a cube and progressively truncate its corners towards the same end). This is not a divisible by three number (neither can you put one in the centre, the rest are divisble by three and can surround it symmetrically), but you don't need strict rotational symmetry in any way. The opposing side can reflect/copy the non-symmetry as required to create any useful symmetry across the whole of the structure (and make floored-base/upmost-face pairings, amongst other things).
::As long as you make the faces equally likely to land on ''and stay on'' (could be hyperstellated as a slightly flat irregular 8192agon-based right-pyramid with the pyramid-faces of adjacent sides matching or meshing edges with those of each other, or a complicated mostly-hexagonal mesh, or a triangular one that's a limited fragment of a fine geodesic-like bulged pattern) by some suitable scheme governing area, aspect ratio and inter-face angle of incidence (probably normalising features to touch the unit sphere, for a start) then it should do it fairly and with ''exactly'' 65536 faces. I leave the fine-tweaking up to someone else. [[Special:Contributions/172.70.162.5|172.70.162.5]] 12:59, 31 May 2022 (UTC)

I don't know why it's so big? Seems like it should have a diameter of approx. 1 meter. [[Special:Contributions/172.70.130.105|172.70.130.105]] 21:37, 30 May 2022 (UTC)
: Cueball is 50 pixels high. The ball is 340 px high. Assuming Cueball is an average-height male (1.7m), and is standing the same distance from the viewer as the center of the ball, roughly how large is each face of the polygon? Area of a sphere is 4.pi.r.r, r=0.85, so 9.08 m^2 or 9080000 mm^2, divide by number of faces, get 277 mm^2, so we get 1.6cm to a side. If I did that right, then you're right: those are fairly large faces. --[[Special:Contributions/172.69.70.39|172.69.70.39]] 05:58, 31 May 2022 (UTC)
:I ran the calculations for the Trivia section. I used 12pt font which gave each number an area of 1/6 square inch (about 1 square cm) [[Special:Contributions/162.158.106.237|162.158.106.237]] 06:57, 31 May 2022 (UTC)
:Simple: Exaggerated for comedic effect and to make the point it's unwieldy (plus avoid the fuss of figuring out a realistic size) [[User:NiceGuy1|NiceGuy1]] ([[User talk:NiceGuy1|talk]]) 06:31, 4 June 2022 (UTC)

Should the title and picture file use "d" or the comic's difficult to type "ᴅ"?
[[User:While False|While False]] ([[User talk:While False|talk]]) 21:55, 30 May 2022 (UTC)
:Since xkcd uses small caps as lowercase letters, the "ᴅ" should just be considered xkcd-font for "d", and as such need not be used on the title, which is not using the xkcd font.
:: Ah! [[User:While False|While False]] ([[User talk:While False|talk]]) 06:15, 31 May 2022 (UTC)

If you really did want to generate a 16 bit integer with physical dice, it would be much simpler to roll a [https://www.thediceshoponline.com/impact-opaque-hexidice-d16-hexadecimal-dice hex die] four times. [[User:Clayot|Clayot]] ([[User talk:Clayot|talk]]) 23:30, 30 May 2022 (UTC)
:Rolling a binary die 16 times would also work. You can get binary dice for 1¢ each. [[Special:Contributions/108.162.245.69|108.162.245.69]] 01:31, 31 May 2022 (UTC)
::The lowest-value coin of all is the Tiyin from Uzbekistan. Some 3,038 equate to one UK penny (and 2,000 tot up to one US cent) from https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-21572359. [[User:Arachrah|Arachrah]] ([[User talk:Arachrah|talk]]) 15:13, 31 May 2022 (UTC)
::Those 1¢ "dices" are not exactly guaranteed to be random. -- [[User:Hkmaly|Hkmaly]] ([[User talk:Hkmaly|talk]]) 06:12, 31 May 2022 (UTC)
:::They seem as random as other dice? Am I wrong? [[Special:Contributions/172.70.230.63|172.70.230.63]] 09:33, 31 May 2022 (UTC)
:::: You can reduce bias by taking two not quite fair coins. Flip them together. If both heads, or both tails, then record a 0. If different, record a 1. [[User:Arachrah|Arachrah]] ([[User talk:Arachrah|talk]]) 15:13, 31 May 2022 (UTC)
::::: Actually, it's better to flip one coin twice. If it's heads then tails, record a 0, if it's tails then heads, record a 1. If it's HH or TT, try again. [[Special:Contributions/172.70.207.8|172.70.207.8]] 15:20, 2 June 2022 (UTC)

I think the hardest part (or maybe second-hardest part) is figuring out which facet is the one on top. [[Special:Contributions/162.158.78.109|162.158.78.109]] 00:46, 31 May 2022 (UTC)
:Roll it on a glass table, check from below which face it's landed on instead. Wait until it has settled safely, though, or it might land on ''your'' face! [[Special:Contributions/172.70.90.227|172.70.90.227]] 04:58, 31 May 2022 (UTC)
:: Good plan. Assuming standard dice design, subtract the value from 65537 to get the value of the uppermost face. --[[Special:Contributions/172.69.70.39|172.69.70.39]] 05:58, 31 May 2022 (UTC)
::: Because computer binary counting starts with ZERO (and in this case ends with 65535) one has to subtract from 65535. This die would not have a 65536 and it would have a zero. [[User:Inquirer|Inquirer]] ([[User talk:Inquirer|talk]]) 22:38, 31 May 2022 (UTC)
::::Notice that the parent comment says “assuming standard dice design” and standard dice start with 1 and end with their d number: a standard d4 has faces 1,2,3,4; a standard d6 has faces 1,2,3,4,5,6; a standard d10 1,2,3,[…],10; and a standard d100 has faces 1 through 100. Which is why rolling 2xd10 does NOT yield the same results as rolling 1xd100, because one cannot roll a 1 OR a 100 with two d10’s, and other numbers are over represented. This is why I have both a d12 and a d100 in my set of dice…[[User:John|John]] ([[User talk:John|talk]]) 11:40, 2 June 2022 (UTC)
:::::D10s are frequently (IME) numbered 0..9, with underlines to distinguish 6 from 9, whether or not that is as a deliberate sop to pairing up for percentiles ("It's the red dice first...", "It isn't!", "It is, it's ''always'' the red dice first, that's a 9 percent fail, not at 90 percent success!"). The 0 opposite 9, 1 opposite 8, etc.
:::::If you're rolling 1..10s (depends upon the system being used for... and arguments about the original intentions, possibly, where 10 of something or zero of something turning up/discovered means a lot to what exactly happens next) you ''treat'' them as full 10s, and double-zero can (again, hopefully understood in advance) be a "natural 100", rather than a natural-zero, to someone's obvious advantage or detriment.
:::::Similarly, games with D4 may use 0..3 as its outcomes, or D3s (D6/2s) have 0,0,1,1,2,2 as faces. Or if you are somehow stuck with a 1-based die of the appropriate (or divisible) range, and need to play something that requires a 0-based one, you agree that MAXNUM->ZERO or N=N-1.
:::::From my recollections of the truly huge collection of multicoloured, multisized and variously multifaceted dice that was dragged out for wargaming/role-playing sessions, years of accumulations from various sources, the D6s (spotted, not "Hit", "Missfire", <arrows for miss direction>, or otherwise for other uses), D8s, D12s and D20s were habitually 1-upwards, and Ds with 3, 4 and 10 almost all 0-upwards. D6s were the most numerous, but D10s well up there (enough for colour-mismatched pairs for each of a whole battalion of participants, even if the Hit/Miss die had to be passed around at need, and the few big yellow D20s might need to be offered onwards/rolled on someone's behalf on occasion).
:::::In short, the 'standard' is perhaps more firmly that opposite sides add up to double the average (not possible with D4, which is also "point-marked", not one number per side), though I'd like to check a D3 to see if it's 0 opposite 2 (x2) and 1 opposite 1 (which also happens to be a 0..5-dice with the opposition rule, but modded by 3) or perhaps in a basic {1..6}mod3 conversion 1 opposes 0(=6), 2 opposite 2(=5), 0(=3) opposite 1(=4). Maybe next time I go a gaming I'll get the chance. [[Special:Contributions/172.70.86.44|172.70.86.44]] 12:48, 2 June 2022 (UTC)
:::::HOW are you figuring any numbers are over represented in rolling 2xD10? There are 100 possibilities, 1 through 100, one chance per number, exactly equal... Each die has a 1 in 10 chance of rolling each value. Unless you're forgetting to pre-assign which die is the tens position and which is the ones... This is why any set with more than one D10 has then different colours so you can tell them apart... [[User:NiceGuy1|NiceGuy1]] ([[User talk:NiceGuy1|talk]]) 05:11, 4 June 2022 (UTC)
::::::Not sure what you're asking here. It seems to bear very little relevence to the meaning of the thing you're replying to (wot I wrote, which might indicate the error in conveying is at my end). I did not ''intend'' to suggest (as it is untrue) that 2D10≠1D100 (give or take adjusting what "00" means, which is an implementation issue, not a mathematical one), but I'll gladly clear up anything I left potentially saying something other than I thought it did. Quote the bit, and you can get a 'better' rewrite of it ASAP. [[Special:Contributions/162.158.159.41|162.158.159.41]] 05:48, 4 June 2022 (UTC)
:::::::"Which is why rolling 2xd10 does NOT yield the same results as rolling 1xd100, because one cannot roll a 1 OR a 100 with two d10’s, and other numbers are over represented.", that line. A 1 is rolling 0 on the tens die and a 1 on the ones die. A 100 is 0 on both dice (or you make the range 0 to 99, in which case two 0s is 0). NOW I think you were thinking of multiplying the values, which is indeed bad (for example, it then becomes impossible to roll a 17, as no two single digit numbers multiply to 17. Also, 9x9 is 81, 9x10 is 90, making those the last two possible values before 100, the other 80s and 90s unachievable. And then what you say make sense, you can get 24 with 3x8 or 4x6, two chances = over-represented). [[User:NiceGuy1|NiceGuy1]] ([[User talk:NiceGuy1|talk]]) 06:29, 4 June 2022 (UTC)
::::::::Ah, no, that was User:John, not me (172.70.86.44). Teach me for replying based on seeing the Diffs page, and not counting the indent-colons correctly! You were replying to a point that I had actually ''not even noticed'', at the same 'level' as I had jumped in on the zero-based-range thing with my spiel that you weren't actually arguing with. (Not sure John was thinking dice-multiplied, either, as 1x1=1. Perhaps why I blanked that bit out.)
::::::::On the subject, though, the Babylon 5 RPG used an interesting double-dice system, for some things (either straight success/fail or modifying other offsets, possibly). Red D6 and Green D6 (or similar hue distinction) rolled together. Take the ''lowest'' value of the two, and then call it negative if it was the red one. Equal rolls mean zero, except double-1 (critical/special failure of some kind) and -6 (likewise a success). Gives a slightly modified normalised-around-zero distribution (intentionally or otherwise) with the possible results being ((-Critical -5 -4 -4 -3 -3 -3 -2 -2 -2 -2 -1 -1 -1 -1 -1 0 0 0 0 +1 +1 +1 +1 +1 +2 +2 +2 +2 +3 +3 +3 +4 +4 +5 +Critical)), if you order the 36 possibilities. Similar to 2D6 added, minus 7 (to bunch up the unexceptionalism towards the baseline), but two of the middlingest possibilities removed and given special status at the either end for that little possible pizzaz! ;)
::::::::It reminded me of the experiment with monkeys where they were taught to recognise values (as number of bananas, e.g.) and then taught that whichever of two options they chose, it was the ''other'' one's value that dictated their reward. When done with abstract numbers (digits, or colours/shapes relating to numbers by training) they would "choose low, to get high", but when given ''actual'' quantities of reward-items, they'd instinctively "choose high", by instinct, immediately before their conscious brains kicked in and they realised they'd done the wrong thing. Or something like that (look for 30/40-year-old study, possibly shown to be flawed, these days)...
::::::::Anyway, it took a short while to train oneself to be somehow excited by 3 dots on a green when paired with six dots on a red, say, (or dissapointed with a green 6 in the light of any non-6 red) when previously the merest glance at the cumulative spots on thrown dice would suffice to satisfy the question of how well they fell for you. ;)
::::::::Not useful for this comic, but had always been dying to mention it, from the beginning! [[Special:Contributions/172.70.86.64|172.70.86.64]] 11:10, 4 June 2022 (UTC)
:::::::::LOL! Yes, I indented to answer John, his comment mystified me, :) And I did not check your identity, just understood by your response YOU were the one I was speaking to. :) The comments on here are so many and so LARGE I haven't read most, just that his caught my eye. THAT is an interesting if complicated dice system, wow! [[User:NiceGuy1|NiceGuy1]] ([[User talk:NiceGuy1|talk]]) 05:03, 5 June 2022 (UTC)

What material should it be to be light enough to easily roll it but cheap enough that doing the 1,5 meters doest cost a fortune ? Sorry if the question is not clear. [[Special:Contributions/141.101.69.30|141.101.69.30]] 05:50, 31 May 2022 (UTC)
:I recommend making it hollow. You could probably do something like this for $3000 if you made it out of 1/8th inch acrylic plate. [[Special:Contributions/162.158.106.237|162.158.106.237]] 07:02, 31 May 2022 (UTC)
:At first I thought aluminum for sturdiness, but really you could make this out of cardboard for dirt cheap, lasercutting precise shapes, but you'd have to design its structural frame to keep it intact, exchanges design effort for price. [[Special:Contributions/172.70.230.63|172.70.230.63]] 09:32, 31 May 2022 (UTC)

I disagree with this dice being really random. Like, sure, if thrown correctly, but that's going to be quite hard. -- [[User:Hkmaly|Hkmaly]] ([[User talk:Hkmaly|talk]]) 06:12, 31 May 2022 (UTC)

:True. For a rolled die to be random, it needs to roll far enough so that the initial orientation no longer governs the outcome. Say, ten times the circumference, or about 150 meters? -- [[User:Dtgriscom|Dtgriscom]] ([[User talk:Dtgriscom|talk]]) 10:28, 31 May 2022 (UTC)
::Interesting to consider the 'necessary minimum'. Simplify to a "wheel of fortune" (just one axis of continual rotation) it would depend upon the potential variation of imparted rotation. If (say) 'aiming' at two whole rotations has a (perhaps 'normal') spread of variance that relates to ±½ rotational uncertainty at the 1st and 3rd quartile of probability then the sub-first and above-third 'tails' might wrap around to (roughly) equalise the chances that 2±(whatever fraction) spins lands just about anywhere just about equally. Aiming at four whole rotations (similary ±1 spin at the given quartiles, and the tailing chancs 'filling in' above 5 rotations and below 3) would smooth things out, all else equal, but takes twice as much perceived/attempted effort for not much more 'randomising'.
::Similarly, requiring 10 full rolls (maybe honestly aiming for 10, but allowing it to be 7.5 or less if not obviously 'just nudged') seems overkill, in the single dimension.
::Except, of course that you also need enough distance (on top of whatever factor you consider practical as a variation-wrapping value, which might not be the ½-in-2 I give) to also roll ''sideways''. If for some reason you really don't want to roll 65536 or 1 (or is it 65535 and 0?), which may be on polar-opposite faces, you might make sure that they are directly to the left and right before you propel the die forwards ''a little'', not caring which distribution of numbers is on/near the rolling-equator (2 is acceptible to you, and 65533, etc; other very low/high values conceivably placed on that thin band of "wheel-like chance" but you're just avoiding the very largest and smallest, or specifically just the one of them) but knowing that it's more unlikely to easily present the exact face(s) you dislike than it might be in a truly 'fair' roll.
::Perhaps the best thing is to have a rolling track to send the thing down that puts it the required "two or so rotations" forward to then either hit a wall or climb slightly up a slope (at a roughly 45 degree angle) that then sends it back roughly sideways to the original vector for a similar distance with a perpendicular or even composite moment of rolling rotation, to bring 'initially axial' numbers fully into play... And that dog-leg would require a sligthly shorter length from launch-position to where the thoroughly mixed-up final stopping point should be, whilst significantly foiling the master-manipulators who actually try to arrange an initial setup that favours better final results (rather than just nudge it, uncaring, for a result not as totally random but certainly not more predominently of desired-for ranges than otherwise). [[Special:Contributions/141.101.99.8|141.101.99.8]] 12:28, 31 May 2022 (UTC)
::At what point does the structural material the die is composed of, combined with its mass, create a smoothing effect that will destroy the fairness of the die. I mean a small plastic die is no problem. A 2-ton acrylic die would start grinding off the edges of some faces with every roll, would it not? [[Special:Contributions/172.69.69.122|172.69.69.122]] 13:35, 31 May 2022 (UTC)

Should it be related to https://xkcd.com/221/ ? [[Special:Contributions/162.158.183.246|162.158.183.246]] 08:07, 31 May 2022 (UTC)

I'm going to wait, I think - I don't think there's room in my attic for this as well as all the Betamax kit, my drawers full of MiniDiscs and my Zune collection. No, I'll sit tight - I'm hearing encouraging things about the introduction of the Magic 65536-Ball... [[User:Yorkshire Pudding|Yorkshire Pudding]] ([[User talk:Yorkshire Pudding|talk]]) 09:41, 31 May 2022 (UTC)
:The number of sides on the die inside the ball is not what determines the name of the ball. It's the exterior housing which is colored in the manner of an Eight Ball. The classic design uses a d20, and is still called an Eight Ball, not a Twenty Ball. [[Special:Contributions/172.70.130.195|172.70.130.195]] 18:00, 31 May 2022 (UTC)
::Full disclosure: I don't have any of those things in my attic. And I'm not entirely sure, but I don't think Randall thinks rolling a d65536 is genuinely the hardest part of generating random 16-bit numbers. And Grape Nuts contain neither grapes nor nuts. [[User:Yorkshire Pudding|Yorkshire Pudding]] ([[User talk:Yorkshire Pudding|talk]]) 23:37, 31 May 2022 (UTC)

I'm suprised the hidden message points to 2624. I would've thought it would point to 2626 to refer to itself. Maybe things didn't get published as intended? Or maybe Randall really just wanted to point people to the Voyager comic? [[User:Linux2647|Linux2647]] ([[User talk:Linux2647|talk]]) 18:13, 31 May 2022 (UTC)
:I'm no ASCII expert, but from the description provided I'm pretty sure the comic URL would require the number representing "26" to show up twice. A die with, say, two 13,359 faces would obviously not be fair. If only Randall had published this as #2625 or #2627! (Or maybe he ''planned'' to publish it last week and had to shuffle his schedule after finalizing this comic?) [[User:GreatWyrmGold|GreatWyrmGold]] ([[User talk:GreatWyrmGold|talk]]) 18:24, 31 May 2022 (UTC)
::Probably the latter, seeing as it doesn't actually line up so that any of them are actually "26". The numbers are xk-cd-.c-om-/2-62-4/, so the 26 and 24 aren't lined up like that. [[Special:Contributions/172.70.126.87|172.70.126.87]] 19:38, 31 May 2022 (UTC)
::To change the number from 24 to 26 would mean changing 13,359 to 13,871. The only way that would be a problem is if 13,871 was already in the comic, which it isn't. Convert 13,359 to hex, it's 342F. In ASCII, 34 is "4", 2F is "/". Add 2 you get 36, so the new hex number is 362F, which converted to decimal is 13,871. [[User:NiceGuy1|NiceGuy1]] ([[User talk:NiceGuy1|talk]]) 11:37, 5 June 2022 (UTC)
:Perl code to decode the ASCII: <pre>perl -E 'for (30827, 25444, 11875, 28525, 12082, 13874, 13359) { print chr($_ >> 8), chr($_ & 0xff) }; print "\n"'</pre>

<big><big>'''Remember that "die" is singular and "dice" is plural'''</big></big> [[User:Mushrooms|Mushrooms]] ([[User talk:Mushrooms|talk]]) 09:30, 1 June 2022 (UTC)

;Might be worth offering some easier alternatives..
Needless to say, 16 ordered coins (eg ordered by the date of their minting) provide a much easier alternative to a d65536.

Other (easy to find) d p^2 - such as 8 ordered d4, or 5 ordered d8 and a coin (or bit-shave a dice.)
It's true some rules need to be applied (the highest number of the die is treated as a 0, and the order of the dice is strictly followed).

For example using a rainbow spectrum ordering of 6d8,
I role: 7, 1, 2, 8, 3, 5. Each dice represents 3 bits -
111-001-010-000-011-101. We shave off the last two bits (because we want 16 bits, not 18, for a d65536)
1110 0101 0000 0111. Hex = E507, which is decimal 58,631.

While it takes a few seconds for a human to convert the number it is quite trivial to write a program to convert an image capture.

There are also specialist dice - such as d16 'hexidice' which provide 4 bits per ordered die, and far less human calculation.
There are even d256 hex dice made, but they suffer the same problem that a d65536 would have.

[[User:20040302|20040302]] ([[User talk:20040302|talk]])
: how are you trivially converting image captures? i still use my keyboard. what's the update? [[Special:Contributions/162.158.79.120|162.158.79.120]] 18:26, 1 June 2022 (UTC)
:For your D8 system, since a D8 absolutely SCREAMS octal, you'll get results from 001 to 1000 octal for each die roll. Just subtract 1, and it's a perfect 3 digit range, 000 to 111! Which feels better than 8, the highest roll, becoming 0, the lowest, like you're doing. And as the previous commenter asked, how is image capture trivial? Especially from a programming perspective? Seems like the ACTUAL trivial method is to put a calculator into scientific mode and just type in the hex number to convert... :) [[User:NiceGuy1|NiceGuy1]] ([[User talk:NiceGuy1|talk]]) 05:11, 4 June 2022 (UTC)

::D8 is fine, and I tried that - but it's not so easy to composite the hex number from D8. With a D16 (there are two different styles, both easily available) it's really easy to get a nybble of randomness. Using e.g. visible spectrum ordering and suitable (eg red, orange, yellow, grass*, green, cyan, blue, purple) dice, it's trivial to order the dice to 4 bytes of randomness. (and a d65536 is only 2 bytes) (*I have no grass but I have a dark orange), so just now I rolled 0x6A5D391B.

::As for using a program to convert an image capture, it was sort of a joke. However, the real advantage over a calculator is that the calculator is a PRNG.
::Here is a link to 12 lines of code that would grab the dice numbers - similar code would be used to grab the colours.
:: https://stackoverflow.com/questions/66027978/python-number-recognition-on-colored-screen
:: Also, just for fun, have a look at the an system http://gamesbyemail.com/news/diceomatic
::Mainly I wrote this just for fun. ([[User:20040302|20040302]] ([[User talk:20040302|talk]]) 11:19, 18 June 2022 (UTC))

I found an octahedral Goldberg with 65538 sides, 6 squares and 65532 irregular hexagons, notated GP₄(128,0). Can be constructed by chamfering a cube 7 times (Conway cccccccC). I don't think anything can be closer. [[User:SDSpivey|SDSpivey]] ([[User talk:SDSpivey|talk]]) 04:37, 2 June 2022 (UTC)
:I have had two designs in mind:
:*Start with octahedron, subdivide each face triangle into 16,384 triangular faces (subdivide all original edges into 128ths, effectively, while "halving into quarter-sized triangles), pairing the triangles up into half that many 'diamonds' then inflating to touch the bounding sphere, keeping the diamonds planar and possibly equal area, but will also distort them (some into kites, others may be utterly irregular) so it'll be a (literal?) balancing act to make all tippings between faces equally possible.
:*Start with a tetrahedron, subdivide likewise, stick with the triangles, have the same issue of inflating the faces towards the unit sphere while balancing the resulting distortions.
:I tried to work out something that seems to exactly match the image (or as exactly as I perceive it to be) with mildly distorted hexagons - albeit with the necessary pentagonal substitutions to carry the curvature - formed of (a similarly subdivided set of) sub-triangles drawn out on the original surfaces of either icosahedron or a snub-stellated extension onwards the dodecahedron, but I couldn't get the numbers to add up. Which is not to say that there isn't a way to do it. I was going to spend more time on this issue later, so if I get past the issues, then... Watch this space? [[Special:Contributions/172.70.162.77|172.70.162.77]] 13:17, 2 June 2022 (UTC)

I WAS going to say a far simpler way is to roll a D6 and 4 D10s (what is WITH all the lowercase Ds? Every time I see dice named it's uppercase!), figuring that gives a range of 0 to 69,999, and throw out/re-roll results higher than 65,535. (I realize that probably adjusts the odds, but I would think minimally and equally). Then I realized the D6 can't give a result of 0, so the real range is 10,000 to 69,999. Oops! And a D7 feels weird and rare if it even exists, SO! 5 D10s and still throw out everything above 65,535. :) Oh, and I agree with the Warning text, NEEDS an explanation how these numbers turn into a URL. WITHOUT relying on writing a program or concepts like "big endian", just say what's being done to ONE number, come on! EDIT: Never mind, I figured it out and added a MUCH simpler explanation. :) [[User:NiceGuy1|NiceGuy1]] ([[User talk:NiceGuy1|talk]])
:I think a D7*2 exists, i.e. a D14div2 (two faces for each of seven digits), though they're rarer than D14s (same idea as a D10, but interlocked heptagonally-based pyramid 'ends') which are already niche. I saw one with days on (Mo/Tu/We/Th/Fr/Sa/Su, leastwise), which is the only vaguely obvious reason for one. Might as well have a spinner. But to save so much 'wasted' rolling, use a D8 and only reject the 8 (or, rather, 8=0, reroll the 7 and all the rest, to prevent actual statistical clumping, ditto onwards from any other 'bust'). [[Special:Contributions/162.158.159.41|162.158.159.41]] 05:48, 4 June 2022 (UTC)
::Yup, didn't think about a D8 (which is extra stupid as I was discussing D8 higher up, LOL!) D'oh! And yes, I didn't think about rolling a day of the week, that would make a D7/D14 useful. Even if it was so labelled, just have Sunday equals 0, Monday is 1, etc. Range becomes 0 to 69999, only about 4,000 possibilities thrown out (I'd probably just re-roll the D7/D14). For a D8 I'd agree with your method.

::Reminds me of a Facebook Memory I had the other day: If you want to confuse someone, ask them why there's a line under the 6 on a D8.[[User:NiceGuy1|NiceGuy1]] ([[User talk:NiceGuy1|talk]]) 06:14, 4 June 2022 (UTC)

'''"hexakismyriapentakischiliapentahectatriacontakaihexahedron"''' [From the Explanation] Would anyone care to take a stab at deciphering that word? As of this comment, Google only returns this page as a reference. [[User:These Are Not The Comments You Are Looking For|These Are Not The Comments You Are Looking For]] ([[User talk:These Are Not The Comments You Are Looking For|talk]]) 01:55, 7 June 2022 (UTC)
:I have not checked for accuracy/consistency with the accepted "large specific number prefixing" conventions, but "hexa" (6) "kismyria" (x10,000) "penta" (5) "kischilia" (x5,000) "penta" (5) "hecta" (x100) "tria" (3) "conta(kai?)" (x10) "hexa" (6) "hedron" (-faced 3d shape")... Possibly constructed by historic geometrical naming rules (historically may not have dealt with myriads enough to establish a firm usage-policy), possibly just the root number* Google Translated to modern Greek, in the latin alphabet and geometrised/de-spaced a bit. It was funny enough for me not to investigate too closely, but this is my impression. It'll be lost once the Incomplete is edited off, anyway, and was never part of the comic to be explained. The 'Incomplete' rewrites sometimes ''do'' seem to need a bit of counter-nerdsniping, but as we don't have an explainexplainxkcd.com to discuss them, in Talk is as good a place as any... :) [[Special:Contributions/172.70.85.211|172.70.85.211]] 09:11, 7 June 2022 (UTC)
::(*) It's the "kai" that gets me. May be the difference between US number ("twelve thousand thirteen") and UK number ("twelve thousand and thirteen"), except for Greek, or "triacontakai" is "thirty", but that seems unweildy to me for "everyday" Greek (ancient or modern) and I'd have used "trideca" before realising that's probably "thirteen" (c.f. "dodecaedron", so... Anyway, to explain my assumption there. Really I could just look it up to be certain! [[Special:Contributions/162.158.159.121|162.158.159.121]] 09:19, 7 June 2022 (UTC)
::: I'm the one who named the polyhedron. Hexakismyria (60000) - pentakischilia (5000) - pentahecta (500) - triaconta (30) - kai - hexa (6) - hedron (3D). From what I found, "Kai" was supposed to be added when there's a tens and ones place as stated on [https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Polygon&oldid=1085462006#Naming wikipedia's polygon page], and "kis" was used for multiples of thousands as per [https://polytope.miraheze.org/w/index.php?title=Nomenclature&oldid=43793 another wiki]. In both cases, if there's a naming convention flaw, it's best to get a Wikipedia-grade citation to fix things. --[[Special:Contributions/108.162.242.58|108.162.242.58]] 01:36, 11 June 2022 (UTC)
:Why'd you place your comment above mine from 2 days earlier? :) [[User:NiceGuy1|NiceGuy1]] ([[User talk:NiceGuy1|talk]]) 03:42, 11 June 2022 (UTC)

It seems like it would be inappropriate for me to make the call, as I'm the one who made the fix, but can the "Don't remove this too soon" request for more information on the hidden message trivia be declared resolved? I feel I've made it clear (I feel like fully doing the conversion on every number would seem too bulky). Also, it begs the question, why THAT comic, is it worth mentioning that this makes it seem likely that THIS was supposed to be 2624, and he forgot to update the number? It would have been simple enough to just add 2 to the last number... [[User:NiceGuy1|NiceGuy1]] ([[User talk:NiceGuy1|talk]]) 05:26, 5 June 2022 (UTC)

Talk:2626: d65536

2022-06-18T11:22:21Z

20040302:

I wonder: can we even make a fair polyhedron with 65536 faces? In Randal's illustration, the faces seem to be irregular hexagons. [[Special:Contributions/172.70.130.105|172.70.130.105]] 21:37, 30 May 2022 (UTC)
: This is better than my question, which was simply if you could tile a sphere with these. [[Special:Contributions/172.70.211.36|172.70.211.36]] 23:01, 30 May 2022 (UTC)
:Definitely possible, just create two identical right pyramids with a 32768-gon base and glue the bases together. [[User:Clam|Clam]] ([[User talk:Clam|talk]]) 23:53, 30 May 2022 (UTC)
: Would this design be fair? Consider a set of 256 lines of latitude overlapping another set, with the second set's polar axis at the equator of the first. Cut flat quadrangles between the intersection points of the lines of latitude. Doesn't use hexagons like the comic does though. [[Special:Contributions/172.70.110.121|172.70.110.121]] 09:41, 31 May 2022 (UTC)
:: Fairness is a given for pyramids (if that's what you're asking). As long as there's enough 'rolling energy' to get either of the pyramids 'facing up', any N-agon base to the pyramids should have enough indeterminate impetous to then finally roll around a bit to end up with any of those exposed faces on top.
::(Interesting to note that for odd-numbered N-agonal bases, like that in a D10, you need to offset the bases and instead of sticking to the triangular faces base-to-base you now have kite-shapes that interlock in a serration that is no longer strictly planar along the axis's perpendiculars.)
::That might need a selection of the pyramidal slope. A very wide pair of bases with very little tip-'elevation' (to fit tightly within an oblate spheroid) should transition very well between same-pyramid faces, like a bulgy button, but one with highly acute tip-angle (prolate, likewise) might find the dominant behaviour to be tip-to-tip tipping, more like a toggle-fastener. OTOH, for odd-numbered end-agons it would probably ratchett to subsequent sides as it tips back and forth so long as it has enough energy to it.
::If you're asking about lines of latitude intersecting, consider that near the poles of either latitudinal reference the division of the other reference-system is going to be spliced more irregularly and thus give varying degrees of stability to rest upon.
::(Also, do you have a latitudinal line that crosses ''both'' pairs of poles, or are you deliberately moving them by half a phase (1/512th of the relevent circumference) so that you at least don't have them entirely coincident.)
::I believe the suggested scheme would be to take a dodecahedron or icosohedron (either of the two duals can be used to start with) and then subdivide each face in such a manner that equally-sized (but differently distorted) hexagons – and 12 little regular pentagons of identical area fitting in at the old dodecahedron centre/the old icosahedron vertex – emerge from the required segmentation/vertex-truncation and readjustment the radiality of all new mid-edge vertices (or maybe the newer-edges' centres or the newer-faces' centres) to touch the unit sphere. If done symmetrically, it should be entirely fair.
::The face-count might be troublesome, though. The twelve necessary pentagonal faces leaves 65524 hexagons, to split evenly between* either 12 or 20 zones, and it should be obvious that neither is possible**, in whole numbers, given the starting point of 2n faces...
:::(* - you can, and probably will in this design, have some that cross between two of the top-level polygons, but you can fully 'donate' as many as you then fully ''get'' donated from the next face around, so it might as well be just counted as a group of whole tiles on an a set of Escher-like interlocking 'rough' polygons.)
:::(** - If you're using 12 zones, that's 3x4x(however many in the zone + one corner each) and there's no factor of 3 in ''any'' value that is 2n. Arranging into 20 symmetrical zones (5x4), you will find that 65524 isn't divisible by 5, either...)
::You could probably arrange an N-ahedron with the number of faces being 12+(12a) or 12+(20b), for some higher value (a bit of mental arithmatic suggests 65592 might be that value) and mark all the 'excess' faces (56?) with "Roll Again!". Or perhaps some pithy motivational slogans that also convey roughly the same meaning... :P [[Special:Contributions/172.70.162.5|172.70.162.5]] 11:32, 31 May 2022 (UTC)
::Postcript: Ok, so this is my idea for face-placing. Take a D8 (octahedron) and divide each of its 8 originally triangular faces into 8192 smaller faces (alternatively, start with a cube and progressively truncate its corners towards the same end). This is not a divisible by three number (neither can you put one in the centre, the rest are divisble by three and can surround it symmetrically), but you don't need strict rotational symmetry in any way. The opposing side can reflect/copy the non-symmetry as required to create any useful symmetry across the whole of the structure (and make floored-base/upmost-face pairings, amongst other things).
::As long as you make the faces equally likely to land on ''and stay on'' (could be hyperstellated as a slightly flat irregular 8192agon-based right-pyramid with the pyramid-faces of adjacent sides matching or meshing edges with those of each other, or a complicated mostly-hexagonal mesh, or a triangular one that's a limited fragment of a fine geodesic-like bulged pattern) by some suitable scheme governing area, aspect ratio and inter-face angle of incidence (probably normalising features to touch the unit sphere, for a start) then it should do it fairly and with ''exactly'' 65536 faces. I leave the fine-tweaking up to someone else. [[Special:Contributions/172.70.162.5|172.70.162.5]] 12:59, 31 May 2022 (UTC)

I don't know why it's so big? Seems like it should have a diameter of approx. 1 meter. [[Special:Contributions/172.70.130.105|172.70.130.105]] 21:37, 30 May 2022 (UTC)
: Cueball is 50 pixels high. The ball is 340 px high. Assuming Cueball is an average-height male (1.7m), and is standing the same distance from the viewer as the center of the ball, roughly how large is each face of the polygon? Area of a sphere is 4.pi.r.r, r=0.85, so 9.08 m^2 or 9080000 mm^2, divide by number of faces, get 277 mm^2, so we get 1.6cm to a side. If I did that right, then you're right: those are fairly large faces. --[[Special:Contributions/172.69.70.39|172.69.70.39]] 05:58, 31 May 2022 (UTC)
:I ran the calculations for the Trivia section. I used 12pt font which gave each number an area of 1/6 square inch (about 1 square cm) [[Special:Contributions/162.158.106.237|162.158.106.237]] 06:57, 31 May 2022 (UTC)
:Simple: Exaggerated for comedic effect and to make the point it's unwieldy (plus avoid the fuss of figuring out a realistic size) [[User:NiceGuy1|NiceGuy1]] ([[User talk:NiceGuy1|talk]]) 06:31, 4 June 2022 (UTC)

Should the title and picture file use "d" or the comic's difficult to type "ᴅ"?
[[User:While False|While False]] ([[User talk:While False|talk]]) 21:55, 30 May 2022 (UTC)
:Since xkcd uses small caps as lowercase letters, the "ᴅ" should just be considered xkcd-font for "d", and as such need not be used on the title, which is not using the xkcd font.
:: Ah! [[User:While False|While False]] ([[User talk:While False|talk]]) 06:15, 31 May 2022 (UTC)

If you really did want to generate a 16 bit integer with physical dice, it would be much simpler to roll a [https://www.thediceshoponline.com/impact-opaque-hexidice-d16-hexadecimal-dice hex die] four times. [[User:Clayot|Clayot]] ([[User talk:Clayot|talk]]) 23:30, 30 May 2022 (UTC)
:Rolling a binary die 16 times would also work. You can get binary dice for 1¢ each. [[Special:Contributions/108.162.245.69|108.162.245.69]] 01:31, 31 May 2022 (UTC)
::The lowest-value coin of all is the Tiyin from Uzbekistan. Some 3,038 equate to one UK penny (and 2,000 tot up to one US cent) from https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-21572359. [[User:Arachrah|Arachrah]] ([[User talk:Arachrah|talk]]) 15:13, 31 May 2022 (UTC)
::Those 1¢ "dices" are not exactly guaranteed to be random. -- [[User:Hkmaly|Hkmaly]] ([[User talk:Hkmaly|talk]]) 06:12, 31 May 2022 (UTC)
:::They seem as random as other dice? Am I wrong? [[Special:Contributions/172.70.230.63|172.70.230.63]] 09:33, 31 May 2022 (UTC)
:::: You can reduce bias by taking two not quite fair coins. Flip them together. If both heads, or both tails, then record a 0. If different, record a 1. [[User:Arachrah|Arachrah]] ([[User talk:Arachrah|talk]]) 15:13, 31 May 2022 (UTC)
::::: Actually, it's better to flip one coin twice. If it's heads then tails, record a 0, if it's tails then heads, record a 1. If it's HH or TT, try again. [[Special:Contributions/172.70.207.8|172.70.207.8]] 15:20, 2 June 2022 (UTC)

I think the hardest part (or maybe second-hardest part) is figuring out which facet is the one on top. [[Special:Contributions/162.158.78.109|162.158.78.109]] 00:46, 31 May 2022 (UTC)
:Roll it on a glass table, check from below which face it's landed on instead. Wait until it has settled safely, though, or it might land on ''your'' face! [[Special:Contributions/172.70.90.227|172.70.90.227]] 04:58, 31 May 2022 (UTC)
:: Good plan. Assuming standard dice design, subtract the value from 65537 to get the value of the uppermost face. --[[Special:Contributions/172.69.70.39|172.69.70.39]] 05:58, 31 May 2022 (UTC)
::: Because computer binary counting starts with ZERO (and in this case ends with 65535) one has to subtract from 65535. This die would not have a 65536 and it would have a zero. [[User:Inquirer|Inquirer]] ([[User talk:Inquirer|talk]]) 22:38, 31 May 2022 (UTC)
::::Notice that the parent comment says “assuming standard dice design” and standard dice start with 1 and end with their d number: a standard d4 has faces 1,2,3,4; a standard d6 has faces 1,2,3,4,5,6; a standard d10 1,2,3,[…],10; and a standard d100 has faces 1 through 100. Which is why rolling 2xd10 does NOT yield the same results as rolling 1xd100, because one cannot roll a 1 OR a 100 with two d10’s, and other numbers are over represented. This is why I have both a d12 and a d100 in my set of dice…[[User:John|John]] ([[User talk:John|talk]]) 11:40, 2 June 2022 (UTC)
:::::D10s are frequently (IME) numbered 0..9, with underlines to distinguish 6 from 9, whether or not that is as a deliberate sop to pairing up for percentiles ("It's the red dice first...", "It isn't!", "It is, it's ''always'' the red dice first, that's a 9 percent fail, not at 90 percent success!"). The 0 opposite 9, 1 opposite 8, etc.
:::::If you're rolling 1..10s (depends upon the system being used for... and arguments about the original intentions, possibly, where 10 of something or zero of something turning up/discovered means a lot to what exactly happens next) you ''treat'' them as full 10s, and double-zero can (again, hopefully understood in advance) be a "natural 100", rather than a natural-zero, to someone's obvious advantage or detriment.
:::::Similarly, games with D4 may use 0..3 as its outcomes, or D3s (D6/2s) have 0,0,1,1,2,2 as faces. Or if you are somehow stuck with a 1-based die of the appropriate (or divisible) range, and need to play something that requires a 0-based one, you agree that MAXNUM->ZERO or N=N-1.
:::::From my recollections of the truly huge collection of multicoloured, multisized and variously multifaceted dice that was dragged out for wargaming/role-playing sessions, years of accumulations from various sources, the D6s (spotted, not "Hit", "Missfire", <arrows for miss direction>, or otherwise for other uses), D8s, D12s and D20s were habitually 1-upwards, and Ds with 3, 4 and 10 almost all 0-upwards. D6s were the most numerous, but D10s well up there (enough for colour-mismatched pairs for each of a whole battalion of participants, even if the Hit/Miss die had to be passed around at need, and the few big yellow D20s might need to be offered onwards/rolled on someone's behalf on occasion).
:::::In short, the 'standard' is perhaps more firmly that opposite sides add up to double the average (not possible with D4, which is also "point-marked", not one number per side), though I'd like to check a D3 to see if it's 0 opposite 2 (x2) and 1 opposite 1 (which also happens to be a 0..5-dice with the opposition rule, but modded by 3) or perhaps in a basic {1..6}mod3 conversion 1 opposes 0(=6), 2 opposite 2(=5), 0(=3) opposite 1(=4). Maybe next time I go a gaming I'll get the chance. [[Special:Contributions/172.70.86.44|172.70.86.44]] 12:48, 2 June 2022 (UTC)
:::::HOW are you figuring any numbers are over represented in rolling 2xD10? There are 100 possibilities, 1 through 100, one chance per number, exactly equal... Each die has a 1 in 10 chance of rolling each value. Unless you're forgetting to pre-assign which die is the tens position and which is the ones... This is why any set with more than one D10 has then different colours so you can tell them apart... [[User:NiceGuy1|NiceGuy1]] ([[User talk:NiceGuy1|talk]]) 05:11, 4 June 2022 (UTC)
::::::Not sure what you're asking here. It seems to bear very little relevence to the meaning of the thing you're replying to (wot I wrote, which might indicate the error in conveying is at my end). I did not ''intend'' to suggest (as it is untrue) that 2D10≠1D100 (give or take adjusting what "00" means, which is an implementation issue, not a mathematical one), but I'll gladly clear up anything I left potentially saying something other than I thought it did. Quote the bit, and you can get a 'better' rewrite of it ASAP. [[Special:Contributions/162.158.159.41|162.158.159.41]] 05:48, 4 June 2022 (UTC)
:::::::"Which is why rolling 2xd10 does NOT yield the same results as rolling 1xd100, because one cannot roll a 1 OR a 100 with two d10’s, and other numbers are over represented.", that line. A 1 is rolling 0 on the tens die and a 1 on the ones die. A 100 is 0 on both dice (or you make the range 0 to 99, in which case two 0s is 0). NOW I think you were thinking of multiplying the values, which is indeed bad (for example, it then becomes impossible to roll a 17, as no two single digit numbers multiply to 17. Also, 9x9 is 81, 9x10 is 90, making those the last two possible values before 100, the other 80s and 90s unachievable. And then what you say make sense, you can get 24 with 3x8 or 4x6, two chances = over-represented). [[User:NiceGuy1|NiceGuy1]] ([[User talk:NiceGuy1|talk]]) 06:29, 4 June 2022 (UTC)
::::::::Ah, no, that was User:John, not me (172.70.86.44). Teach me for replying based on seeing the Diffs page, and not counting the indent-colons correctly! You were replying to a point that I had actually ''not even noticed'', at the same 'level' as I had jumped in on the zero-based-range thing with my spiel that you weren't actually arguing with. (Not sure John was thinking dice-multiplied, either, as 1x1=1. Perhaps why I blanked that bit out.)
::::::::On the subject, though, the Babylon 5 RPG used an interesting double-dice system, for some things (either straight success/fail or modifying other offsets, possibly). Red D6 and Green D6 (or similar hue distinction) rolled together. Take the ''lowest'' value of the two, and then call it negative if it was the red one. Equal rolls mean zero, except double-1 (critical/special failure of some kind) and -6 (likewise a success). Gives a slightly modified normalised-around-zero distribution (intentionally or otherwise) with the possible results being ((-Critical -5 -4 -4 -3 -3 -3 -2 -2 -2 -2 -1 -1 -1 -1 -1 0 0 0 0 +1 +1 +1 +1 +1 +2 +2 +2 +2 +3 +3 +3 +4 +4 +5 +Critical)), if you order the 36 possibilities. Similar to 2D6 added, minus 7 (to bunch up the unexceptionalism towards the baseline), but two of the middlingest possibilities removed and given special status at the either end for that little possible pizzaz! ;)
::::::::It reminded me of the experiment with monkeys where they were taught to recognise values (as number of bananas, e.g.) and then taught that whichever of two options they chose, it was the ''other'' one's value that dictated their reward. When done with abstract numbers (digits, or colours/shapes relating to numbers by training) they would "choose low, to get high", but when given ''actual'' quantities of reward-items, they'd instinctively "choose high", by instinct, immediately before their conscious brains kicked in and they realised they'd done the wrong thing. Or something like that (look for 30/40-year-old study, possibly shown to be flawed, these days)...
::::::::Anyway, it took a short while to train oneself to be somehow excited by 3 dots on a green when paired with six dots on a red, say, (or dissapointed with a green 6 in the light of any non-6 red) when previously the merest glance at the cumulative spots on thrown dice would suffice to satisfy the question of how well they fell for you. ;)
::::::::Not useful for this comic, but had always been dying to mention it, from the beginning! [[Special:Contributions/172.70.86.64|172.70.86.64]] 11:10, 4 June 2022 (UTC)
:::::::::LOL! Yes, I indented to answer John, his comment mystified me, :) And I did not check your identity, just understood by your response YOU were the one I was speaking to. :) The comments on here are so many and so LARGE I haven't read most, just that his caught my eye. THAT is an interesting if complicated dice system, wow! [[User:NiceGuy1|NiceGuy1]] ([[User talk:NiceGuy1|talk]]) 05:03, 5 June 2022 (UTC)

What material should it be to be light enough to easily roll it but cheap enough that doing the 1,5 meters doest cost a fortune ? Sorry if the question is not clear. [[Special:Contributions/141.101.69.30|141.101.69.30]] 05:50, 31 May 2022 (UTC)
:I recommend making it hollow. You could probably do something like this for $3000 if you made it out of 1/8th inch acrylic plate. [[Special:Contributions/162.158.106.237|162.158.106.237]] 07:02, 31 May 2022 (UTC)
:At first I thought aluminum for sturdiness, but really you could make this out of cardboard for dirt cheap, lasercutting precise shapes, but you'd have to design its structural frame to keep it intact, exchanges design effort for price. [[Special:Contributions/172.70.230.63|172.70.230.63]] 09:32, 31 May 2022 (UTC)

I disagree with this dice being really random. Like, sure, if thrown correctly, but that's going to be quite hard. -- [[User:Hkmaly|Hkmaly]] ([[User talk:Hkmaly|talk]]) 06:12, 31 May 2022 (UTC)

:True. For a rolled die to be random, it needs to roll far enough so that the initial orientation no longer governs the outcome. Say, ten times the circumference, or about 150 meters? -- [[User:Dtgriscom|Dtgriscom]] ([[User talk:Dtgriscom|talk]]) 10:28, 31 May 2022 (UTC)
::Interesting to consider the 'necessary minimum'. Simplify to a "wheel of fortune" (just one axis of continual rotation) it would depend upon the potential variation of imparted rotation. If (say) 'aiming' at two whole rotations has a (perhaps 'normal') spread of variance that relates to ±½ rotational uncertainty at the 1st and 3rd quartile of probability then the sub-first and above-third 'tails' might wrap around to (roughly) equalise the chances that 2±(whatever fraction) spins lands just about anywhere just about equally. Aiming at four whole rotations (similary ±1 spin at the given quartiles, and the tailing chancs 'filling in' above 5 rotations and below 3) would smooth things out, all else equal, but takes twice as much perceived/attempted effort for not much more 'randomising'.
::Similarly, requiring 10 full rolls (maybe honestly aiming for 10, but allowing it to be 7.5 or less if not obviously 'just nudged') seems overkill, in the single dimension.
::Except, of course that you also need enough distance (on top of whatever factor you consider practical as a variation-wrapping value, which might not be the ½-in-2 I give) to also roll ''sideways''. If for some reason you really don't want to roll 65536 or 1 (or is it 65535 and 0?), which may be on polar-opposite faces, you might make sure that they are directly to the left and right before you propel the die forwards ''a little'', not caring which distribution of numbers is on/near the rolling-equator (2 is acceptible to you, and 65533, etc; other very low/high values conceivably placed on that thin band of "wheel-like chance" but you're just avoiding the very largest and smallest, or specifically just the one of them) but knowing that it's more unlikely to easily present the exact face(s) you dislike than it might be in a truly 'fair' roll.
::Perhaps the best thing is to have a rolling track to send the thing down that puts it the required "two or so rotations" forward to then either hit a wall or climb slightly up a slope (at a roughly 45 degree angle) that then sends it back roughly sideways to the original vector for a similar distance with a perpendicular or even composite moment of rolling rotation, to bring 'initially axial' numbers fully into play... And that dog-leg would require a sligthly shorter length from launch-position to where the thoroughly mixed-up final stopping point should be, whilst significantly foiling the master-manipulators who actually try to arrange an initial setup that favours better final results (rather than just nudge it, uncaring, for a result not as totally random but certainly not more predominently of desired-for ranges than otherwise). [[Special:Contributions/141.101.99.8|141.101.99.8]] 12:28, 31 May 2022 (UTC)
::At what point does the structural material the die is composed of, combined with its mass, create a smoothing effect that will destroy the fairness of the die. I mean a small plastic die is no problem. A 2-ton acrylic die would start grinding off the edges of some faces with every roll, would it not? [[Special:Contributions/172.69.69.122|172.69.69.122]] 13:35, 31 May 2022 (UTC)

Should it be related to https://xkcd.com/221/ ? [[Special:Contributions/162.158.183.246|162.158.183.246]] 08:07, 31 May 2022 (UTC)

I'm going to wait, I think - I don't think there's room in my attic for this as well as all the Betamax kit, my drawers full of MiniDiscs and my Zune collection. No, I'll sit tight - I'm hearing encouraging things about the introduction of the Magic 65536-Ball... [[User:Yorkshire Pudding|Yorkshire Pudding]] ([[User talk:Yorkshire Pudding|talk]]) 09:41, 31 May 2022 (UTC)
:The number of sides on the die inside the ball is not what determines the name of the ball. It's the exterior housing which is colored in the manner of an Eight Ball. The classic design uses a d20, and is still called an Eight Ball, not a Twenty Ball. [[Special:Contributions/172.70.130.195|172.70.130.195]] 18:00, 31 May 2022 (UTC)
::Full disclosure: I don't have any of those things in my attic. And I'm not entirely sure, but I don't think Randall thinks rolling a d65536 is genuinely the hardest part of generating random 16-bit numbers. And Grape Nuts contain neither grapes nor nuts. [[User:Yorkshire Pudding|Yorkshire Pudding]] ([[User talk:Yorkshire Pudding|talk]]) 23:37, 31 May 2022 (UTC)

I'm suprised the hidden message points to 2624. I would've thought it would point to 2626 to refer to itself. Maybe things didn't get published as intended? Or maybe Randall really just wanted to point people to the Voyager comic? [[User:Linux2647|Linux2647]] ([[User talk:Linux2647|talk]]) 18:13, 31 May 2022 (UTC)
:I'm no ASCII expert, but from the description provided I'm pretty sure the comic URL would require the number representing "26" to show up twice. A die with, say, two 13,359 faces would obviously not be fair. If only Randall had published this as #2625 or #2627! (Or maybe he ''planned'' to publish it last week and had to shuffle his schedule after finalizing this comic?) [[User:GreatWyrmGold|GreatWyrmGold]] ([[User talk:GreatWyrmGold|talk]]) 18:24, 31 May 2022 (UTC)
::Probably the latter, seeing as it doesn't actually line up so that any of them are actually "26". The numbers are xk-cd-.c-om-/2-62-4/, so the 26 and 24 aren't lined up like that. [[Special:Contributions/172.70.126.87|172.70.126.87]] 19:38, 31 May 2022 (UTC)
::To change the number from 24 to 26 would mean changing 13,359 to 13,871. The only way that would be a problem is if 13,871 was already in the comic, which it isn't. Convert 13,359 to hex, it's 342F. In ASCII, 34 is "4", 2F is "/". Add 2 you get 36, so the new hex number is 362F, which converted to decimal is 13,871. [[User:NiceGuy1|NiceGuy1]] ([[User talk:NiceGuy1|talk]]) 11:37, 5 June 2022 (UTC)
:Perl code to decode the ASCII: <pre>perl -E 'for (30827, 25444, 11875, 28525, 12082, 13874, 13359) { print chr($_ >> 8), chr($_ & 0xff) }; print "\n"'</pre>

<big><big>'''Remember that "die" is singular and "dice" is plural'''</big></big> [[User:Mushrooms|Mushrooms]] ([[User talk:Mushrooms|talk]]) 09:30, 1 June 2022 (UTC)

;Might be worth offering some easier alternatives..
Needless to say, 16 ordered coins (eg ordered by the date of their minting) provide a much easier alternative to a d65536.

Other (easy to find) d p^2 - such as 8 ordered d4, or 5 ordered d8 and a coin (or bit-shave a dice.)
It's true some rules need to be applied (the highest number of the die is treated as a 0, and the order of the dice is strictly followed).

For example using a rainbow spectrum ordering of 6d8,
I role: 7, 1, 2, 8, 3, 5. Each dice represents 3 bits -
111-001-010-000-011-101. We shave off the last two bits (because we want 16 bits, not 18, for a d65536)
1110 0101 0000 0111. Hex = E507, which is decimal 58,631.

While it takes a few seconds for a human to convert the number it is quite trivial to write a program to convert an image capture.

There are also specialist dice - such as d16 'hexidice' which provide 4 bits per ordered die, and far less human calculation.
There are even d256 hex dice made, but they suffer the same problem that a d65536 would have.

[[User:20040302|20040302]] ([[User talk:20040302|talk]])
: how are you trivially converting image captures? i still use my keyboard. what's the update? [[Special:Contributions/162.158.79.120|162.158.79.120]] 18:26, 1 June 2022 (UTC)
:For your D8 system, since a D8 absolutely SCREAMS octal, you'll get results from 001 to 1000 octal for each die roll. Just subtract 1, and it's a perfect 3 digit range, 000 to 111! Which feels better than 8, the highest roll, becoming 0, the lowest, like you're doing. And as the previous commenter asked, how is image capture trivial? Especially from a programming perspective? Seems like the ACTUAL trivial method is to put a calculator into scientific mode and just type in the hex number to convert... :) [[User:NiceGuy1|NiceGuy1]] ([[User talk:NiceGuy1|talk]]) 05:11, 4 June 2022 (UTC)

::D8 is fine, and I tried that - but it's not so easy to composite the hex number from D8. With a D16 (there are two different styles, both easily available) it's really easy to get a nybble of randomness. Using e.g. visible spectrum ordering and suitable (eg red, orange, yellow, grass*, green, cyan, blue, purple) dice, it's trivial to order the dice to 4 bytes of randomness. (and a d65536 is only 2 bytes) (*I have no grass but I have a dark orange), so just now I rolled 0x6A5D391B.

::As for using a program to convert an image capture, it was sort of a joke. However, the real advantage over a calculator is that the calculator is a PRNG.
::Here is a link to 12 lines of code that would grab the dice numbers - similar code would be used to grab the colours.
:: https://stackoverflow.com/questions/66027978/python-number-recognition-on-colored-screen
::Mainly I wrote this just for fun. ([[User:20040302|20040302]] ([[User talk:20040302|talk]]) 11:19, 18 June 2022 (UTC))

I found an octahedral Goldberg with 65538 sides, 6 squares and 65532 irregular hexagons, notated GP₄(128,0). Can be constructed by chamfering a cube 7 times (Conway cccccccC). I don't think anything can be closer. [[User:SDSpivey|SDSpivey]] ([[User talk:SDSpivey|talk]]) 04:37, 2 June 2022 (UTC)
:I have had two designs in mind:
:*Start with octahedron, subdivide each face triangle into 16,384 triangular faces (subdivide all original edges into 128ths, effectively, while "halving into quarter-sized triangles), pairing the triangles up into half that many 'diamonds' then inflating to touch the bounding sphere, keeping the diamonds planar and possibly equal area, but will also distort them (some into kites, others may be utterly irregular) so it'll be a (literal?) balancing act to make all tippings between faces equally possible.
:*Start with a tetrahedron, subdivide likewise, stick with the triangles, have the same issue of inflating the faces towards the unit sphere while balancing the resulting distortions.
:I tried to work out something that seems to exactly match the image (or as exactly as I perceive it to be) with mildly distorted hexagons - albeit with the necessary pentagonal substitutions to carry the curvature - formed of (a similarly subdivided set of) sub-triangles drawn out on the original surfaces of either icosahedron or a snub-stellated extension onwards the dodecahedron, but I couldn't get the numbers to add up. Which is not to say that there isn't a way to do it. I was going to spend more time on this issue later, so if I get past the issues, then... Watch this space? [[Special:Contributions/172.70.162.77|172.70.162.77]] 13:17, 2 June 2022 (UTC)

I WAS going to say a far simpler way is to roll a D6 and 4 D10s (what is WITH all the lowercase Ds? Every time I see dice named it's uppercase!), figuring that gives a range of 0 to 69,999, and throw out/re-roll results higher than 65,535. (I realize that probably adjusts the odds, but I would think minimally and equally). Then I realized the D6 can't give a result of 0, so the real range is 10,000 to 69,999. Oops! And a D7 feels weird and rare if it even exists, SO! 5 D10s and still throw out everything above 65,535. :) Oh, and I agree with the Warning text, NEEDS an explanation how these numbers turn into a URL. WITHOUT relying on writing a program or concepts like "big endian", just say what's being done to ONE number, come on! EDIT: Never mind, I figured it out and added a MUCH simpler explanation. :) [[User:NiceGuy1|NiceGuy1]] ([[User talk:NiceGuy1|talk]])
:I think a D7*2 exists, i.e. a D14div2 (two faces for each of seven digits), though they're rarer than D14s (same idea as a D10, but interlocked heptagonally-based pyramid 'ends') which are already niche. I saw one with days on (Mo/Tu/We/Th/Fr/Sa/Su, leastwise), which is the only vaguely obvious reason for one. Might as well have a spinner. But to save so much 'wasted' rolling, use a D8 and only reject the 8 (or, rather, 8=0, reroll the 7 and all the rest, to prevent actual statistical clumping, ditto onwards from any other 'bust'). [[Special:Contributions/162.158.159.41|162.158.159.41]] 05:48, 4 June 2022 (UTC)
::Yup, didn't think about a D8 (which is extra stupid as I was discussing D8 higher up, LOL!) D'oh! And yes, I didn't think about rolling a day of the week, that would make a D7/D14 useful. Even if it was so labelled, just have Sunday equals 0, Monday is 1, etc. Range becomes 0 to 69999, only about 4,000 possibilities thrown out (I'd probably just re-roll the D7/D14). For a D8 I'd agree with your method.

::Reminds me of a Facebook Memory I had the other day: If you want to confuse someone, ask them why there's a line under the 6 on a D8.[[User:NiceGuy1|NiceGuy1]] ([[User talk:NiceGuy1|talk]]) 06:14, 4 June 2022 (UTC)

'''"hexakismyriapentakischiliapentahectatriacontakaihexahedron"''' [From the Explanation] Would anyone care to take a stab at deciphering that word? As of this comment, Google only returns this page as a reference. [[User:These Are Not The Comments You Are Looking For|These Are Not The Comments You Are Looking For]] ([[User talk:These Are Not The Comments You Are Looking For|talk]]) 01:55, 7 June 2022 (UTC)
:I have not checked for accuracy/consistency with the accepted "large specific number prefixing" conventions, but "hexa" (6) "kismyria" (x10,000) "penta" (5) "kischilia" (x5,000) "penta" (5) "hecta" (x100) "tria" (3) "conta(kai?)" (x10) "hexa" (6) "hedron" (-faced 3d shape")... Possibly constructed by historic geometrical naming rules (historically may not have dealt with myriads enough to establish a firm usage-policy), possibly just the root number* Google Translated to modern Greek, in the latin alphabet and geometrised/de-spaced a bit. It was funny enough for me not to investigate too closely, but this is my impression. It'll be lost once the Incomplete is edited off, anyway, and was never part of the comic to be explained. The 'Incomplete' rewrites sometimes ''do'' seem to need a bit of counter-nerdsniping, but as we don't have an explainexplainxkcd.com to discuss them, in Talk is as good a place as any... :) [[Special:Contributions/172.70.85.211|172.70.85.211]] 09:11, 7 June 2022 (UTC)
::(*) It's the "kai" that gets me. May be the difference between US number ("twelve thousand thirteen") and UK number ("twelve thousand and thirteen"), except for Greek, or "triacontakai" is "thirty", but that seems unweildy to me for "everyday" Greek (ancient or modern) and I'd have used "trideca" before realising that's probably "thirteen" (c.f. "dodecaedron", so... Anyway, to explain my assumption there. Really I could just look it up to be certain! [[Special:Contributions/162.158.159.121|162.158.159.121]] 09:19, 7 June 2022 (UTC)
::: I'm the one who named the polyhedron. Hexakismyria (60000) - pentakischilia (5000) - pentahecta (500) - triaconta (30) - kai - hexa (6) - hedron (3D). From what I found, "Kai" was supposed to be added when there's a tens and ones place as stated on [https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Polygon&oldid=1085462006#Naming wikipedia's polygon page], and "kis" was used for multiples of thousands as per [https://polytope.miraheze.org/w/index.php?title=Nomenclature&oldid=43793 another wiki]. In both cases, if there's a naming convention flaw, it's best to get a Wikipedia-grade citation to fix things. --[[Special:Contributions/108.162.242.58|108.162.242.58]] 01:36, 11 June 2022 (UTC)
:Why'd you place your comment above mine from 2 days earlier? :) [[User:NiceGuy1|NiceGuy1]] ([[User talk:NiceGuy1|talk]]) 03:42, 11 June 2022 (UTC)

It seems like it would be inappropriate for me to make the call, as I'm the one who made the fix, but can the "Don't remove this too soon" request for more information on the hidden message trivia be declared resolved? I feel I've made it clear (I feel like fully doing the conversion on every number would seem too bulky). Also, it begs the question, why THAT comic, is it worth mentioning that this makes it seem likely that THIS was supposed to be 2624, and he forgot to update the number? It would have been simple enough to just add 2 to the last number... [[User:NiceGuy1|NiceGuy1]] ([[User talk:NiceGuy1|talk]]) 05:26, 5 June 2022 (UTC)

Talk:2626: d65536

2022-06-18T11:19:39Z

20040302: how to use d16 / image capture.

I wonder: can we even make a fair polyhedron with 65536 faces? In Randal's illustration, the faces seem to be irregular hexagons. [[Special:Contributions/172.70.130.105|172.70.130.105]] 21:37, 30 May 2022 (UTC)
: This is better than my question, which was simply if you could tile a sphere with these. [[Special:Contributions/172.70.211.36|172.70.211.36]] 23:01, 30 May 2022 (UTC)
:Definitely possible, just create two identical right pyramids with a 32768-gon base and glue the bases together. [[User:Clam|Clam]] ([[User talk:Clam|talk]]) 23:53, 30 May 2022 (UTC)
: Would this design be fair? Consider a set of 256 lines of latitude overlapping another set, with the second set's polar axis at the equator of the first. Cut flat quadrangles between the intersection points of the lines of latitude. Doesn't use hexagons like the comic does though. [[Special:Contributions/172.70.110.121|172.70.110.121]] 09:41, 31 May 2022 (UTC)
:: Fairness is a given for pyramids (if that's what you're asking). As long as there's enough 'rolling energy' to get either of the pyramids 'facing up', any N-agon base to the pyramids should have enough indeterminate impetous to then finally roll around a bit to end up with any of those exposed faces on top.
::(Interesting to note that for odd-numbered N-agonal bases, like that in a D10, you need to offset the bases and instead of sticking to the triangular faces base-to-base you now have kite-shapes that interlock in a serration that is no longer strictly planar along the axis's perpendiculars.)
::That might need a selection of the pyramidal slope. A very wide pair of bases with very little tip-'elevation' (to fit tightly within an oblate spheroid) should transition very well between same-pyramid faces, like a bulgy button, but one with highly acute tip-angle (prolate, likewise) might find the dominant behaviour to be tip-to-tip tipping, more like a toggle-fastener. OTOH, for odd-numbered end-agons it would probably ratchett to subsequent sides as it tips back and forth so long as it has enough energy to it.
::If you're asking about lines of latitude intersecting, consider that near the poles of either latitudinal reference the division of the other reference-system is going to be spliced more irregularly and thus give varying degrees of stability to rest upon.
::(Also, do you have a latitudinal line that crosses ''both'' pairs of poles, or are you deliberately moving them by half a phase (1/512th of the relevent circumference) so that you at least don't have them entirely coincident.)
::I believe the suggested scheme would be to take a dodecahedron or icosohedron (either of the two duals can be used to start with) and then subdivide each face in such a manner that equally-sized (but differently distorted) hexagons – and 12 little regular pentagons of identical area fitting in at the old dodecahedron centre/the old icosahedron vertex – emerge from the required segmentation/vertex-truncation and readjustment the radiality of all new mid-edge vertices (or maybe the newer-edges' centres or the newer-faces' centres) to touch the unit sphere. If done symmetrically, it should be entirely fair.
::The face-count might be troublesome, though. The twelve necessary pentagonal faces leaves 65524 hexagons, to split evenly between* either 12 or 20 zones, and it should be obvious that neither is possible**, in whole numbers, given the starting point of 2n faces...
:::(* - you can, and probably will in this design, have some that cross between two of the top-level polygons, but you can fully 'donate' as many as you then fully ''get'' donated from the next face around, so it might as well be just counted as a group of whole tiles on an a set of Escher-like interlocking 'rough' polygons.)
:::(** - If you're using 12 zones, that's 3x4x(however many in the zone + one corner each) and there's no factor of 3 in ''any'' value that is 2n. Arranging into 20 symmetrical zones (5x4), you will find that 65524 isn't divisible by 5, either...)
::You could probably arrange an N-ahedron with the number of faces being 12+(12a) or 12+(20b), for some higher value (a bit of mental arithmatic suggests 65592 might be that value) and mark all the 'excess' faces (56?) with "Roll Again!". Or perhaps some pithy motivational slogans that also convey roughly the same meaning... :P [[Special:Contributions/172.70.162.5|172.70.162.5]] 11:32, 31 May 2022 (UTC)
::Postcript: Ok, so this is my idea for face-placing. Take a D8 (octahedron) and divide each of its 8 originally triangular faces into 8192 smaller faces (alternatively, start with a cube and progressively truncate its corners towards the same end). This is not a divisible by three number (neither can you put one in the centre, the rest are divisble by three and can surround it symmetrically), but you don't need strict rotational symmetry in any way. The opposing side can reflect/copy the non-symmetry as required to create any useful symmetry across the whole of the structure (and make floored-base/upmost-face pairings, amongst other things).
::As long as you make the faces equally likely to land on ''and stay on'' (could be hyperstellated as a slightly flat irregular 8192agon-based right-pyramid with the pyramid-faces of adjacent sides matching or meshing edges with those of each other, or a complicated mostly-hexagonal mesh, or a triangular one that's a limited fragment of a fine geodesic-like bulged pattern) by some suitable scheme governing area, aspect ratio and inter-face angle of incidence (probably normalising features to touch the unit sphere, for a start) then it should do it fairly and with ''exactly'' 65536 faces. I leave the fine-tweaking up to someone else. [[Special:Contributions/172.70.162.5|172.70.162.5]] 12:59, 31 May 2022 (UTC)

I don't know why it's so big? Seems like it should have a diameter of approx. 1 meter. [[Special:Contributions/172.70.130.105|172.70.130.105]] 21:37, 30 May 2022 (UTC)
: Cueball is 50 pixels high. The ball is 340 px high. Assuming Cueball is an average-height male (1.7m), and is standing the same distance from the viewer as the center of the ball, roughly how large is each face of the polygon? Area of a sphere is 4.pi.r.r, r=0.85, so 9.08 m^2 or 9080000 mm^2, divide by number of faces, get 277 mm^2, so we get 1.6cm to a side. If I did that right, then you're right: those are fairly large faces. --[[Special:Contributions/172.69.70.39|172.69.70.39]] 05:58, 31 May 2022 (UTC)
:I ran the calculations for the Trivia section. I used 12pt font which gave each number an area of 1/6 square inch (about 1 square cm) [[Special:Contributions/162.158.106.237|162.158.106.237]] 06:57, 31 May 2022 (UTC)
:Simple: Exaggerated for comedic effect and to make the point it's unwieldy (plus avoid the fuss of figuring out a realistic size) [[User:NiceGuy1|NiceGuy1]] ([[User talk:NiceGuy1|talk]]) 06:31, 4 June 2022 (UTC)

Should the title and picture file use "d" or the comic's difficult to type "ᴅ"?
[[User:While False|While False]] ([[User talk:While False|talk]]) 21:55, 30 May 2022 (UTC)
:Since xkcd uses small caps as lowercase letters, the "ᴅ" should just be considered xkcd-font for "d", and as such need not be used on the title, which is not using the xkcd font.
:: Ah! [[User:While False|While False]] ([[User talk:While False|talk]]) 06:15, 31 May 2022 (UTC)

If you really did want to generate a 16 bit integer with physical dice, it would be much simpler to roll a [https://www.thediceshoponline.com/impact-opaque-hexidice-d16-hexadecimal-dice hex die] four times. [[User:Clayot|Clayot]] ([[User talk:Clayot|talk]]) 23:30, 30 May 2022 (UTC)
:Rolling a binary die 16 times would also work. You can get binary dice for 1¢ each. [[Special:Contributions/108.162.245.69|108.162.245.69]] 01:31, 31 May 2022 (UTC)
::The lowest-value coin of all is the Tiyin from Uzbekistan. Some 3,038 equate to one UK penny (and 2,000 tot up to one US cent) from https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-21572359. [[User:Arachrah|Arachrah]] ([[User talk:Arachrah|talk]]) 15:13, 31 May 2022 (UTC)
::Those 1¢ "dices" are not exactly guaranteed to be random. -- [[User:Hkmaly|Hkmaly]] ([[User talk:Hkmaly|talk]]) 06:12, 31 May 2022 (UTC)
:::They seem as random as other dice? Am I wrong? [[Special:Contributions/172.70.230.63|172.70.230.63]] 09:33, 31 May 2022 (UTC)
:::: You can reduce bias by taking two not quite fair coins. Flip them together. If both heads, or both tails, then record a 0. If different, record a 1. [[User:Arachrah|Arachrah]] ([[User talk:Arachrah|talk]]) 15:13, 31 May 2022 (UTC)
::::: Actually, it's better to flip one coin twice. If it's heads then tails, record a 0, if it's tails then heads, record a 1. If it's HH or TT, try again. [[Special:Contributions/172.70.207.8|172.70.207.8]] 15:20, 2 June 2022 (UTC)

I think the hardest part (or maybe second-hardest part) is figuring out which facet is the one on top. [[Special:Contributions/162.158.78.109|162.158.78.109]] 00:46, 31 May 2022 (UTC)
:Roll it on a glass table, check from below which face it's landed on instead. Wait until it has settled safely, though, or it might land on ''your'' face! [[Special:Contributions/172.70.90.227|172.70.90.227]] 04:58, 31 May 2022 (UTC)
:: Good plan. Assuming standard dice design, subtract the value from 65537 to get the value of the uppermost face. --[[Special:Contributions/172.69.70.39|172.69.70.39]] 05:58, 31 May 2022 (UTC)
::: Because computer binary counting starts with ZERO (and in this case ends with 65535) one has to subtract from 65535. This die would not have a 65536 and it would have a zero. [[User:Inquirer|Inquirer]] ([[User talk:Inquirer|talk]]) 22:38, 31 May 2022 (UTC)
::::Notice that the parent comment says “assuming standard dice design” and standard dice start with 1 and end with their d number: a standard d4 has faces 1,2,3,4; a standard d6 has faces 1,2,3,4,5,6; a standard d10 1,2,3,[…],10; and a standard d100 has faces 1 through 100. Which is why rolling 2xd10 does NOT yield the same results as rolling 1xd100, because one cannot roll a 1 OR a 100 with two d10’s, and other numbers are over represented. This is why I have both a d12 and a d100 in my set of dice…[[User:John|John]] ([[User talk:John|talk]]) 11:40, 2 June 2022 (UTC)
:::::D10s are frequently (IME) numbered 0..9, with underlines to distinguish 6 from 9, whether or not that is as a deliberate sop to pairing up for percentiles ("It's the red dice first...", "It isn't!", "It is, it's ''always'' the red dice first, that's a 9 percent fail, not at 90 percent success!"). The 0 opposite 9, 1 opposite 8, etc.
:::::If you're rolling 1..10s (depends upon the system being used for... and arguments about the original intentions, possibly, where 10 of something or zero of something turning up/discovered means a lot to what exactly happens next) you ''treat'' them as full 10s, and double-zero can (again, hopefully understood in advance) be a "natural 100", rather than a natural-zero, to someone's obvious advantage or detriment.
:::::Similarly, games with D4 may use 0..3 as its outcomes, or D3s (D6/2s) have 0,0,1,1,2,2 as faces. Or if you are somehow stuck with a 1-based die of the appropriate (or divisible) range, and need to play something that requires a 0-based one, you agree that MAXNUM->ZERO or N=N-1.
:::::From my recollections of the truly huge collection of multicoloured, multisized and variously multifaceted dice that was dragged out for wargaming/role-playing sessions, years of accumulations from various sources, the D6s (spotted, not "Hit", "Missfire", <arrows for miss direction>, or otherwise for other uses), D8s, D12s and D20s were habitually 1-upwards, and Ds with 3, 4 and 10 almost all 0-upwards. D6s were the most numerous, but D10s well up there (enough for colour-mismatched pairs for each of a whole battalion of participants, even if the Hit/Miss die had to be passed around at need, and the few big yellow D20s might need to be offered onwards/rolled on someone's behalf on occasion).
:::::In short, the 'standard' is perhaps more firmly that opposite sides add up to double the average (not possible with D4, which is also "point-marked", not one number per side), though I'd like to check a D3 to see if it's 0 opposite 2 (x2) and 1 opposite 1 (which also happens to be a 0..5-dice with the opposition rule, but modded by 3) or perhaps in a basic {1..6}mod3 conversion 1 opposes 0(=6), 2 opposite 2(=5), 0(=3) opposite 1(=4). Maybe next time I go a gaming I'll get the chance. [[Special:Contributions/172.70.86.44|172.70.86.44]] 12:48, 2 June 2022 (UTC)
:::::HOW are you figuring any numbers are over represented in rolling 2xD10? There are 100 possibilities, 1 through 100, one chance per number, exactly equal... Each die has a 1 in 10 chance of rolling each value. Unless you're forgetting to pre-assign which die is the tens position and which is the ones... This is why any set with more than one D10 has then different colours so you can tell them apart... [[User:NiceGuy1|NiceGuy1]] ([[User talk:NiceGuy1|talk]]) 05:11, 4 June 2022 (UTC)
::::::Not sure what you're asking here. It seems to bear very little relevence to the meaning of the thing you're replying to (wot I wrote, which might indicate the error in conveying is at my end). I did not ''intend'' to suggest (as it is untrue) that 2D10≠1D100 (give or take adjusting what "00" means, which is an implementation issue, not a mathematical one), but I'll gladly clear up anything I left potentially saying something other than I thought it did. Quote the bit, and you can get a 'better' rewrite of it ASAP. [[Special:Contributions/162.158.159.41|162.158.159.41]] 05:48, 4 June 2022 (UTC)
:::::::"Which is why rolling 2xd10 does NOT yield the same results as rolling 1xd100, because one cannot roll a 1 OR a 100 with two d10’s, and other numbers are over represented.", that line. A 1 is rolling 0 on the tens die and a 1 on the ones die. A 100 is 0 on both dice (or you make the range 0 to 99, in which case two 0s is 0). NOW I think you were thinking of multiplying the values, which is indeed bad (for example, it then becomes impossible to roll a 17, as no two single digit numbers multiply to 17. Also, 9x9 is 81, 9x10 is 90, making those the last two possible values before 100, the other 80s and 90s unachievable. And then what you say make sense, you can get 24 with 3x8 or 4x6, two chances = over-represented). [[User:NiceGuy1|NiceGuy1]] ([[User talk:NiceGuy1|talk]]) 06:29, 4 June 2022 (UTC)
::::::::Ah, no, that was User:John, not me (172.70.86.44). Teach me for replying based on seeing the Diffs page, and not counting the indent-colons correctly! You were replying to a point that I had actually ''not even noticed'', at the same 'level' as I had jumped in on the zero-based-range thing with my spiel that you weren't actually arguing with. (Not sure John was thinking dice-multiplied, either, as 1x1=1. Perhaps why I blanked that bit out.)
::::::::On the subject, though, the Babylon 5 RPG used an interesting double-dice system, for some things (either straight success/fail or modifying other offsets, possibly). Red D6 and Green D6 (or similar hue distinction) rolled together. Take the ''lowest'' value of the two, and then call it negative if it was the red one. Equal rolls mean zero, except double-1 (critical/special failure of some kind) and -6 (likewise a success). Gives a slightly modified normalised-around-zero distribution (intentionally or otherwise) with the possible results being ((-Critical -5 -4 -4 -3 -3 -3 -2 -2 -2 -2 -1 -1 -1 -1 -1 0 0 0 0 +1 +1 +1 +1 +1 +2 +2 +2 +2 +3 +3 +3 +4 +4 +5 +Critical)), if you order the 36 possibilities. Similar to 2D6 added, minus 7 (to bunch up the unexceptionalism towards the baseline), but two of the middlingest possibilities removed and given special status at the either end for that little possible pizzaz! ;)
::::::::It reminded me of the experiment with monkeys where they were taught to recognise values (as number of bananas, e.g.) and then taught that whichever of two options they chose, it was the ''other'' one's value that dictated their reward. When done with abstract numbers (digits, or colours/shapes relating to numbers by training) they would "choose low, to get high", but when given ''actual'' quantities of reward-items, they'd instinctively "choose high", by instinct, immediately before their conscious brains kicked in and they realised they'd done the wrong thing. Or something like that (look for 30/40-year-old study, possibly shown to be flawed, these days)...
::::::::Anyway, it took a short while to train oneself to be somehow excited by 3 dots on a green when paired with six dots on a red, say, (or dissapointed with a green 6 in the light of any non-6 red) when previously the merest glance at the cumulative spots on thrown dice would suffice to satisfy the question of how well they fell for you. ;)
::::::::Not useful for this comic, but had always been dying to mention it, from the beginning! [[Special:Contributions/172.70.86.64|172.70.86.64]] 11:10, 4 June 2022 (UTC)
:::::::::LOL! Yes, I indented to answer John, his comment mystified me, :) And I did not check your identity, just understood by your response YOU were the one I was speaking to. :) The comments on here are so many and so LARGE I haven't read most, just that his caught my eye. THAT is an interesting if complicated dice system, wow! [[User:NiceGuy1|NiceGuy1]] ([[User talk:NiceGuy1|talk]]) 05:03, 5 June 2022 (UTC)

What material should it be to be light enough to easily roll it but cheap enough that doing the 1,5 meters doest cost a fortune ? Sorry if the question is not clear. [[Special:Contributions/141.101.69.30|141.101.69.30]] 05:50, 31 May 2022 (UTC)
:I recommend making it hollow. You could probably do something like this for $3000 if you made it out of 1/8th inch acrylic plate. [[Special:Contributions/162.158.106.237|162.158.106.237]] 07:02, 31 May 2022 (UTC)
:At first I thought aluminum for sturdiness, but really you could make this out of cardboard for dirt cheap, lasercutting precise shapes, but you'd have to design its structural frame to keep it intact, exchanges design effort for price. [[Special:Contributions/172.70.230.63|172.70.230.63]] 09:32, 31 May 2022 (UTC)

I disagree with this dice being really random. Like, sure, if thrown correctly, but that's going to be quite hard. -- [[User:Hkmaly|Hkmaly]] ([[User talk:Hkmaly|talk]]) 06:12, 31 May 2022 (UTC)

:True. For a rolled die to be random, it needs to roll far enough so that the initial orientation no longer governs the outcome. Say, ten times the circumference, or about 150 meters? -- [[User:Dtgriscom|Dtgriscom]] ([[User talk:Dtgriscom|talk]]) 10:28, 31 May 2022 (UTC)
::Interesting to consider the 'necessary minimum'. Simplify to a "wheel of fortune" (just one axis of continual rotation) it would depend upon the potential variation of imparted rotation. If (say) 'aiming' at two whole rotations has a (perhaps 'normal') spread of variance that relates to ±½ rotational uncertainty at the 1st and 3rd quartile of probability then the sub-first and above-third 'tails' might wrap around to (roughly) equalise the chances that 2±(whatever fraction) spins lands just about anywhere just about equally. Aiming at four whole rotations (similary ±1 spin at the given quartiles, and the tailing chancs 'filling in' above 5 rotations and below 3) would smooth things out, all else equal, but takes twice as much perceived/attempted effort for not much more 'randomising'.
::Similarly, requiring 10 full rolls (maybe honestly aiming for 10, but allowing it to be 7.5 or less if not obviously 'just nudged') seems overkill, in the single dimension.
::Except, of course that you also need enough distance (on top of whatever factor you consider practical as a variation-wrapping value, which might not be the ½-in-2 I give) to also roll ''sideways''. If for some reason you really don't want to roll 65536 or 1 (or is it 65535 and 0?), which may be on polar-opposite faces, you might make sure that they are directly to the left and right before you propel the die forwards ''a little'', not caring which distribution of numbers is on/near the rolling-equator (2 is acceptible to you, and 65533, etc; other very low/high values conceivably placed on that thin band of "wheel-like chance" but you're just avoiding the very largest and smallest, or specifically just the one of them) but knowing that it's more unlikely to easily present the exact face(s) you dislike than it might be in a truly 'fair' roll.
::Perhaps the best thing is to have a rolling track to send the thing down that puts it the required "two or so rotations" forward to then either hit a wall or climb slightly up a slope (at a roughly 45 degree angle) that then sends it back roughly sideways to the original vector for a similar distance with a perpendicular or even composite moment of rolling rotation, to bring 'initially axial' numbers fully into play... And that dog-leg would require a sligthly shorter length from launch-position to where the thoroughly mixed-up final stopping point should be, whilst significantly foiling the master-manipulators who actually try to arrange an initial setup that favours better final results (rather than just nudge it, uncaring, for a result not as totally random but certainly not more predominently of desired-for ranges than otherwise). [[Special:Contributions/141.101.99.8|141.101.99.8]] 12:28, 31 May 2022 (UTC)
::At what point does the structural material the die is composed of, combined with its mass, create a smoothing effect that will destroy the fairness of the die. I mean a small plastic die is no problem. A 2-ton acrylic die would start grinding off the edges of some faces with every roll, would it not? [[Special:Contributions/172.69.69.122|172.69.69.122]] 13:35, 31 May 2022 (UTC)

Should it be related to https://xkcd.com/221/ ? [[Special:Contributions/162.158.183.246|162.158.183.246]] 08:07, 31 May 2022 (UTC)

I'm going to wait, I think - I don't think there's room in my attic for this as well as all the Betamax kit, my drawers full of MiniDiscs and my Zune collection. No, I'll sit tight - I'm hearing encouraging things about the introduction of the Magic 65536-Ball... [[User:Yorkshire Pudding|Yorkshire Pudding]] ([[User talk:Yorkshire Pudding|talk]]) 09:41, 31 May 2022 (UTC)
:The number of sides on the die inside the ball is not what determines the name of the ball. It's the exterior housing which is colored in the manner of an Eight Ball. The classic design uses a d20, and is still called an Eight Ball, not a Twenty Ball. [[Special:Contributions/172.70.130.195|172.70.130.195]] 18:00, 31 May 2022 (UTC)
::Full disclosure: I don't have any of those things in my attic. And I'm not entirely sure, but I don't think Randall thinks rolling a d65536 is genuinely the hardest part of generating random 16-bit numbers. And Grape Nuts contain neither grapes nor nuts. [[User:Yorkshire Pudding|Yorkshire Pudding]] ([[User talk:Yorkshire Pudding|talk]]) 23:37, 31 May 2022 (UTC)

I'm suprised the hidden message points to 2624. I would've thought it would point to 2626 to refer to itself. Maybe things didn't get published as intended? Or maybe Randall really just wanted to point people to the Voyager comic? [[User:Linux2647|Linux2647]] ([[User talk:Linux2647|talk]]) 18:13, 31 May 2022 (UTC)
:I'm no ASCII expert, but from the description provided I'm pretty sure the comic URL would require the number representing "26" to show up twice. A die with, say, two 13,359 faces would obviously not be fair. If only Randall had published this as #2625 or #2627! (Or maybe he ''planned'' to publish it last week and had to shuffle his schedule after finalizing this comic?) [[User:GreatWyrmGold|GreatWyrmGold]] ([[User talk:GreatWyrmGold|talk]]) 18:24, 31 May 2022 (UTC)
::Probably the latter, seeing as it doesn't actually line up so that any of them are actually "26". The numbers are xk-cd-.c-om-/2-62-4/, so the 26 and 24 aren't lined up like that. [[Special:Contributions/172.70.126.87|172.70.126.87]] 19:38, 31 May 2022 (UTC)
::To change the number from 24 to 26 would mean changing 13,359 to 13,871. The only way that would be a problem is if 13,871 was already in the comic, which it isn't. Convert 13,359 to hex, it's 342F. In ASCII, 34 is "4", 2F is "/". Add 2 you get 36, so the new hex number is 362F, which converted to decimal is 13,871. [[User:NiceGuy1|NiceGuy1]] ([[User talk:NiceGuy1|talk]]) 11:37, 5 June 2022 (UTC)
:Perl code to decode the ASCII: <pre>perl -E 'for (30827, 25444, 11875, 28525, 12082, 13874, 13359) { print chr($_ >> 8), chr($_ & 0xff) }; print "\n"'</pre>

<big><big>'''Remember that "die" is singular and "dice" is plural'''</big></big> [[User:Mushrooms|Mushrooms]] ([[User talk:Mushrooms|talk]]) 09:30, 1 June 2022 (UTC)

;Might be worth offering some easier alternatives..
Needless to say, 16 ordered coins (eg ordered by the date of their minting) provide a much easier alternative to a d65536.

Other (easy to find) d p^2 - such as 8 ordered d4, or 5 ordered d8 and a coin (or bit-shave a dice.)
It's true some rules need to be applied (the highest number of the die is treated as a 0, and the order of the dice is strictly followed).

For example using a rainbow spectrum ordering of 6d8,
I role: 7, 1, 2, 8, 3, 5. Each dice represents 3 bits -
111-001-010-000-011-101. We shave off the last two bits (because we want 16 bits, not 18, for a d65536)
1110 0101 0000 0111. Hex = E507, which is decimal 58,631.

While it takes a few seconds for a human to convert the number it is quite trivial to write a program to convert an image capture.

There are also specialist dice - such as d16 'hexidice' which provide 4 bits per ordered die, and far less human calculation.
There are even d256 hex dice made, but they suffer the same problem that a d65536 would have.

[[User:20040302|20040302]] ([[User talk:20040302|talk]])
: how are you trivially converting image captures? i still use my keyboard. what's the update? [[Special:Contributions/162.158.79.120|162.158.79.120]] 18:26, 1 June 2022 (UTC)
:For your D8 system, since a D8 absolutely SCREAMS octal, you'll get results from 001 to 1000 octal for each die roll. Just subtract 1, and it's a perfect 3 digit range, 000 to 111! Which feels better than 8, the highest roll, becoming 0, the lowest, like you're doing. And as the previous commenter asked, how is image capture trivial? Especially from a programming perspective? Seems like the ACTUAL trivial method is to put a calculator into scientific mode and just type in the hex number to convert... :) [[User:NiceGuy1|NiceGuy1]] ([[User talk:NiceGuy1|talk]]) 05:11, 4 June 2022 (UTC)

::D8 is fine, and I tried that - but it's not so easy to composite the hex number from D8. With a D16 (there are two different styles, both easily available) it's really easy to get a nybble of randomness. Using e.g. visible spectrum ordering and suitable (eg red, orange, yellow, grass*, green, cyan, blue, purple) dice, it's trivial to order the dice to 4 bytes of randomness. (and a d65536 is only 2 bytes) (*I have no grass but I have a dark orange), so just now I rolled 0x6A5D391B.

::As for using a program to convert an image capture, it was sort of a joke. However, the real advantage over a calculator is that the calculator is a PRNG.
::Here is a link to 12 lines of code that would grab the dice numbers - similar code would be used to grab the colours.
::Mainly I wrote this just for fun. ([[User:20040302|20040302]] ([[User talk:20040302|talk]]) 11:19, 18 June 2022 (UTC))

I found an octahedral Goldberg with 65538 sides, 6 squares and 65532 irregular hexagons, notated GP₄(128,0). Can be constructed by chamfering a cube 7 times (Conway cccccccC). I don't think anything can be closer. [[User:SDSpivey|SDSpivey]] ([[User talk:SDSpivey|talk]]) 04:37, 2 June 2022 (UTC)
:I have had two designs in mind:
:*Start with octahedron, subdivide each face triangle into 16,384 triangular faces (subdivide all original edges into 128ths, effectively, while "halving into quarter-sized triangles), pairing the triangles up into half that many 'diamonds' then inflating to touch the bounding sphere, keeping the diamonds planar and possibly equal area, but will also distort them (some into kites, others may be utterly irregular) so it'll be a (literal?) balancing act to make all tippings between faces equally possible.
:*Start with a tetrahedron, subdivide likewise, stick with the triangles, have the same issue of inflating the faces towards the unit sphere while balancing the resulting distortions.
:I tried to work out something that seems to exactly match the image (or as exactly as I perceive it to be) with mildly distorted hexagons - albeit with the necessary pentagonal substitutions to carry the curvature - formed of (a similarly subdivided set of) sub-triangles drawn out on the original surfaces of either icosahedron or a snub-stellated extension onwards the dodecahedron, but I couldn't get the numbers to add up. Which is not to say that there isn't a way to do it. I was going to spend more time on this issue later, so if I get past the issues, then... Watch this space? [[Special:Contributions/172.70.162.77|172.70.162.77]] 13:17, 2 June 2022 (UTC)

I WAS going to say a far simpler way is to roll a D6 and 4 D10s (what is WITH all the lowercase Ds? Every time I see dice named it's uppercase!), figuring that gives a range of 0 to 69,999, and throw out/re-roll results higher than 65,535. (I realize that probably adjusts the odds, but I would think minimally and equally). Then I realized the D6 can't give a result of 0, so the real range is 10,000 to 69,999. Oops! And a D7 feels weird and rare if it even exists, SO! 5 D10s and still throw out everything above 65,535. :) Oh, and I agree with the Warning text, NEEDS an explanation how these numbers turn into a URL. WITHOUT relying on writing a program or concepts like "big endian", just say what's being done to ONE number, come on! EDIT: Never mind, I figured it out and added a MUCH simpler explanation. :) [[User:NiceGuy1|NiceGuy1]] ([[User talk:NiceGuy1|talk]])
:I think a D7*2 exists, i.e. a D14div2 (two faces for each of seven digits), though they're rarer than D14s (same idea as a D10, but interlocked heptagonally-based pyramid 'ends') which are already niche. I saw one with days on (Mo/Tu/We/Th/Fr/Sa/Su, leastwise), which is the only vaguely obvious reason for one. Might as well have a spinner. But to save so much 'wasted' rolling, use a D8 and only reject the 8 (or, rather, 8=0, reroll the 7 and all the rest, to prevent actual statistical clumping, ditto onwards from any other 'bust'). [[Special:Contributions/162.158.159.41|162.158.159.41]] 05:48, 4 June 2022 (UTC)
::Yup, didn't think about a D8 (which is extra stupid as I was discussing D8 higher up, LOL!) D'oh! And yes, I didn't think about rolling a day of the week, that would make a D7/D14 useful. Even if it was so labelled, just have Sunday equals 0, Monday is 1, etc. Range becomes 0 to 69999, only about 4,000 possibilities thrown out (I'd probably just re-roll the D7/D14). For a D8 I'd agree with your method.

::Reminds me of a Facebook Memory I had the other day: If you want to confuse someone, ask them why there's a line under the 6 on a D8.[[User:NiceGuy1|NiceGuy1]] ([[User talk:NiceGuy1|talk]]) 06:14, 4 June 2022 (UTC)

'''"hexakismyriapentakischiliapentahectatriacontakaihexahedron"''' [From the Explanation] Would anyone care to take a stab at deciphering that word? As of this comment, Google only returns this page as a reference. [[User:These Are Not The Comments You Are Looking For|These Are Not The Comments You Are Looking For]] ([[User talk:These Are Not The Comments You Are Looking For|talk]]) 01:55, 7 June 2022 (UTC)
:I have not checked for accuracy/consistency with the accepted "large specific number prefixing" conventions, but "hexa" (6) "kismyria" (x10,000) "penta" (5) "kischilia" (x5,000) "penta" (5) "hecta" (x100) "tria" (3) "conta(kai?)" (x10) "hexa" (6) "hedron" (-faced 3d shape")... Possibly constructed by historic geometrical naming rules (historically may not have dealt with myriads enough to establish a firm usage-policy), possibly just the root number* Google Translated to modern Greek, in the latin alphabet and geometrised/de-spaced a bit. It was funny enough for me not to investigate too closely, but this is my impression. It'll be lost once the Incomplete is edited off, anyway, and was never part of the comic to be explained. The 'Incomplete' rewrites sometimes ''do'' seem to need a bit of counter-nerdsniping, but as we don't have an explainexplainxkcd.com to discuss them, in Talk is as good a place as any... :) [[Special:Contributions/172.70.85.211|172.70.85.211]] 09:11, 7 June 2022 (UTC)
::(*) It's the "kai" that gets me. May be the difference between US number ("twelve thousand thirteen") and UK number ("twelve thousand and thirteen"), except for Greek, or "triacontakai" is "thirty", but that seems unweildy to me for "everyday" Greek (ancient or modern) and I'd have used "trideca" before realising that's probably "thirteen" (c.f. "dodecaedron", so... Anyway, to explain my assumption there. Really I could just look it up to be certain! [[Special:Contributions/162.158.159.121|162.158.159.121]] 09:19, 7 June 2022 (UTC)
::: I'm the one who named the polyhedron. Hexakismyria (60000) - pentakischilia (5000) - pentahecta (500) - triaconta (30) - kai - hexa (6) - hedron (3D). From what I found, "Kai" was supposed to be added when there's a tens and ones place as stated on [https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Polygon&oldid=1085462006#Naming wikipedia's polygon page], and "kis" was used for multiples of thousands as per [https://polytope.miraheze.org/w/index.php?title=Nomenclature&oldid=43793 another wiki]. In both cases, if there's a naming convention flaw, it's best to get a Wikipedia-grade citation to fix things. --[[Special:Contributions/108.162.242.58|108.162.242.58]] 01:36, 11 June 2022 (UTC)
:Why'd you place your comment above mine from 2 days earlier? :) [[User:NiceGuy1|NiceGuy1]] ([[User talk:NiceGuy1|talk]]) 03:42, 11 June 2022 (UTC)

It seems like it would be inappropriate for me to make the call, as I'm the one who made the fix, but can the "Don't remove this too soon" request for more information on the hidden message trivia be declared resolved? I feel I've made it clear (I feel like fully doing the conversion on every number would seem too bulky). Also, it begs the question, why THAT comic, is it worth mentioning that this makes it seem likely that THIS was supposed to be 2624, and he forgot to update the number? It would have been simple enough to just add 2 to the last number... [[User:NiceGuy1|NiceGuy1]] ([[User talk:NiceGuy1|talk]]) 05:26, 5 June 2022 (UTC)

Talk:Main Page

2022-06-01T09:33:18Z

20040302: /* Top 10 includes no more than 9 people? */

{{notice|This page is for discussion of the [[Main Page]] itself. For discussion of the latest comic, see [[{{LATESTCOMIC}}#Discussion|its discussion section]]. Other issues probably belong at the [[Explain XKCD:Community portal]].}}

{{notice|This page has a sandbox, located at [[Main Page/sandbox]].}}

As a new user, I think the first page is very important. So I thought why not begin a discussion here what to have on the first page every user visits.--[[User:Relic|Relic]] ([[User talk:Relic|talk]]) 05:59, 1 August 2012 (EDT) Re-signed here - b/c I broke the comment in two when I added the "List of comics" header. --''[[User:Philosopher|Philosopher]]'' [[User talk:Philosopher|Let us reason together.]] 23:01, 2 August 2012 (EDT)

==List of comics==
I was thinking of having a quick link to the list of comics that is explained. Right know, it took me a while to even see any of them. Eventually I found the "List All Pages" (found it in Special pages) where I could find the comics that have been explained. What do you think?
:A category tag will do that for you automatically. Having a list of comics indexed by its number would be a little different.--[[User:Relic|Relic]] ([[User talk:Relic|talk]]) 05:59, 1 August 2012 (EDT)
::Sounds like a great list - I ''think'' it'd have to be manually maintained until/unless we get someone who knows how to make a bot update it. Categories will be useful, but they only work if someone added the category to the page in the first place. --''[[User:Philosopher|Philosopher]]'' [[User talk:Philosopher|Let us reason together.]] 07:21, 1 August 2012 (EDT)
:::A (somewhat) related question - should [[:Category:Comics]] be sorted alphabetically or by comic number? --''[[User:Philosopher|Philosopher]]'' [[User talk:Philosopher|Let us reason together.]] 07:43, 1 August 2012 (EDT)
::::I think [[:Category:Comics]] should be sorted by comic number. If you are looking for a specific comic, you will use the search field. Is there a way to make that happen? --[[User:Jeff|Jeff]] ([[User talk:Jeff|talk]]) 08:11, 1 August 2012 (EDT)
:::::They are two different functions. For the former, instead of adding <nowiki>[[Category:Comics]]</nowiki>, add, say, <nowiki>[[Category:Comics|1]]</nowiki>. For the second, we can create redirects. Normally, I'd say just make sure the search term was in the article text, but since numbers are going to be use for other purposes than just comic titles, it may be better to create [[1]] and [[Comic 1]] as redirects to the relevant articles right off the bat. --08:24, 1 August 2012 (EDT)
::::::We could also have a comic-list template on the Main Page, I suppose, or perhaps two - one for number and one for name? --''[[User:Philosopher|Philosopher]]'' [[User talk:Philosopher|Let us reason together.]] 08:54, 1 August 2012 (EDT)
:::::::Here's what I was thinking of for that: {{tl|Comics navbox}} Thoughts? ''[[User:Philosopher|Philosopher]]'' [[User talk:Philosopher|Let us reason together.]]
:(outdent) It's ugly, but a sortable wikitable [[User:SurturZ/sandbox|(click here for example)]] could be used as a checklist to see what has been uploaded and what hasn't. What's the project namespace here, anyway (analogue of "WP:")? --[[User:SurturZ|SurturZ]] ([[User talk:SurturZ|talk]]) 03:04, 3 August 2012 (EDT)
:OK, I've found a way to get all the titles of the comics, so I was confident enough to create <big>[[Explain XKCD:Checklist]]</big> which can be used to fill in the gaps. --[[User:SurturZ|SurturZ]] ([[User talk:SurturZ|talk]]) 03:41, 3 August 2012 (EDT)
::I'm liking the checklist! That should do quite nicely as a "tool for editors". (I'm linking to it at the Community Portal). We still need the "template for readers." Did you think {{tl|Comics navbox}} was on the right track or should we do something else for that? --''[[User:Philosopher|Philosopher]]'' [[User talk:Philosopher|Let us reason together.]] 20:09, 3 August 2012 (EDT)
::Better idea - I'm throwing it directly onto the Main Page. --''[[User:Philosopher|Philosopher]]'' [[User talk:Philosopher|Let us reason together.]] 20:10, 3 August 2012 (EDT)

==Admin list==
You can find a system-accurate list of admins [{{canonicalurl:Special:ListUsers|group=sysop}} here], so that might good to share, along with the manual list. --''[[User:Philosopher|Philosopher]]'' [[User talk:Philosopher|Let us reason together.]] 07:13, 1 August 2012 (EDT)
:Added to page. --''[[User:Philosopher|Philosopher]]'' [[User talk:Philosopher|Let us reason together.]] 08:10, 1 August 2012 (EDT)
::That's exactly what I wanted, but couldn't find the auto page for it. I knew it was somewhere. I don't see any reason to keep the link to the manual page. Do you? --[[User:Jeff|Jeff]] ([[User talk:Jeff|talk]]) 08:11, 1 August 2012 (EDT)
:::Not unless you want it. I'll remove it. Should I add the similar link for 'crats or is that unnecessary at this point? --''[[User:Philosopher|Philosopher]]'' [[User talk:Philosopher|Let us reason together.]] 08:25, 1 August 2012 (EDT)
::::To be honest, I have no idea what the Burecrats role does. Might be unnecessary now but helpful in the future? --[[User:Jeff|Jeff]] ([[User talk:Jeff|talk]]) 11:16, 1 August 2012 (EDT)
:::::Bureaucrats can turn other users into administrators (or indeed, other bureaucrats). That privilege isn't available to ordinary administrators. I'd keep it to yourself for the time being. :-) --[[User:Yirba|Yirba]] ([[User talk:Yirba|talk]]) 17:39, 1 August 2012 (EDT)
::::::You can actually see a technical list of which rights each group confers at [[Special:ListGroupRights]]. As the wiki grows, you might want to spin off a few, such as the ability to grant rollbacker and autopatrolled, to admins as some other wikis have. But for the time being, at least, there's really no reason for the wiki to have more than one 'crat. --''[[User:Philosopher|Philosopher]]'' [[User talk:Philosopher|Let us reason together.]] 17:07, 2 August 2012 (EDT)

== Community portal ==

I've created the [[Explain XKCD:Community portal]] as a tools/help page. If that's not what you want, feel free to change/move/whatever it, but I thought it'd be nice to save this page for discussion of the Main Page and discuss the wiki as a whole/ask for help there. --''[[User:Philosopher|Philosopher]]'' [[User talk:Philosopher|Let us reason together.]] 08:36, 1 August 2012 (EDT)

== Direct link to latest comic ==

There should be a direct link to the latest comic at the top of the Main page. A nice thing about going to explainxkcd.com was that the latest comic is right there at the top. For those changing their default link to the wiki, there should be an easy "Latest Comic" link that quickly takes them there. I'm sure some folks actually skip xkcd.com and come directly here instead to read the latest offering from Randall. They shouldn't have to search for it.
[[User:Christopher Foxx|- CFoxx]] ([[User talk:Christopher Foxx|talk]]) 11:59, 1 August 2012 (EDT)

: Maybe the page [[latest]] should redirect to the most recent comic? Could that be taken care of by some sort of script/template so it doesn't have to be manually updated? Should each explination page also have "next", "previous", "random", "first" and "latest" links, possibly also generated automatically via scripts/templates? Additionally, shouldn't the number page be the canonical one? It seems like [[Internal monologue]] should redirect to [[1089]] rather than the other way around - certainly it would make a bunch of scripting types of things a lot easier. [[User:J-beda|J-beda]] ([[User talk:J-beda|talk]]) 13:02, 1 August 2012 (EDT)
:::If you wanted, we could even use wiki-magic to show the title of the page as the Comic name, but the URL as the number - in order to parallel the actual XKCD website. --''[[User:Philosopher|Philosopher]]'' [[User talk:Philosopher|Let us reason together.]] 17:09, 2 August 2012 (EDT)
:: Shouldn't there be a way to programmatically find the comic with the highest number that has a page with content? That would work as long as no one puts future comic pages up. --[[User:Jeff|Jeff]] ([[User talk:Jeff|talk]]) 20:25, 1 August 2012 (EDT)
:::It's all sounding like folks are over-complicating something quite easy. All I'm suggesting is a prominent link to http://www.xkcd.com/. No need, I think, to list which number the latest is, or include the next/last/random buttons, etc. [[User:Christopher Foxx|- CFoxx]] ([[User talk:Christopher Foxx|talk]]) 11:41, 3 August 2012 (EDT)
::::Oh. We've got that, now, in the sidebar - labeled as "XKCD." I do think that having an internal link to the latest (explained) comic would be a great thing, though. --''[[User:Philosopher|Philosopher]]'' [[User talk:Philosopher|Let us reason together.]] 16:36, 4 August 2012 (EDT)

You can transclude the latest comic on the main page like this: <nowiki>{{:pagename}} e.g. {{:Internal_monologue}} </nowiki>--[[User:SurturZ|SurturZ]] ([[User talk:SurturZ|talk]]) 00:25, 2 August 2012 (EDT)
: I've started with just a manual link to the latest comic. Ideally it will be automatic, but a manual link will work for now as I've had quite a few people ask for it. --[[User:Jeff|Jeff]] ([[User talk:Jeff|talk]]) 21:09, 1 August 2012 (EDT)

Transclusion of the latest comic is great. Someone with the right permissions should add (for instance on the top-right corner of the grey transclusion area) a link to edit the corresponding wiki page, so that people seeing something they could add would feel invited to do so (wiki style). In my opinion this would be a good way to improve the quality of the user-generated explanations.
Also, all the "XKCD"s in the "New here?" section should be converted to the lowercase "xkcd"...
[[User:Cos|Cos]] ([[User talk:Cos|talk]]) 14:00, 6 August 2012 (UTC)
:Good points. I've done both. --[[User:Waldir|Waldir]] ([[User talk:Waldir|talk]]) 15:48, 6 August 2012 (UTC)

Call me dumb, but... You've got a link called "prev" that goes to the explaination for the previous comic. Then a link called "comic #42" but that goes to xkcd. And then a smaller, less prominent link called "go to this comic" that doesn't go to the comic but to its explaination. Anyone else think that's a little back-to-front? [[User:Zootle|Zootle]] ([[User talk:Zootle|talk]]) 17:18, 31 August 2012 (UTC)
:OK, you're dumb :-). The standard template for an explanation page includes the header with "Prev", "Comic # (date)", and "Next" links. If we don't have explanation pages for the previous or next comic, we don't show the respective link. I hadn't noticed that the "Comic # (date)" bit was a link to the xkcd site before, but in context it makes sense to me. Including a link to the Explain page for the comic who's explain page you are already looking at doesn't make sense.
:The explanation page for the latest comic is "transcluded" in the main page pretty much as-is, so we get the header, the comic, the explanation, etc. We don't get the discussion, which is visible at the bottom of the Explain page. Because there is never an explanation for a comic that hasn't been released yet, there is never a "Next" link on the main page's transcluded header. So you get "Prev" and "Comic" links. The "Go to this comic" link is added by the main page above the transcluded explain page.
:I can see how the "Go to this comic" link might be poorly worded especially as it's placement seems to be within the explanation it's linking to. [[User:Blaisepascal|Blaisepascal]] ([[User talk:Blaisepascal|talk]]) 18:16, 31 August 2012 (UTC)
::Rather than "Go to this comic" maybe it could be "Go to full explanation" ? Something else? [[User:J-beda|J-beda]] ([[User talk:J-beda|talk]]) 13:38, 5 September 2012 (UTC)
::There was [http://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php?title=explain_xkcd:Community_portal/Admin_requests#.22Edit_this_explanation.22_link_on_main_page a discussion at one point] about a wittier/more descriptive link - but no one came up with anything. I do like "Go to Full Explanation" better, for what it's worth. --[[User:DanB|DanB]] ([[User talk:DanB|talk]]) 15:31, 5 September 2012 (UTC)
:::My problem with that suggestion is that it implies that the main page explanation is not full. As of right now, the full explanation is transcluded on the main page. There's nothing more to see by clicking that link (explanation wise) Perhaps "Go to full explanation page" but that doesn't quite sound right to me... [[User:TheHYPO|TheHYPO]] ([[User talk:TheHYPO|talk]]) 15:42, 7 September 2012 (UTC)
::::How about "Go to this Comic Explanation Page"? One nice thing about the specific page rather than the [[Main_Page]] transcoding is that it nicely includes the discussion as well. I have a bookmark to the [[Main_Page]] that I look at every day, but I want to easily read the discussions, not only the explanation. Humm, maybe we could have a page [[most recent comic]] that automagically redirects to the most recent comic? [[User:J-beda|J-beda]] ([[User talk:J-beda|talk]]) 12:42, 8 September 2012 (UTC)
:::::I tried to get [[most recent comic]] to redirect to LATESTCOMIC, but can't get the syntax working - it is possible? [[User:J-beda|J-beda]] ([[User talk:J-beda|talk]]) 13:03, 8 September 2012 (UTC)
::::::Apparently it isn't. I would have tried <code><nowiki>#REDIRECT [[{{LATESTCOMIC}}]]</nowiki></code> like you did, but since that doesn't work, I'll delete the page for now. --[[User:Waldir|Waldir]] ([[User talk:Waldir|talk]]) 16:38, 20 November 2012 (UTC)

== Discussion of latest comic ==
Perhaps include the discussions of the latest comic here? I almost missed there was a discussion field a few times because I would only read about the latest comic on the main page. [[User:Carewolf|Carewolf]] ([[User talk:Carewolf|talk]]) 14:54, 22 September 2012 (UTC)

This comics's explanation is complete bollocks, I think. Of course it is NOT a "fact that such a room exists". This comics parodies trope often used in cop movies - an elderly cop goes to work for the last time before his retirement, packs things, plans fishing the next day ... only to be called to one more case (possibly with a new, young and brash partner). And despites his efforts not to screw anything and stay clear of danger, he is either mortally wounded or screws big time and is degraded. So much clichè, that if someone says "It's my last day or service", you might be sure one of the two options above happens. See http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/Retirony [[User:edheldil|Edheldil]] 10:17, 26 September 2012 (UTC)

I believe this link maybe relevant: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Turtle_graphics {{unsigned|Rhudi}}

I went ahead and filled out the bracket from today's (see edit date) comic: http://m.imgur.com/gallery/WyPkHx2 {{unsigned|Glaucon81}}

*rise

Btw, why wouldn't I just enter "ipconfig free" if I didn't want my IP address showing? {{unsigned ip|172.68.65.48}}

== The comic explanation count is wrong ==

The adjustment is currently 3, but there are now 6 subcategories and one list making the current correct adjustment 7.
If the wiki was upgraded to version 1.20, a form exists to automatically exclude subcategories.
--[[User:Divad27182|Divad27182]] ([[User talk:Divad27182|talk]]) 09:56, 8 October 2012 (UTC)

:Looks like another week of the wiki going down then.
:But seriously, I've been noticing this too. Didn't know what was causing it, but it's going to have to be fixed sometime.[[User:Davidy22|Davidy22]] ([[User talk:Davidy22|talk]]) 10:25, 8 October 2012 (UTC)

::The text reads <pre><nowiki>We already have [[:Category:Comics|'''{{#expr:{{PAGESINCAT:Comics}}-3}}''' comic explanations]]!</nowiki></pre> The -3 is to account for the subcategories and non-explanation pages in the category. There apparently used to be three such pages, and now there are seven. I would fix this myself, but the page is protected. If the wiki where upgraded to version 1.20, the categories could be explicitly excluded, but the [[List of all comics]] would still be in the category. (Note that the -3 actually appears twice.) --[[User:Divad27182|Divad27182]] ([[User talk:Divad27182|talk]]) 05:03, 11 October 2012 (UTC)

:::Mediawiki 1.20 fixes this issue, although it'd be nice if this could be fixed in the meantime via the hack reccommended by divad. [[User:Davidy22|Davidy22]][[User talk:Davidy22|<tt>(talk)</tt>]] 06:40, 16 November 2012 (UTC)

:Looks like Waldir updated the "Comic Correction Count" to "10" (as of 20 November 2012):
<nowiki> We already have [[:Category:Comics|'''{{#expr:{{PAGESINCAT:Comics}}-10}}''' comic explanations]]!</big>
Note: the -10 in the calculation above is to discount subcategories (there are 7 of them as of 20 November 2012),
non-comic pages (2 as of same date: [[List of all comics]] and [[Exoplanet]])
and the comic 404, which was deliberately not posted. Thus 7 + 2 + 1 = 10
(But there are still {{#expr:{{LATESTCOMIC}}-({{PAGESINCAT:Comics}}-10)}} to go. Come and [[List of all comics|add yours]]!)</nowiki>
:Could we possibly make this more dynamic by creating a "IGNORE_IN_COUNT" category or something? and then using something like: <nowiki>{#expr:{{PAGESINCAT:Comics}}-{{PAGESINCAT:IGNORE_IN_COUNT}}}</nowiki>? Then any additional entries to the "Comics" category (that are 'special' entries) could just have the special category added and no main page editing would be necessary? --[[User:Bpothier|B. P.]] ([[User talk:Bpothier|talk]]) 07:50, 22 November 2012 (UTC)

==Make Jeff stop apologizing==
The apology for server downtime has been around for a while now. Can we take it down? [[User:Davidy22|Davidy22]] ([[User talk:Davidy22|talk]]) 04:41, 11 October 2012 (UTC)

== Spambots ==

I think someone should install [http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Extension:AbuseFilter AbuseFilter]. --[[User:Kronf|Kronf]] ([[User talk:Kronf|talk]]) 10:09, 13 October 2012 (UTC)

== Purge ==

We should regularly purge the server's cache for the main page using http://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php?title=Main_Page&action=purge to keep the explanation up to date. --[[User:Kronf|Kronf]] ([[User talk:Kronf|talk]]) 02:28, 3 November 2012 (UTC)

== Updating the Rules ==

I've been having a lovely discussion with someone who apparently thought the "edit anything you want" rule applied to the Talk pages. As we don't have any codified rules for ''here'' and can only point to "well the canonical way this is done on Wikipedia is..." I think that there are a few things we need to put into the list of Rules on the front page, and then have a link to a more in-depth talk about why the rules exist and what-not.

Specifically, I'm talking about writing "Feel free to edit any page on the wiki to be better. But, treat talk pages like you would blog comments: comments by other people ''cannot be changed by you'', you can only respond to them." as a new rule to be plastered on the front page, as there seems to be an increasing number social neophytes that seem to think that editing words that are attributed as being said by another person is perfectly legitimate and non-controversial.

Shall we discuss? [[User:Lcarsos|lcarsos]]_a ([[User talk:Lcarsos|talk]]) 01:25, 15 November 2012 (UTC)

:We could add the etiquette rules as an addendum to the signature reminder at the top of the page. Just an extra note below the alert box asking people to not edit other people's comments. [[User:Davidy22|Davidy22]][[User talk:Davidy22|<tt>(talk)</tt>]] 06:40, 16 November 2012 (UTC)

::It really should be right down with the "edited mercilessly" description, because this is an exception to that statement. Shouldn't have two sets of contradictory instructions in different places. When I made my improper edit, I had a semi-conscious moment of doubt about whether changing the other guy's comment was ok, even though this is a wiki (and even though it wasn't really clear to me that this "discussion" box held something totally separate from the page content), but that statement at the bottom put all such doubts to rest. I read it multiple times to be sure. But I did not notice that line at the top about the four tildes until ''much'' later. It's somewhat lost, visually, in the header line, when you're not looking directly at it.[[Special:Contributions/50.0.38.245|50.0.38.245]] 18:32, 18 November 2012 (UTC)

:::There's discussion to replace that message with a more noticeable alert box. The message at the bottom of the page appears for all pages, including talk pages, so a talk-page specific message there would not entirely fit. [[User:Davidy22|Davidy22]][[User talk:Davidy22|<tt>(talk)</tt>]] 00:18, 19 November 2012 (UTC)

::::If that text at the bottom is in fact alterable, it should be written to take every case into account. It's an extremely poor user interface that has instructions appearing on a page stating rules that are the exact opposite of reality. And note that the altert box on the top looks a lot like a banner add, when you don't focus on it and read it. People will tend to habitually filter out anything written there from their perception. Also, it can easily be scrolled off the top of the screen when the discussion starts to get long, and they have a preview displayed.
::::So I think after the "...then do not submit it here.", it should add, "'''Exception''': others' comments in Discussion pages are not to be altered. See full rules at <<link to appropriate wikipedia page>>."[[Special:Contributions/50.0.38.245|50.0.38.245]] 15:46, 28 November 2012 (UTC)

== Update after changes ==

The front page explanation hasn't been updated at all day to match changes in the explanation on the comic's page. This is a major problem i think, as it is the front page explanation people visitors will most often read. --[[User:St.nerol|St.nerol]] ([[User talk:St.nerol|talk]]) 20:43, 26 November 2012 (UTC)
: It might be a caching issue. Appending <code>&action=purge</code> to the URL will probably fix it. Can you confirm it looks good to you now? --[[User:Waldir|Waldir]] ([[User talk:Waldir|talk]]) 00:29, 27 November 2012 (UTC)
::Yep, now it updates instantly! Well done, whatever you did! :) --[[User:St.nerol|St.nerol]] ([[User talk:St.nerol|talk]]) 16:24, 27 November 2012 (UTC)

:::I've also added a link underneath the comic box that has the action embedded, so no one has to do any manual URL hacking. [[User:Lcarsos|lcarsos]]_a ([[User talk:Lcarsos|talk]]) 17:38, 11 December 2012 (UTC)

::::Just wanted to check in on this - are there issues with automated systems or spammers following this link? I know it can affect performance - caching is important on a busy site! --[[User:Overand|Overand]] ([[User talk:Overand|talk]]) 22:37, 13 September 2013 (UTC)

== Suggestion: Change "Go to this comic" to "Go to this entry" ==

Just a small suggestion. For the Main Page, I suggest changing "Go to this comic" to say "Go to this ''entry''" instead to remove any confusion for new and regular viewers. It certainly took me a while to figure how to go to each featured comic's entry from the main page.

[[Special:Contributions/69.43.114.2|69.43.114.2]] 17:04, 11 December 2012 (UTC)

:How about if it reads "Go to this comic explanation"? Would that be less confusing? I only quibble because the explanations aren't really entries, in wiki parlance each page is usually called an article, but that doesn't seem to fit here as we really have explanation pages. [[User:Lcarsos|lcarsos]]_a ([[User talk:Lcarsos|talk]]) 17:41, 11 December 2012 (UTC)

::Agreed. [[User:Ctxppc|Randy Marsh]] ([[User talk:Ctxppc|talk]]) 22:55, 8 January 2013 (UTC)

== Explain the Unreleased Comic? ==
:I wonder if [[http://i56.tinypic.com/a9ton8.png this comic]] is permitted to be explained, despite the double issue of Randall pulling the comic plus me finding the pulled comic through "xkcd overrated"... [[User:Greyson|Greyson]] ([[User talk:Greyson|talk]]) 18:21, 12 December 2012 (UTC)

== Comic 1156 ==

I don't have an account to edit the page directly, so here's an edit someone should make:
It looks like whoever wrote the existing page simply googled 'conditioning' and found the first link that came up.
Please modify the link to point to 'Classical conditioning', not 'Operant conditioning'.
Thanks. {{unsigned ip|124.191.56.91|05:26, 7 January 2013‎ (UTC)}}

:Hi. This is the talk page for the main page of the wiki. This page only has a "view" of the actual comic explanation. The actual explanation page is at [[1156: Conditioning]], and I assure you, edit permissions have not been restricted for that page. Someone has already changed the page to link to Classical conditioning, but the original editor came back stating that Operant was correct. If you would like to start a discussion about this [[Talk:1156: Conditioning|on the talk page for this explanation]] that would be much more conducive to getting this matter settled. [[User:Lcarsos|lcarsos]]_a ([[User talk:Lcarsos|talk]]) 05:52, 7 January 2013 (UTC)

== Comic Links ==

Some of the links seem to be confusing, as they're titled in a weird way. The link/button 'go to this comic', I'd expect would go to the actual comic on XKCD's page. Yet it goes to the comic's wiki page. And clicking on the comic # and date directs you to the XKCD page, yet I really feel that link should go to the wiki page, as it's right at the top center there, and has the date and everything, sort of indicating that it's a wiki page, yet it's not. And the prev and next buttons next to it don't go to the xkcd page, they go to the wiki pages. Which is really messed up, I think. Because of my confusion, every single time I visit here, I clicked on the wrong link, though now I've gotten used to it. I suggest rewording the links as 'XKCD Comic # and date' and 'go to this comic's wiki page'. And possibly switching the links' positions so that the wiki links could be in that navigation bar and the XKCD links could be off to the side. After all, we are a wiki, so putting our wiki links to the comic off to the side and the direct xkcd link in the center seems odd. Anyway, has anyone had the same thoughts and/or agree with me on this?--[[Special:Contributions/69.119.250.251|69.119.250.251]] 18:19, 9 January 2013 (UTC)

== Unexplained comics ==

The template that starts each explanation page should be edited to have the next and previous buttons automatically skip over pages that don't exist, rather than simply not being there if comic n+1 or n-1 doesn't exist. Preferably it would append a notice to the next page (like the redirect notices commonly found on mediawiki) telling you how many comics have been skipped. I'm not sure how feasible this would be to script, however. [[Special:Contributions/130.160.145.185|130.160.145.185]] 23:45, 9 March 2013 (UTC)

== Percentage of remaining comics calculation is off... ==

Okay, I hate to be "that pedantic math guy", but... Today the main page reads "We have collaboratively explained 936 xkcd comics, and only 252 (27%) remain." While I agree that 252/936 is roughly 27%, I believe we should really be calculating the percentage as "the number left to explain" divided by "the total number of comics that exist", not divided by "the number we have finished". That is (today), 252/1188=21%. Think about it. If we had completed 594 comics today, with 594 remaining, what should the percentage be? 594/594=100%? That's not right... 594/1188=50%? That's what we really want to say.

The page is protected, which makes sense. So I'll make my suggestion here.

Change this:

<pre>
and only {{#expr:{{LATESTCOMIC}}-({{PAGESINCAT:Comics}}-9)}}
({{#expr: ({{LATESTCOMIC}}-({{PAGESINCAT:Comics}}-9)) / ({{PAGESINCAT:Comics}}-9) * 100 round 0}}%)
remain.
</pre>
To this:
<pre>
and only {{#expr:{{LATESTCOMIC}}-({{PAGESINCAT:Comics}}-9)}}
({{#expr: ({{LATESTCOMIC}}-({{PAGESINCAT:Comics}}-9)) / {{#expr:{{LATESTCOMIC}}}} * 100 round 0}}%)
remain.
</pre>
[[User:Imperpay|Imperpay]] ([[User talk:Imperpay|talk]]) 15:32, 20 March 2013 (UTC)

:Done and done. '''[[User:Davidy22|{{Color|purple|David}}y²²]]'''[[User talk:Davidy22|<tt>[talk]</tt>]] 15:37, 20 March 2013 (UTC)

:Thanks for the heads-up! However, notice that the #expr: around LATESTCOMIC was unnecessary. I've removed it. [[User:Waldir|Waldir]] ([[User talk:Waldir|talk]]) 11:30, 21 March 2013 (UTC)

::Waldir, you have exposed me as a charlatan and a fool! (I just copied, pasted, and tinkered until I made something that worked. I don't actually understand it. No formal training, you see. It's what we used to call "hacking" back in the dawn of the digital era, before the word took on connotations of vandalism, trespassing, and fraud. Have you kids come up with another word for it?) [[User:Imperpay|Imperpay]] ([[User talk:Imperpay|talk]]) 13:59, 22 March 2013 (UTC)

::: Joke's on me then, 'cause you sure fooled me – I readily assumed you knew your way around those parser functions. Nice job hacking the code, it was a nearly perfect crime ;) --[[User:Waldir|Waldir]] ([[User talk:Waldir|talk]]) 03:26, 25 March 2013 (UTC)

:::I've heard the cool kids call that the "Maker Mentality", usually with a reference to [http://makezine.com/ Make magazine] and [http://makerfaire.com/ Maker Faire]. But I think there's also a movement to resurrect the original meaning of hacker. [[User:Lcarsos|lcarsos]]_a ([[User talk:Lcarsos|talk]]) 04:21, 25 March 2013 (UTC)

==sidebar ads?==
''Moved to [[explain xkcd:Community portal/Proposals]] –– [[User:St.nerol|St.nerol]] ([[User talk:St.nerol|talk]]) 08:06, 4 May 2013 (UTC)''

== Expression error on Main Page ==

Please use <code><nowiki>{{PAGESINCAT:...|R}}</nowiki></code> instead of <code><nowiki>{{PAGESINCAT:...}}</nowiki></code> to correct these errors :) --[[Special:Contributions/110.168.83.62|110.168.83.62]] 10:55, 8 April 2013 (UTC)
:Dun diddly done. '''[[User:Davidy22|{{Color|#707|David}}y²²]]'''[[User talk:Davidy22|<tt>[talk]</tt>]] 11:21, 8 April 2013 (UTC)

== Compile a list of non-technical comics to non-technical readers? ==

I'm a long-time reader and fan of >< |< C |}, but my normal approach is useless when I introduce this provocative comic series to my less technical friends. They stay at the apparent level of many comics. They don't bother reading the explanations, but they would say, "it's hard to make sense". Imagine an average non-technical (and non-arts) major guy/girl, can we compile a list of state-of-the-art but less-technical, easy-to-comprehend but "ah ha!!" strips that is suitable for them? --[[User:FrenzY|W shll nvr flly xpln xkcd!]] ([[User talk:FrenzY|talk]]) 12:39, 18 May 2013 (UTC)
:Oh my god that signature.
:Gaah, derailment. Uh, pretty much anything that isn't tagged with the physics or math categories are easy enough to understand for the average English speaker, so just check the categories at the bottom of the page for that. Also, avoid comics with the incomplete tag, and that oughta be fine. '''[[User:Davidy22|{{Color|#707|David}}y²²]]'''[[User talk:Davidy22|<tt>[talk]</tt>]] 14:41, 18 May 2013 (UTC)

== Quit building? ==
''This post was moved to [[Talk:1214: Geoguessr]].''

:Hello, this is the talk page for the content of the front page of the wiki, not for discussion of the most recent comic, that happens [[Talk:1214: Geoguessr|here]]. I've moved your post over there for you. Cheers, and welcome to explain xkcd! [[User:Lcarsos|lcarsos]]_a ([[User talk:Lcarsos|talk]]) 05:09, 22 May 2013 (UTC)

== List of incomplete comics ==
We need a link to the "Incomplete articles" at the main page below the "Missing link". Most pages are created but many are incomplete.--[[User:Dgbrt|Dgbrt]] ([[User talk:Dgbrt|talk]]) 19:06, 7 June 2013 (UTC)

== Header message ==

'''Please don't take this seriously unless you actually think it's a good idea:'''

I think the header should be changed from "explain xkcd: It's 'cause you're dumb." to "explain xkcd: It's 'cause you're dumb... or still have some hope that comic [[1190]] will end." or something similar. [[User:Schiffy|Schiffy]] ([[User_talk:Schiffy|Speak to me]]|[[Special:Contributions/Schiffy|What I've done]]) 14:53, 9 June 2013 (UTC)

::Nope! This page is trying to explain more than 1222 comics, not only [[1190: Time]]. The header just states the truth.--[[User:Dgbrt|Dgbrt]] ([[User talk:Dgbrt|talk]]) 15:49, 9 June 2013 (UTC)

I'd vote for a change. People have started coming over to discuss the comic even when they've 'gotten' it. That, and the fact that this is one step ahead of Googling the references yourself. So.. maybe, "it's because you're dumb..and lazy."[[Special:Contributions/220.224.246.97|220.224.246.97]] 02:26, 31 August 2013 (UTC)
:I honestly don't think it either. This is the most comprehensive comic-by-comic Wiki. People don't come here because they're dumb ''or'' lazy. That's like saying I'm dumb for reading a review of an episode after I've watched it - I'm interested in seeing what other people up with or caught that I didn't. It denigrates the idea of aggregating information, which is a very un-XKCD idea.

As a regular reader of explainxkcd (who was to lazy to cotribute anything until now), I'd like to support the proposed edit. (... and lazy) It really fits to the tone of our favourite waste of otherwise productive time (which is xkcd for myself). Best wishes from Heidelberg, Germany. --[[Special:Contributions/147.142.13.86|147.142.13.86]] 14:38, 10 October 2013 (UTC)

A friend that happens to be blind hates this site because of the "It's cause you're dumb" tagline. If he wants a transcript of the comic on xkcd, his option is to come here and have his screen reader program telling him that he is dumb every single time.

How about, "explain xkcd: because sometimes we all need a little help."? -- [[Special:Contributions/173.245.54.65|173.245.54.65]] 02:07, 8 February 2016 (UTC)

:Oh, hadn't thought about that. There's been recurring complaints about this over the years, though the tagline's been around since before we were a wiki. I'll write something up and put this to a vote. '''[[User:Davidy22|{{Color|#707|David}}y²²]]'''[[User talk:Davidy22|<tt>[talk]</tt>]] 09:00, 8 February 2016 (UTC)

== A point of confusion ==

Why is 'Apatosaurus' a category but 'Internet Argument' no longer a category? [[User:Greyson|Greyson]] ([[User talk:Greyson|talk]]) 13:53, 20 June 2013 (UTC)
:Cuz people hit the random button, see an Apatosaurus feature in three comics and figure it must be a recurring theme. Same as the internet argument thing. Will get round to a category purge after we've cleared out all the incomplete tags. I think there's one for ferrets hidden away somewhere in the dark recesses of our catalog of categories. '''[[User:Davidy22|{{Color|#707|David}}y²²]]'''[[User talk:Davidy22|<tt>[talk]</tt>]] 14:45, 20 June 2013 (UTC)
::On the subject, can I suggest a "Barred from Conferences" category, or similar? That's definitely a recurring theme (for a long, long time), and thus should be justified enough. I'd be happy to add various qualifying articles as I scroll through again, if I can, but first I'll leave it up to someone else to solidify the actual name. (In case it turns out not to be just conferences, for example.) [[Special:Contributions/178.98.31.27|178.98.31.27]] 16:27, 22 June 2013 (UTC)

== Incomplete comics statement ==

I suggest the minor change: "We have an explanation for all x xkcd comics, and only y (y/x %) are '''marked as''' incomplete." –[[User:St.nerol|St.nerol]] ([[User talk:St.nerol|talk]]) 08:07, 21 June 2013 (UTC)

== 1262 is out ==

So what are you waiting for? [[Special:Contributions/75.60.27.102|75.60.27.102]] 06:25, 9 September 2013 (UTC)
:<nowiki>(diff | hist) . . N 1262: Unquote‎; 06:23, 9 September 2013 (UTC) . . (+322)‎ . . ‎Davidy22 (Talk | contribs | block)‎ (Created page with "{{comic | number = 1262 | date = September 9, 2013 | title = Unquote | image = unquote.png | titletext = I guess it's a saying from the Old Country. }} ==Expl...")</nowiki>
:Examine the time stamps. '''[[User:Davidy22|{{Color|#707|David}}y²²]]'''[[User talk:Davidy22|<tt>[talk]</tt>]] 06:30, 9 September 2013 (UTC)

== Adverts ==

I am not going to disable my adblock, I hate ads. If you accept bitcoin I can make a donation though. [[Special:Contributions/184.66.160.91|184.66.160.91]] 05:24, 27 September 2013 (UTC)
:Our ads are always easy-to-load images as opposed to flash ads, they're always pointing to some valuable product of some form and we've looked at and approved all of them. They also occupy space that would otherwise have been empty, as our one ad is bound strictly to the sidebar. We used to have a paypal donation button, but it was pitifully tended to and a much less reliable source of income than ads. Ads are the only reliable business model for small sites like this one; unless our readers suddenly become willing to pay all our server costs for us, we can't feasibly afford a better hosting plan without ads. We legally aren't allowed to open a merch store, because that infringes on Randall's shop, and we haven't had a single generous benefactor yet. If you want to stop seeing our server error messages, loosening up adblock for us and contributing to our impressions count will help us massively. '''[[User:Davidy22|{{Color|#707|David}}y²²]]'''[[User talk:Davidy22|<tt>[talk]</tt>]] 06:00, 27 September 2013 (UTC)

I don't care about your server message, I wanted to make a donation. Sooo, you don't want any bitcoins? [[Special:Contributions/37.221.161.235|37.221.161.235]] 07:16, 27 September 2013 (UTC)
:This took a bit of digging. We're fine with bitcoin donations, it's just that at the rate donations came in, they were just not enough to pay for anything. [https://coinbase.com/checkouts/b19f921822ac962807a8f72d51509e59] '''[[User:Davidy22|{{Color|#707|David}}y²²]]'''[[User talk:Davidy22|<tt>[talk]</tt>]] 20:34, 28 September 2013 (UTC)

Donation made! [[Special:Contributions/184.66.160.91|184.66.160.91]] 23:23, 30 September 2013 (UTC)
:Thanks! '''[[User:Davidy22|{{Color|#707|David}}y²²]]'''[[User talk:Davidy22|<tt>[talk]</tt>]] 02:27, 1 October 2013 (UTC)

I hope you kept your Bitcoins ;) --[[User:192·168·0·1|192·168·0·1]] ([[User talk:192·168·0·1|talk]]) 21:43, 5 May 2022 (UTC)

Am I the only one that feels it is "wrong" that the explainxkcd site has ads and the real xkcd doesn't have any? It feels like someone is profiting off of Randall's work. Does he officially endorse this website? Do any proceeds help go to support his ongoing publication of an awesome comic? [[Special:Contributions/173.245.54.19|173.245.54.19]] 16:01, 7 July 2015 (UTC)

:An admin will be able to give you more detail than me, but explainxkcd has a significant number of visitors (and thus hosting costs), and no way to generate income other than donations and ads. In contrast, Randall makes money from his comics by way of books and merchandise (and possibly public speaking), some of which will pay for his hosting. He could choose to have ads on his site to generate additional income, its his choice not to. I have no knowledge of the finances of explainxkcd, however I doubt there is much/any surplus ad revenue being pocketed by the owners/admin. As far as the site being officially endorsed, not as far as I'm aware, no.
:Also, for more discussion on adverts/income, see [http://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php/explain_xkcd:Community_portal/Proposals#Sidebar_ads here].--[[User:Pudder|Pudder]] ([[User talk:Pudder|talk]]) 16:21, 7 July 2015 (UTC)

== /wiki is returning a 403 ==

Hello, 
http://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/ is returning a 403 now. In my eyes you should redirect it to the main-page instead :-). --[[User:DaB.|DaB.]] ([[User talk:DaB.|talk]]) 12:41, 8 November 2013 (UTC)
:We have a new, hopefully better, server. The problem is already reported to [[User_talk:Jeff#Forbidden]] --[[User:Dgbrt|Dgbrt]] ([[User talk:Dgbrt|talk]]) 14:22, 8 November 2013 (UTC)

== Explain Explain XKCD / Explain^2 XKCD ==

This particular comic explanation requires explanation. Way too many potential cross references with each conjecture requiring its own explanation page. Dial it back a little. {{unsigned ip|108.162.245.11}}
:Uh, sorry, could you clarify that a little? '''[[User:Davidy22|{{Color|#707|David}}y²²]]'''[[User talk:Davidy22|<tt>[talk]</tt>]] 07:23, 19 November 2013 (UTC)

::He is talking about the [http://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/ http://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/] issue. --[[User:Dgbrt|Dgbrt]] ([[User talk:Dgbrt|talk]]) 21:32, 19 November 2013 (UTC)
:::Well if it's that, that's an intentional permissions setting on a URL that no-one is feasibly going to type. Unless you can come up with a better use for that URL, with a reason? '''[[User:Davidy22|{{Color|#707|David}}y²²]]'''[[User talk:Davidy22|<tt>[talk]</tt>]] 08:40, 20 November 2013 (UTC)
::::A symlink to "index.php" at the root folder would solve the problem.--[[User:Dgbrt|Dgbrt]] ([[User talk:Dgbrt|talk]]) 09:26, 20 November 2013 (UTC)
:::::I cannot believe how many weeks that took to fix. Amazing. No one was going to type it, but everyone was going to get redirected to it from the home page! [[Special:Contributions/108.162.222.227|108.162.222.227]] 11:37, 20 November 2013 (UTC)

The problem is still not solved. [http://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/ http://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/] gives still a 403 error because "index.php" is not included in the http server configuration as a default index page. --[[User:Dgbrt|Dgbrt]] ([[User talk:Dgbrt|talk]]) 20:07, 20 November 2013 (UTC)
:: I've fixed this. Sorry about the delay. Was super busy! --[[User:Jeff|Jeff]] ([[User talk:Jeff|talk]]) 16:02, 21 November 2013 (UTC)
:::Thanks Jeff, it's working. --[[User:Dgbrt|Dgbrt]] ([[User talk:Dgbrt|talk]]) 22:20, 21 November 2013 (UTC)

== Webmaster: Obtrusive video ad on your site ==

In the ad section I saw a box sticking out and blocking out the explanation. This was therefore a very obtrusive botched video ad. Please remove this ad from your site. [[Special:Contributions/199.27.128.188|199.27.128.188]] 22:29, 6 June 2014 (UTC)

EDIT: It's now sticking out and preventing me from clicking on the "Save page" button. [[Special:Contributions/199.27.128.188|199.27.128.188]] 22:29, 6 June 2014 (UTC)
:We only accept GIFs for moving ads. Ads should also be contained within the sidebar as they're techonogically restricted to standard-sized PNGs and GIFs, so an extruding ad would be a CSS error on the site end/browser error. In addition, we run ads from lots of advertisers, and "this ad" is not specific enough to tell us which ad you want us to remove. Could you provide a screenshot/link/more information? '''[[User:Davidy22|{{Color|#707|David}}y²²]]'''[[User talk:Davidy22|<tt>[talk]</tt>]] 22:54, 6 June 2014 (UTC)

== Adding an arcs list page ==

I think there should be a page listing all webcomics arcs so far (the red spiders, the race, etc.)[[Special:Contributions/188.114.102.134|188.114.102.134]] 12:47, 2 October 2014 (UTC)

:This already exists, see [[:Category:Comic series]]. --[[User:Waldir|Waldir]] ([[User talk:Waldir|talk]]) 05:39, 10 April 2015 (UTC)

== This explanation may be incomplete or incorrect: link ==

This has been bothering me for a while now. Why does the link in the info box for the main page link to editing the main page? It needs to link to the editing of the page which the comic's explanation is on. When I would like to edit the latest XKCD explanation, I click that thinking I am going to edit the explanation, but instead I am led to editing the main page. [[User:Auraxangelic|Auraxangelic]] ([[User talk:Auraxangelic|talk]]) 15:19, 24 October 2014 (UTC)
:Ooooooh, nice catch. I've actually never noticed that before, and it's definitely not intentional. It happens because the text of the explanation page is folded into the main page before mediawiki parses links and syntax, and the "Edit this page" button links to the page that the link is on. I have an idea for how to fix it though, so I'll get on that. '''[[User:Davidy22|{{Color|#707|David}}y²²]]'''[[User talk:Davidy22|<tt>[talk]</tt>]] 01:49, 25 October 2014 (UTC)

== #1454 - bad description ==

"Curly-hair states longingly..." She comes across as disappointed (or even heartbroken), not "longing", which suggests sounding somewhat positive and energetic, rather than deflated. [[Special:Contributions/141.101.99.88|141.101.99.88]] 22:29, 2 December 2014 (UTC)

==Cueball/Rob merge==

It seems to me from a general reading of the comics that Randall has always intended for the character we here call "Cueball" to have the name "Rob". Much as "Cutie" was renamed "Megan" when we learned her name, and now she is identified as "Megan" even in comics where her name is not explicitly mentioned, I think we should consider merging the "Cueball" and "Rob" articles. I know there's a lot of inertia here, but it seems to me that this is Randall's intention for the character's name. [[User:Djbrasier|Djbrasier]] ([[User talk:Djbrasier|talk]]) 13:38, 10 March 2015 (UTC)
: Alternatively, we should un-merge [[Megan]] and [[Cutie]] for consistency. [[User:Djbrasier|Djbrasier]] ([[User talk:Djbrasier|talk]]) 14:50, 10 March 2015 (UTC)
: I'm pretty sure this is an augmentation of the author's internal characters, including the one he has developed involuntarily as to the nature of his love. His memory of his love is not his love, yet it is what he has to love. Randall seems the type to delve into this, and thus I am in support of keeping the character names as they stand. /eof [[Special:Contributions/173.245.56.185|173.245.56.185]] 05:43, 25 March 2015 (UTC)

== Kerbal Space Program ==

I'm a schizophrenic who's been playing Kerbal Space Program for about five days with no sleep, and I'm pretty sure this is a reference to [https://www.google.com/search?q=xkcd+kerbal+space+program&oq=xkcd+kerbal+space+program&aqs=chrome..69i57.10851j0j7&sourceid=chrome&es_sm=122&ie=UTF-8 comic 1365] :D [[Special:Contributions/173.245.56.185|173.245.56.185]] 05:39, 25 March 2015 (UTC)

== 1509 is missing ==

When will it be added? By bot, I presume.--[[User:17jiangz1|17jiangz1]] ([[User talk:17jiangz1|talk]]) 04:51, 8 April 2015 (UTC)

== Broken Date Box on comics ==

The "Comic #1511 (April 13, 2015)" textbox that appears on top of each comic breaks if you shrink the screen. I think the space after the comma needs to be replaced with a non breaking space.{{unsigned ip|108.162.238.144}}

:Is it fixed now? '''[[User:Davidy22|{{Color|#707|David}}y²²]]'''[[User talk:Davidy22|<tt>[talk]</tt>]] 20:59, 13 April 2015 (UTC)

::It looks like it. I had pointed it out once before and it was fixed. I guess somebody reverted that change or something... --[[Special:Contributions/173.245.56.202|173.245.56.202]] 13:42, 15 April 2015 (UTC)

== 1515? ==

Is it correct that we have 1515 comics, as of April 15, 2015? --[[Special:Contributions/173.245.48.122|173.245.48.122]] 05:20, 15 April 2015 (UTC)
:It's not, but some people insist on making comic pages for things that aren't comics. I'll fix that. '''[[User:Davidy22|{{Color|#707|David}}y²²]]'''[[User talk:Davidy22|<tt>[talk]</tt>]] 06:27, 15 April 2015 (UTC)

== 972 is broken ==

Look, I'm not going to make an account here or anything, but I just wanted to point out that trying to access the page for comic #972 leads to a database error, and maybe someone should check on that. [[Special:Contributions/173.245.48.102|173.245.48.102]] 07:45, 14 July 2015 (UTC)

Actually a lot of other pages lead to that same error as well... Even the 'Technical Diskussions' sub-page is broken. Seems to my, like some swap-spac needs cleaning up? [[Special:Contributions/108.162.230.83|108.162.230.83]] 10:32, 14 July 2015 (UTC)
:Yep. It's a symptom of another problem, but the errors should be cleared up now. '''[[User:Davidy22|{{Color|#707|David}}y²²]]'''[[User talk:Davidy22|<tt>[talk]</tt>]] 16:31, 14 July 2015 (UTC)
::No dice. [[997]] is still broken. --[[Special:Contributions/198.41.235.119|198.41.235.119]] 00:27, 3 August 2015 (UTC)

:::Looks like they're working now. 21:01, 2016-11-27 {{unsigned ip|141.101.98.163}}

== #1567 ==

I think the current explanation is missing the connection, and the parody of, many "As Seen On TV" commercials selling kitchen products. Many of these commercials show people trying to use common kitchen equipment (pots, pans, can openers, etc) in a way that no normally functioning human would do it (for example, one has a lady draining the liquid from a pot of food into a sink in an extremely awkward manner — one that no normal person who has ever seen a kitchen would do — but then the lid flies one way, food goes another, there's a huge mess, etc; another commercial has someone trying to open a can of food using a can opener '''backwards''', with the woman looking extremely confused looking on how the can opener is supposed to be used or attached to the can [if you told someone act like they are a clueless monkey trying to use a can opener for the first time, that's basically what the commercial had the woman doing — no joke]). These commercials often begin with phrases such as "If you are like me" or "If you are like most home makers" or some other closely related "If you are like..." phrase (thus this comic is directly tieing itself to these commercials using this catch phrase). [[Special:Contributions/108.162.220.11|108.162.220.11]] 07:50, 21 August 2015 (UTC)
:: Other opening catch phrases for these commercials include the "Tired of [fill-in made-up frustration]" and the "Do you [fill-in made-up frustration]" kind. [[Special:Contributions/108.162.220.11|108.162.220.11]] 08:09, 21 August 2015 (UTC)

== "I used Google news BEFORE it was clickbait" ==

Go to a handful of older pages on this wiki, and it won't be long before you see this phrase in the comments - [[941: Depth Perception]], for instance has two of them. Does anyone know why this happens? [[Special:Contributions/108.162.221.116|108.162.221.116]] 10:59, 23 August 2015 (UTC)
:That's the signature of a person who used to post here. If you click through, it actually goes to a userpage. '''[[User:Davidy22|{{Color|#707|David}}y²²]]'''[[User talk:Davidy22|<tt>[talk]</tt>]] 14:25, 23 August 2015 (UTC)

== URL ==

I notice that whenever you add "explain" to an xkcd url, it takes you here! neat! [[Special:Contributions/198.41.235.233|198.41.235.233]] 23:13, 28 August 2015 (UTC)
:Someone noticed! Finally! '''[[User:Davidy22|{{Color|#707|David}}y²²]]'''[[User talk:Davidy22|<tt>[talk]</tt>]] 04:45, 29 August 2015 (UTC)

== Should we really be using CC-BY-SA? ==

Don't get me wrong, CC-BY-SA is my favorite creative commons license. The problem is, are we really allowed? The reason I'm worried is that I'm not sure if what we are doing really counts as "fair use" with respect to XKCD. It would probably be better to do CC-NC-BY-SA, to respect XKCD, or at least put a note that CC-BY-SA only covers the wiki portion (since it's probably too late to do CC-BY-SA anyway).
[[Special:Contributions/173.245.54.37|173.245.54.37]] 23:38, 27 January 2016 (UTC)
:This is a tough one. Mediawiki sites generally use CC-BY-SA, even if the content they're based off is copyrighted (Wikia sites for various topics do this). The license only does apply to content ''created'' here. What should probably be done, if it isn't already, is some specification on pages in the <code>File:</code> namespace indicating that they are owned by someone other than the owners of this site. [[User:Schiffy|Schiffy]] ([[User_talk:Schiffy|Speak to me]]|[[Special:Contributions/Schiffy|What I've done]]) 19:37, 7 April 2016 (UTC)

== #1663: Garden not yet added? ==

For me it's 4:30 AM, 4/4/16 - I have a sleep schedule just like [https://xkcd.com/361/], so I've been first on quite a few xkcd explanations immediately. when they came out.
I notice that usually, immediately once a new xkcd comic is released, a bot generates a corresponding bare-bones page on this wiki. However, this new comic "1663: Garden" doesn't yet have an automatically-generated page. Maybe it's because of the strange user-session hash key that appears in the URL bar when the "comic" is interacted with? Maybe this sort of interactive thing messes with the bot?
Am I just being impatient? Do I have to wait a few minutes? (I'm going to bed, and this probably won't be seen until tomorrow, but I am at least interested in knowing how the bot system works.) [[Special:Contributions/173.245.54.21|173.245.54.21]] 09:01, 4 April 2016 (UTC)

== Skins broken ==

It seems both the Classic and Monobook skins are very very broken. Only Vector seems to be laid out normally. [[User:Schiffy|Schiffy]] ([[User_talk:Schiffy|Speak to me]]|[[Special:Contributions/Schiffy|What I've done]]) 19:39, 7 April 2016 (UTC)
: Yes, for me too. Let me see what can be done. [[User:Jeff|Jeff]] ([[User talk:Jeff|talk]]) 20:10, 12 April 2016 (UTC)
::All calls to /load.php seem to fail, which results in the broken look. --[[Special:Contributions/162.158.86.167|162.158.86.167]] 11:02, 14 April 2016 (UTC)
:::Oh wow, I thought I was the only one. [[User:SuperSupermario24|Just some random derp]] 15:57, 8 May 2016 (UTC)
::::Should be fixed now. '''[[User:Davidy22|{{Color|#707|David}}y²²]]'''[[User talk:Davidy22|<tt>[talk]</tt>]] 18:59, 17 May 2016 (UTC)

== #1682: Not sure about the reference for Russian meaning for Bun ==
''Also interesting to note is that in several Slavic languages (including Russian, Czech and Polish), the word for Rabbit literally means Little King''

I'm a native Russian speaker, and i've never heard of Rabbit being used for ''Little King''...

* Rabbit: ''krolik'' (кролик)
* Little King: ''korolyok'' (королёк)

Not sure if this above statement is correct for Russian language. {{unsigned ip|162.158.255.28}}
:This is the main page. You probably want to put this in [[Talk:1682: Bun]]'''[[User:Davidy22|{{Color|#707|David}}y²²]]'''[[User talk:Davidy22|<tt>[talk]</tt>]] 16:36, 20 May 2016 (UTC)

== Random Button ==
The actual xkcd site has one and adding one would make it closer to the actual site and make discovering random comics and their explanations easier. It could go next to the comic # button.[[Special:Contributions/173.245.52.69|173.245.52.69]] 01:03, 5 June 2016 (UTC)
:There is a random page button on the left. '''[[User:Davidy22|{{Color|#707|David}}y²²]]'''[[User talk:Davidy22|<tt>[talk]</tt>]] 02:36, 5 June 2016 (UTC)
::Oh. Didn't see that. Sorry.[[Special:Contributions/173.245.52.69|173.245.52.69]] 20:16, 5 June 2016 (UTC)

== XKCD Alignment Chart ==

A while back, I was searching for an XKCD alignment chart, with no success, so I made one. It is not perfect, so I'm wondering what other opinions on the alignment of the characters are.

Lawful Good- Beret

Neutral Good- Ponytail

Chaotic Good- Mrs. Roberts

Lawful Neutral-Cueball

Neutral Neutral- Megan

Chaotic Neutral- White hat

Lawful Evil- Hairy

Neutral Evil- Danish

Chaotic Evil- Black Hat

--[[User:Fallencrow305|Fallencrow305]] ([[User talk:Fallencrow305|talk]]) 22:10, 28 July 2016 (UTC)

:What about Help I'm trapped in a drivers license factory Elaine Roberts? --[[User:JayRulesXKCD|JayRulesXKCD]] ([[User talk:JayRulesXKCD|talk]]) 15:48, 29 September 2016 (UTC)
::Or Hairbun? Or Science Girl? Here are my predictions: Elaine - Chaotic Good, Hairbun - Lawful Good, Science Girl - Lawful Neutral --[[User:JayRulesXKCD|JayRulesXKCD]] ([[User talk:JayRulesXKCD|talk]]) 16:00, 29 September 2016 (UTC)

What? How can Beret Guy be anything other than chaotic?

== 1713 cc also means carbon copy. So 50 carbon copies of either of those words could be called for. ==

1713 cc also means carbon copy. So 50 carbon copies of either of those words could be called for. {{unsigned ip|108.162.215.146}}
:Sorry, but [[User:108.162.215.146|108.162.215.146]], you need to remember to sign your work. --[[User:JayRulesXKCD|JayRulesXKCD]] ([[User talk:JayRulesXKCD|talk]]) 11:50, 26 September 2016 (UTC)

== Chatroom Idea... What do you guys think? ==
I have an idea. What if there was a discussion board for the wiki? (And no, I don't mean boards like this or the "comment section" of comic explanations. I mean a live chatroom plugin of sorts. We could add it to the website and enable it so we can talk to each other in real-time and make live edits with each other. This way, we can also let each other know of edits we've made, make new pages altogether, or just talk. What do you guys think? -- [[User:JayRulesXKCD|JayRulesXKCD]] ([[User talk:JayRulesXKCD|talk]]) 9:10, 13 September 2016
:The [http://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php/Special:RecentChanges recent changes] log already notifies all users on the site of new pages and edits. User talk pages and the community portals exist for coordination. Also, avoid creating new comment topics in the middle of a talk page in the future, comments are supposed to follow a chronological order. '''[[User:Davidy22|{{Color|#707|David}}y²²]]'''[[User talk:Davidy22|<tt>[talk]</tt>]] 15:39, 13 September 2016 (UTC)
::Sorry. --[[User:JayRulesXKCD|JayRulesXKCD]] ([[User talk:JayRulesXKCD|talk]]) 13:59, 26 September 2016 (UTC)

== Copying versus embedding ==

Hi, I'm new here and I'm trying not to be an asshole. However, I just noticed that this site uses its own archive of copied xkcd comics, rather than using the image URL provided for hotlinking and embedding. I can understand this website will want to have its own archive in case xkcd.org ever goes offline, but until then, why not just embed the images instead of copying?

The reason I'm asking: I just realised I hardly ever go to xkcd.org anymore ever since my browser put explainxkcd above xkcd.org. Explanations get updated, so sometimes I check back later, which rarely happens with the comics. It makes perfect sense. But if more people experience this issue, xkcd.org is getting fewer unique visitors because of it, and this could be fixed by fetching the image directly from there, while still making and storing a copy in case it is needed in the future. Thoughts, anyone? [[Special:Contributions/141.101.104.33|141.101.104.33]] 17:08, 18 October 2016 (UTC)
:So, we can't do this for every comic, like [[1190]] or other april fools comics. Also, xkcd's revenue comes from merchandise sales, not ad revenue, so I believe it's not actually negatively impacting them that we're serving the images ourselves rather than making the main site serve them for us. '''[[User:Davidy22|{{Color|#707|David}}y²²]]'''[[User talk:Davidy22|<tt>[talk]</tt>]] 05:39, 19 October 2016 (UTC)

:Embedding images is generally known as "stealing bandwidth", since it uses resources of the original site's server (may be limited) without bringing it any actual visitors (they won't see anything else of the website, like announcements, shop, other sections, ...). Also, depending on how unique visitors are counted, "visitors" through embedding might be invisible (client's side scripts won't be loaded). So no image embedding without the original site's owner express permission. [[Special:Contributions/141.101.88.106|141.101.88.106]] 12:51, 7 February 2017 (UTC)

== Other Languages ==
Are there translations of pages anywhere. It has been mentioned that they are on subdomains of this site, or a sub-page, as Main_Page/es for spanish. I can't seem to find them there. [[User:The Muffin Man|The Muffin Man]] ([[User talk:The Muffin Man|talk]]) 14:48, 7 February 2017 (UTC)
:It's a work in progress, long delayed but I really do want to get to it eventually. '''[[User:Davidy22|{{Color|#707|David}}y²²]]'''[[User talk:Davidy22|<tt>[talk]</tt>]] 18:58, 7 February 2017 (UTC)

== Why are there male/female symbols in some of the entries? ==

Those symbols are not in the comic, but they're in the table. I think a vandal put them there. Can someone remove them from the Lavaball, Bladeball, Eggspotting, Merfishing, Consequence Golf and Heck Escape? (now don't act like someone who criticizes "politically correct leftist "libt++d" SJW snowflakes" just because I said "heck" or censored the derogatory term for "liberal" or not even trying to say these uncensored) -- [[Special:Contributions/108.162.221.106|108.162.221.106]] 12:36, 25 November 2017 (UTC)

== How quaint ==

From the Main Page:

Explain xkcd: '''It's 'cause you're dumb.'''

From the Rules section:

'''Don't be a jerk. '''

(Emphasis mine)

How very ,very quaint. --[[Special:Contributions/162.158.126.100|162.158.126.100]] 21:00, 5 December 2017 (UTC)

== HTTPS? ==

Hi,
With the general trend towards HTTPS being favoured over HTTP for security and speed reasons, would it be possible to force the use of HTTPS and secure the mixed content please?

Please see [https://www.whynopadlock.com/results/7e707bfd-cd71-4b00-b95e-be226fb10fb6 Why no Padlock?] for more details.

Thanks,
[[Special:Contributions/162.158.179.202|162.158.179.202]] 10:32, 13 January 2018 (UTC)

:Browsing using HTTPS seems to just work. There's even a signed certificate.
:https://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php/1946

:I really don't get why people are so convinced that browsing using HTTPS is so much more "secure". You even seem to claim that it's faster?
:If you love it so much, install a browser extension like https://www.eff.org/https-everywhere.

:With the exception of the login / register page, I really don't see the point for enforcing this for the whole site. I am no admin though.
[[Special:Contributions/172.69.54.93|172.69.54.93]] 22:30, 25 January 2018 (UTC)

We are already in 2018 and this website still does not even redirect automatically to HTTPS ([https://support.cloudflare.com/hc/en-us/articles/200170536-How-do-I-redirect-all-visitors-to-HTTPS-SSL- you can do it so easily with Cloudflare...]) nor enforce HTTPS with {{w|HSTS}}... I don't know, just check [https://scotthelme.co.uk/hardening-your-http-response-headers/#strict-transport-security on Scott Helme's site] why it's important. Having to rely on the user installing an extension for doing the sysadmin work is a bad joke, really. And it does not fix some issues with mixed content of course. With Let's Encrypt and Cloudflare providing certificates for free and the plethora of tutorials online on securing a website (not limited to HTTPS), there is no excuse to not do it. -- [[User:guest|guest]] ([[User talk:guest|talk]]) 11:22, 31 January 2018 (UTC)

== "It's 'cause you're dumb" ==
I see that there was some talk about this a while ago, in which people seemed to agree that the "It's 'cause you're dumb" tagline is unnecessarily mean and should be changed... and yet, it's still here. I'd like to add some more fuel to the fire with several reasons why I really hate this tagline:

* The tagline doesn't fit the tone of XKCD. Randall celebrates knowledge. Even Black Hat wouldn't just outright say "You're dumb", because he's a classhole who can insult way better than that.
* Many of the people who contribute to this wiki are very smart. They're not dumb.
* They're also quite amicable from what I've seen. If they wouldn't insult someone, why is the website doing so?
* Not knowing something is not the same as being dumb. Even the smartest people don't know everything.
* Having a desire to learn is smart, not dumb.
* The tagline's logic is flawed. Just because you learn a new thing, doesn't mean you were dumb to begin with.

Anyone with me on this?

[[User:Hawthorn|Hawthorn]] ([[User talk:Hawthorn|talk]]) 14:07, 20 February 2018 (UTC)

: The first line of the "Rules" section is "Don't be a jerk" at the time of writing. The first thing this wobsite does is to break that rule. I'm not sure what else is to be said here. --[[Special:Contributions/162.158.126.76|162.158.126.76]] 16:55, 20 March 2018 (UTC)

:I always thought that was weird too. But it's still there... I'll tell the admins about it, and hopefully it will be changed. [[User:Herobrine|Herobrine]] ([[User talk:Herobrine|talk]]) 13:18, 18 April 2018 (UTC)

Explanation: ''This'' is a joke... Missing the punchline? --[[User:Dgbrt|Dgbrt]] ([[User talk:Dgbrt|talk]]) 15:15, 18 April 2018 (UTC)

Personally, I'm fine with the current tagline. I consider it a joke and don't feel offended. However, if there is consensus a) that and b) to what it should be changed, I'm ok with changing it. --[[User:SlashMe|SlashMe]] ([[User talk:SlashMe|talk]]) 16:18, 18 April 2018 (UTC)

I'm wondering, would it be possible to temporarily (a week or so?) stop new ads from appearing in the sidebar and replace it with a poll concerning this issue? Right now it's just showing what appeared in the banners in [[1965: Background Apps]], and not a real ad. [[Special:Contributions/162.158.58.81|162.158.58.81]] 10:12, 19 April 2018 (UTC)
:The advertisement is used to pay the fees needed to run this site. Right now this wiki get's an upgrade but when it's done this discussion will get a proper placement here. --[[User:Dgbrt|Dgbrt]] ([[User talk:Dgbrt|talk]]) 13:37, 21 April 2018 (UTC)

The first time I encountered this tagline I thought it was pretty funny. Satire can be hard to detect online but this one seems clear enough. --[[User:DKMell|DKMell]] ([[User talk:DKMell|talk]]) 20:42, 20 August 2018 (UTC)
:What is it satirizing? I'm serious; I genuinely don't know. It could well be that I just don't get the joke. [[User:Hawthorn|Hawthorn]] ([[User talk:Hawthorn|talk]]) 13:39, 10 January 2019 (UTC)

At first I liked the joke, but now it's either annoying or I ignore it. Personally I don't feel it needs to be changed, as it's in the satirical spirit of xkcd, but I wouldn't care too much. [[User:Nyx goddess|Nyx goddess]] ([[User talk:Nyx goddess|talk]]) 22:56, 5 December 2018 (UTC)

It's satire, if it gets removed that's exactly the kind of overzealous political correctness that MAGA chuds are talking about when they accuse us of being snowflakes, howabout let's not give them ammo. - 02:03, 22 December 2018 (UTC) {{unsigned ip|162.158.63.94}}
:As above: what it is satirizing? Also, for my part, it's not about political correctness at all; it's that the tagline doesn't match my personal positive image of XKCD, nor of this wiki, and it just feels unfitting to me, for all the reasons that I laid out. [[User:Hawthorn|Hawthorn]] ([[User talk:Hawthorn|talk]]) 13:39, 10 January 2019 (UTC)

I'm in favor of a change. Let's drop the "dumb". Or at least modify it. I propose a "strikethrough" of dumb, then add any one of a list of possible words: confused, ignorant, curious, wondering, befuddled... (Oooh, could it randomly change each time the page is loaded? Code wizards, advance!) [[User:Imperpay|Imperpay]] ([[User talk:Imperpay|talk]]) 22:25, 24 January 2019 (UTC)
:A complete list of all synonyms of dumb, including dumb and all synonyms of those synonyms, according to thesaurus.com. One randomly loads each time you load the page via rng, or on a once a day system, like the incomplete page of the day. That would actually probably make it more mean on average, but more clearly a joke. Wouldn’t be impossible to code either.[[User:Netherin5|Netherin5]] ([[User talk:Netherin5|talk]]) 15:18, 21 February 2019 (UTC)

The reason I come to Explain XKCD is because I'm excited to see what other people have said about it. I agree with the above - it doesn't fit the spirit of xkcd's joy for knowledge and it really just isn't why people come here. Furthermore, it skirts demeaning people with disabilities. Please remove it. [[User:Jachra|Jachra]] ([[User talk:Jachra|talk]]) 07:43, 2 July 2019 (UTC)

I also agree with Hawthorn. This tagline always was very strange for me. No, this is nothing about political correctness. I don't mind being insulted, if there is a joke, or something ironical or satirical behind it. But there just isn't. It's just not funny at all.
A random selection on every page load from a long list of completely absurd reasons would be more the XKCDs way. You could even try to create one or more "''It's because ...''" explanations for every comic and randomly display one out of those. 2206: "''... you don't know how to type capital numbers.''", 2205: "''... you don't assume Pi is one.''", 2204: "''... you didn't give us a moon.''", 2203: "''... there wasn't a really big meteor impact for a while.''" and so on. Pretty straight forward. The more frequent visitors of XKCD would probably even get many of the references and remember the corresponding comic. --[[Special:Contributions/162.158.91.221|162.158.91.221]] 17:39, 24 September 2019 (UTC)
:I did recently raise the issue again on the [https://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php/explain_xkcd:Community_portal/Miscellaneous#Is_the_.22It.27s_.27cause_you.27re_dumb.22_tagline_a_relic_of_the_past.3F Community Portal], explaining my case in more detail, although it seems to have garnered little interest. [[User:Hawthorn|Hawthorn]] ([[User talk:Hawthorn|talk]]) 12:13, 30 September 2019 (UTC)

What instead, then? It's poor form to suggest half a change; if not "it's cause you're dumb," what should the tagline be? [[Special:Contributions/173.245.52.85|173.245.52.85]] 16:37, 25 December 2019 (UTC)

There seems a pretty clear consensus to get rid of the jarring insult, with no apparent objections. Has been for years now. What do we need to do to delete it? What's the blocker, here?
"first we need a consensus on replacement" isn't an answer. It sets too high a bar for something which is trivial, and anyway replacement is a separate task which can be performed later. Deletion is step 1, so what needs to be done to perform step 1, since none of us seems to have access to do so?
Personally, I'd argue for making it publicly editable, which then magically also resolves step 2, replacement. Any tagline that stayed for any amount of time would then only remain because it was widely considered worthy by site members. --[[Special:Contributions/172.69.71.143|172.69.71.143]] 16:39, 30 September 2021 (UTC)
:I like that idea, it efficiently gets rid of the years-old issue, and any further issues would have their own discussion page, plus any change that's problematic, obscene or spam could easily be reversed. I can imagine that at first there would be many changes, but after a few weeks/ months it should stabilize itself. [[User:256.256.256.256|256.256.256.256]] ([[User talk:256.256.256.256|talk]]) 14:19, 30 November 2021 (UTC)

In my opinion it is not an issue of political correctness, or any related flavour of woke nonsense. It is much simpler. Problem is, ''"It's 'cause you're dumb"'' is extremely pretentious and high-horsed, while simultaneously having absolutely no business being so. It feels like it is said by someone who unironically refers to him/herself in third person. Someone whose professional CV includes the fact that he/she used to be a class leader in second grade of primary school. Someone who used to remind a teacher about homework that the teacher was supposed to check, but forgot. Someone who still asks his/her mom to cut the crust off his/her sandwiches. I am not offended nor insulted by this line, I am just cringing because of that line's author being too socially inept to realize that he/she is not in the place to judge and attempt insulting readers' intellectual capabilities. Understanding Munroe's poorly drawn stick figures, diatribes, and diagrams originating from his neurotic turmoil does not come with an added bonus of entering the supposed high echelons of intelligence, and certainly not comedy nor humour. Munroe's "humour" actually requires only the superficial sliver of knowledge from any given domain to understand and thus does not really come with too many prerequisites, while at the same time it succeeds in making readers feel rare and exceptional as a result of being able to understand said "humour", and makes them feel much smarter than they actually are. That's why those comics were able to find quite a large audience within their niche. It is quite smart in itself, actually: while Munroe may be poor quality comedian, he seems to be self-aware enough to realize the existence of his own shortcomings, and compensate by "bribing" his readers via appeasing their egos. In return, the readers are willing to overlook poor comedic value of virtually all Munroe's content, as long as they are being deluded to feel exceptionally intelligent and sophisticated for understanding the comics' supposedly hyperintellectual subtle references. Meanwhile, doing what this website does: insulting that audience is basically, in principle, going in the completely opposite direction to what actually made Munroe's content successful in the first place, and hence is quite self-destructive from this website's point of view. --[[Special:Contributions/172.70.242.207|172.70.242.207]] 00:20, 3 May 2022 (UTC)

== Editor FAQ ==
Eventually we may need that banner at the top for something else, like the incomplete explanation spotlight, or when the wiki was being upgraded, so I think we should add the Editor FAQ in the New Here? section. [[User:Herobrine|Herobrine]] ([[User talk:Herobrine|talk]]) 11:21, 2 June 2018 (UTC)
:It's a first draft and I'm just waiting to be convinced that it's NOT incomplete. And be sure I haven't written it without a plan how to present it on the proper places. Furthermore this "Sitenotice" on the top is only "dissmissable" for valid users, every visitor not logged in does see this always. Thanks for your participation and I'm grateful about any help. --[[User:Dgbrt|Dgbrt]] ([[User talk:Dgbrt|talk]]) 16:30, 2 June 2018 (UTC)

== Categories on Main Page ==

[[MediaWiki:Common.css]] has the following entry:
<pre>
.page-Main_Page div#catlinks ul li {
border-left: none;
position: absolute;
left: 70px;
bottom: 6px;
}
</pre>
The <code>70px</code> cause an overlap for me in Firefox, and much too small a gap in Chrome. I suggest to actually remove that line completely, just compare it with categories on other pages: The gap is quite large. In Firefox, also the <code>6px</code> are too much, but in Chrome they are required. But it might be worth to try whether setting vertical align to something else can achieve a more consistent display. --[[Special:Contributions/162.158.88.230|162.158.88.230]] 10:22, 13 July 2018 (UTC)
:And the comment above that says: "Dirty hack to hide the categories of the current comic from main page. ...". I'm aware of this but there is much more, especially for a mobile version I'm looking forward to. Only in this case I see three problems: The component is rendered as a list (ul,li) by hiding the bullets. This then empty space is always rendered different in different browsers. Using "position: absolute" tries to circumvent this but absolute positioning is bad layout and never should be used. Furthermore mixing the units ''px'' and ''em'' in many places is also a problem when comparing it at different browsers. I'm working on this with the final goal also having a proper mobile version, not only for Firefox, Chrome, Edge,... on a desktop. --[[User:Dgbrt|Dgbrt]] ([[User talk:Dgbrt|talk]]) 12:12, 13 July 2018 (UTC)

== Bookmark ==

I think we should add this book mark I made to automatically transfer anything from xkcd to its explainxkcd page (I was frustrated, ok?):

javascript:x=window.location.href;x = x.replace(/\D/g,'');t=document.title.substring(5).replace(/ /g,"_");window.location.href="https://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php/"+x+":"+t;

I know the code could be more compact, but using this, you can just press a button and it will take you to the explain page {{unsigned ip|172.68.47.84}}
:Just changing the URL from <code>xkcd.com/2115/</code> to <code>explainxkcd.com/2115/</code> (putting the word explain to the beginning) does the same. --[[User:Dgbrt|Dgbrt]] ([[User talk:Dgbrt|talk]]) 16:41, 22 February 2019 (UTC)
:Collecting these [[Browser helpers|here]]. – [[User:Yfmcpxpj|Yfmcpxpj]] ([[User talk:Yfmcpxpj|talk]]) 04:48, 13 October 2020 (UTC)

== Non-comic explanations? ==

So I was looking at xkcd and I noticed a little jokey line near the bottom of the page in very small print that reads <pre> <nowiki> "xkcd.com is best viewed with Netscape Navigator 4.0 or below on a Pentium 3±1 emulated in Javascript on an Apple IIGS at a screen resolution of 1024x1. Please enable your ad blockers, disable high-heat drying, and remove your device from Airplane Mode and set it to Boat Mode. For security reasons, please leave caps lock on while browsing." </nowiki> </pre>
Now, I know enough to understand the joke, but it would be nice to have a page for this. Do we have one? Am I just blind? Either way, I would like to know. Thanks! [[User:Nyx goddess|Nyx goddess]] ([[User talk:Nyx goddess|talk]]) 23:39, 28 March 2019 (UTC)
:Nevermind, I just found it. Sorry! [[User:Nyx goddess|Nyx goddess]] ([[User talk:Nyx goddess|talk]]) 23:40, 28 March 2019 (UTC)

== Latest comic released. ==

I don't know where to post this, but the bots haven't created the page yet.
[[User:HelloWorld|HelloWorld]] ([[User talk:HelloWorld|talk]]) 19:24, 4 April 2020 (UTC)

: Probably infected by COVID-19. That's why you should wash your keyboards after visiting other websites. Until then, feel free to create the page manually (if possible). --[[Special:Contributions/108.162.242.19|108.162.242.19]] 21:07, 4 April 2020 (UTC)

== Minor edit proposal ==

Line 19 of the main page includes this sentence:
<pre>Many of the recent contributors, listed above, have [http://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php?title=Special%3AContributions&contribs=newbie just joined].</pre>
That right there is not a wikilink. Could we change it to:
<pre>Many of the recent contributors, listed above, have [{{fullurl:Special:Contributions|contribs=newbie}} just joined].</pre>
Both render as follows:
{|class="wikitable"
|Many of the recent contributors, listed above, have [{{fullurl:Special:Contributions|contribs=newbie}} just joined].
|}
And I think my way is cleaner. [[User:Jacky720|That's right, Jacky720 just signed this]] ([[User talk:Jacky720|talk]] | [[Special:Contributions/Jacky720|contribs]]) 14:52, 9 April 2020 (UTC)

==1000: 1000 Comics/1000 characters update==
I've completed the blank explanations for all the remaining characters in [[1000: 1000 Comics/1000 characters]]; however, it could really use some work in terms of verification. I offer the sweet incentive of being able to get rid of a page's 'incomplete' label as reward for people to double check my, and [[User:Kynde|Kynde's]] work on the project. [[User:BlackHat|Your favourite sociopath]] ([[User talk:BlackHat|(the one who leaves all the parentheses open]] 07:58, 25 October 2020 (UTC

==2021-02 updates to top of page==
I don't really like the changed first few lines - I think it takes up too much room and the previous info was better. I look at the main page daily, and want to see the comic and explination not all this stuff that I think would be better down below the daily comic display. [[User:J-beda|J-beda]] ([[User talk:J-beda|talk]]) 17:50, 5 February 2021 (UTC)

: I agree, and it drives me crazy that {{tl|Welcome}} is designed for talk pages, so there is a red link to [[User:Main Page]]! [[Special:Contributions/172.68.142.213|172.68.142.213]] 15:22, 6 February 2021 (UTC)

: Since Jeff is much more involved in all this sort of stuff than myself, I would tend to defer to his judgement, but I also agree that the "Main Page" red link is pretty ugly. I will "be bold" and revert the change and then drop it if he really wants it. [[User:J-beda|J-beda]] ([[User talk:J-beda|talk]]) 18:54, 6 February 2021 (UTC)
::I guess I cannot revert things as there are no "edit" buttons I can view for the Main Page [[User:J-beda|J-beda]] ([[User talk:J-beda|talk]]) 19:01, 6 February 2021 (UTC)
:::You need administrator privileges to edit the main page. This was done to reduce spam, which is basically non-existent now. I made the {{tl|Welcome}} template, and I certainly did not make it for it to be displayed in the main page! I made it to welcome new users to the site. — [[User:Sqrt-1|The 𝗦𝗾𝗿𝘁-𝟭]] [[User talk:Sqrt-1|talk]] [[Special:Contributions/Sqrt-1|stalk]] 13:16, 8 February 2021 (UTC)
::::I see on [User:Jeff|Jeff]]'s talk page that Sqrt-1 has made a comment about this so maybe it will be taken care of. I am guessing that some automatic bot-like thing might have made an error. Today I got the {{tl|Welcome}} template added to my user page by Sqrt-1. It does seem like a useful template for user pages - less so for the Main page. [[User:J-beda|J-beda]] ([[User talk:J-beda|talk]]) 13:28, 8 February 2021 (UTC)
:It looks like [[User:Jeff|Jeff]] has reverted it - Thanks! [[User:J-beda|J-beda]] ([[User talk:J-beda|talk]]) 11:51, 12 February 2021 (UTC)

== Overuse/misuse of incomplete template ==

Instead of having information on why the comic is incomplete or being removed once the explanation is finished, the incomplete template is being treated as a place to put witty comments. This overcrowds the category, making it more difficult to see articles in need of actual help or know why they need help. I have gone through the incomplete articles and posted new topics on ones with incomplete tags that do not provide information on why the template is there, asking to know why the comic is incomplete and, failing that, to have the template removed. For the full details, please see [[User:Quillathe_Siannodel|my user page]].

I would like to request that either a less obtrusive solution or compromise be found or the error of my (relatively new user) ways be explained to me by someone more experienced.

Sincerely, <s>[[406:_Venting|Summer Glau]]</s> [[User talk:Quillathe Siannodel|{)|(}]][[User:Quillathe_Siannodel|Quill]][[User talk:Quillathe Siannodel|{)|(}]]

P.S. Maybe an "incomplete incomplete template" template? I don't know.

P.P.S. I can kill you with my brain.

I don't know. I re-signed and edited so many times, March 2021 (UTC)
: In some cases, the "incomplete" tag is left on for a long time, when nobody takes the trouble to remove it from a page that has migrated out of people's attention. Sometimes, people remove it inappropriately, while a page is still actively under revision. In many cases, it's hard for anyone to say what's "incomplete" about a page because there's relevant stuff to add that isn't obvious until someone adds it. The question is more: at what point can a page be reasonably assumed to be "complete"? A week after the most recent edit to it? Some pages undergo revision for quite a while after they're first posted; other pages remain stable after only a few days. It annoys me when someone edits a page and removes its "incomplete" tag at the same time, which gives me the impression of "now that I have made my change, the page is in its final form, and nobody else should touch it!" [[User:BunsenH|BunsenH]] ([[User talk:BunsenH|talk]]) 22:55, 6 April 2021 (UTC)
::Proposal: The default text of the incomplete template could be modified to include <code><nowiki>[[Category: Incomplete Incomplete (or something similar)]]</nowiki></code>. If the text is modified, the page should be removed from the category. This new category would be easily accessible from the main page, and anyone visiting it should see information about the category's meaning and how to help make said templates more informative. Possible ways to go about this:
::* Line 315 of the bot script would be changed to read: <code><nowiki>{{incomplete|Created by a BOT - Please change this comment when editing this page. Do NOT delete this tag too soon.[[Category: Whatever The Name Ends Up Being]]}}</nowiki></code>.
::* The main page banner would be changed to read: <code><nowiki>''Welcome to the '''explain [[xkcd]]''' wiki!'' 
We have an explanation for all [[:Category:All comics|'''{{#expr:{{PAGESINCAT:All comics|R}}-1}}''' xkcd comics]],

and only {{PAGESINCAT:Incomplete explanations|R}}
({{#expr: {{PAGESINCAT:Incomplete explanations|R}} / {{LATESTCOMIC}} * 100 round 0}}%) [[:Category:Incomplete explanations|are incomplete]]. Help us finish them! If you're looking for something easier, you could also edit one of the {{PAGESINCAT:Whatever The Name Ends Up Being|R}} pages with [[:Category:Whatever The Name Ends Up Being|incomplete explanations]], which would help other editors.</nowiki></code>.

::* The new category would read: <code><nowiki>This is the category page for incomplete pages that have no explanation for why they are incomplete in the incomplete tag. Do not add pages to this category. See also: [[:Category:Incomplete pages]] and [[:Category:Incomplete transcripts]]</nowiki></code>.
::I will not do this without first seeking community approval, because these are huge edits that could majorly change the wiki. Is this a good idea? [[User talk:Quillathe Siannodel|{)|(}]][[User:Quillathe_Siannodel|Quill]][[Special:Contributions/Quillathe_Siannodel|{)|(}]]
::: Feels a great idea. Given the dearth of opinion ventured either way, and given you've given plenty of time for people to declare an opinion, I'd argue to be bold, do it, and see if people squeal. It can always be reverted if required. --[[Special:Contributions/172.70.178.161|172.70.178.161]] 17:02, 9 November 2021 (UTC)

== Add another digit to percentage incomplete count ==

With the large majority of comics gaining explanations, I suggest that the current expression be adjusted to the following, changing "round 0" to "round 1":

<pre>({{#expr: {{PAGESINCAT:Incomplete explanations|R}} / {{LATESTCOMIC}} * 100 round 1}}%)</pre>

Resulting in: ({{#expr: {{PAGESINCAT:Incomplete explanations|R}} / {{LATESTCOMIC}} * 100 round 1}}%)
[[User:Gamma|Gamma]] ([[User talk:Gamma|talk]])

== Problems creating account ==

I just attempted to create an account, and got the following message:
There are problems with some of your input.

I made an adjustment to the password (which seemed to be the problem), consisting of making one of the letters of my original attempt a capital. This didn't work.

There is no point telling me there are problems with my input and not telling me what the problems are. I can't read your mind at this distance.

Cheers
Copey.

== 2530: Clinical Trials ==

Maybe step 3 should come before step 2?

== add non-numbered comics ==

idea: for the "We have an explanation for all [number] xkcd comics..." make the number include the non-numbered comics like five minute comics part 4, Syndication, Blue Eyes, and that one book-publishing-rate one. what do you guys think? [[Special:Contributions/108.162.221.93|108.162.221.93]] 17:52, 22 October 2021 (UTC)Bumpf

:Good point, also as of right now even only including the numbered comics it's not up-to-date, as the newest comic is 2555 and it says "We have an explanation for all 2554 xkcd comics" -- [[User:256 256.256.256|256.256.256.256]] ([[User talk:256 256.256.256|talk]]) 09:38, 16 December 2021 (UTC)

:: That is likely due to:
<nowiki></nowiki>
:: -- [[Special:Contributions/108.162.237.65|108.162.237.65]] 17:21, 21 February 2022 (UTC)

== fix these articles please! ==

What If chapters should be a redirect, not a mirror of [[What If? chapters]] ! [[Special:Contributions/172.69.71.10|172.69.71.10]] 17:38, 19 November 2021 (UTC)Bumpf
:Done. — [[User:Sqrt-1|The 𝗦𝗾𝗿𝘁-𝟭]] [[User talk:Sqrt-1|talk]] [[Special:Contributions/Sqrt-1|stalk]] 07:00, 28 November 2021 (UTC)
::The redirect page now deleted --[[User:Kynde|Kynde]] ([[User talk:Kynde|talk]]) 14:10, 23 May 2022 (UTC)

== lol ==

https://www.reddit.com/r/xkcd/comments/6xbc78/reading_xkcd_comics/ 13:14, 17 December 2021 (UTC)

== Top 10 includes no more than 9 people? ==

[[File:Top_10_but_it's_just_nine.png]]

have only nine users edited in the past seven days (unlikely) or does that top ten list really show no more than nine users? [[User:256.256.256.256|256.256.256.256]] ([[User talk:256.256.256.256|talk]]) 09:13, 6 January 2022 (UTC)
:My guess is that it is because currently place 10 and 11 have a tie with a score of 4 due to 3 edits on 2 pages and the top 10 table can show a maximum of 10 entries and cannot "decide" which one to show as no 10.
:You can view the full list by clicking the "lots of people" below the table. --[[User:Lupo|Lupo]] ([[User talk:Lupo|talk]]) 13:19, 6 January 2022 (UTC)

::That would make sense, except right now it alternates between ElijaRock and Asdf who both have two edits, two points and two unique pages edited, and pure chance seems to decide which one of the two gets 10th place every time I hit F5 [[User:256.256.256.256|256.256.256.256]] ([[User talk:256.256.256.256|talk]]) 14:31, 12 January 2022 (UTC)
:::PS: The actual 10th place right now is neither Asdf nor ElijaRock, it´s Jack (or at least it should be and sometimes, when the wind is blowing in the right direction, it even is) [[User:256.256.256.256|256.256.256.256]] ([[User talk:256.256.256.256|talk]]) 14:34, 12 January 2022 (UTC)

... maybe it's because everyone else is dumb... ^_^ [[User:20040302|20040302]] ([[User talk:20040302|talk]])

== Countdown Timer? ==

What’s the timer at the top right of the xkcd site counting down to? Apologies if there’s already a page on this; I didn’t look very hard :P

See https://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php/Talk:2566:_Decorative_Constants -- [[Special:Contributions/172.70.114.39|172.70.114.39]] 02:17, 11 January 2022 (UTC)

Now here: https://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php/Countdown_in_header_text.

== Set up X-Forwarded-For for correct IP address reporting ==

(I already posted this on David's talk, but I noticed he's no longer active... Hopefully an admin will read this here) This should be done server-side, as right now (and for a very long time) it's been reporting load balancer / cache IP addresses for all the users. With recent vandalism, it'd help. [[User:BytEfLUSh|BytEfLUSh]] ([[User talk:BytEfLUSh|talk]]) 22:27, 29 April 2022 (UTC)

Talk:2626: d65536

2022-06-01T08:52:37Z

20040302: /* Might be worth offering some easier alternatives.. */ sig.

Talk:2626: d65536

2022-06-01T08:44:23Z

20040302: /* Might be worth offering some easier alternatives.. */ new section

2062: Barnard's Star

2018-10-30T07:48:59Z

20040302: /* Explanation */

{{comic
| number = 2062
| date = October 22, 2018
| title = Barnard's Star
| image = barnards_star.png
| titletext = "Ok, team. We have a little under 10,000 years before closest approach to figure out how to destroy Barnard's Star." "Why, does it pose a threat to the Solar System?" "No. It's just an asshole."
}}

==Explanation==
{{incomplete|Too much detail from Wikipedia about Barnard's star, hardly any explanation of the comic itself. Do NOT delete this tag too soon.}}

[[File:Near-stars-past-future-en.svg|thumb|300px|Distances to the nearest stars from 20,000 years ago until 80,000 years in the future]]
{{w|Barnard's Star}} is a very-low-mass {{w|Red dwarf|red dwarf}} about 6 light-years away from Earth in the constellation of {{w|Ophiuchus}}. It is the fourth-nearest known individual star to the {{w|Sun}} after the three components of the Alpha Centauri system and the closest star in the Northern Hemisphere. It is a red dwarf with a mass of 0.144 Solar masses, a fifth in diameter, and it is 7–12 billion years old. Because of this low mass the gravitational pressure in the core is much lower and thus the fusion rate is far smaller than in the core of the Sun. In fact this star is so dim, even though it's one of the nearest, it can't be seen by the naked eye. The low fusion rate also means that the lifespan of small stars is much longer. While huge stars might last a few hundred million years, and the Sun about 10 billion years, a small red dwarf has a lifespan of about a trillion years.

Barnard's Star is the star with the greatest proper motion in the sky. Proper motion is motion in the sky other than that caused by Earth's rotation or orbit. Barnard's star is both very close to the sun (as these things go) and moving now at a speed of more than 140 km/s toward the Sun. It will make its closest approach to the Sun in approximately 10,000 years, at a distance of about 3.75 light-years.

The image on the right shows different stars near the Sun over 100,000 years and it can be seen that none of them are getting closer than 3 light-years. This is a safe distance to our Solar System and the stars will not influence the orbits of the planets or smaller bodies. ''It's also obvious that much closer approaches never have happened since the Solar System formed 4.5 billion years ago because otherwise the nearly circular orbits of the planets in the same plane wouldn't be possible.'' (This last sentence is contentious. {{w|Scholz's Star}} actually passed through the Oort cloud about 70,000 years ago, and at least one estimate suggests that a star is expected to pass through the Oort Cloud every 100,000 years or so. What makes such events even more interesting is that they offer a real chance for interstellar travel via stellar 'hitch-hiking').

The comic shows the sizes and the distances not in a proper scale. If the Sun would be 1.4 cm (1.4 Mio km in real) in diameter Barnard's Star would be less than 3 mm at a distance of 356 km. Even Jupiter wouldn't fit into this picture, ten times smaller than the Sun it would be a few pixels, but at a distance of 7.8 m to the Sun and all the other planets would fit into a circle less than 100 meters in diameter. The distances to others stars are far beyond human imagination and at its closest distance a message still takes 3.75 years from one to the other star.

In regards to "20,000-year-long high-speed flyby", the joke here is suggesting Barnard's Star would need to scream out the maleficent, trolling statement as quickly as possible due to 20,000 years being such a small segment of time relative to the lifespan of the star (and our Sun, for that matter).

The title text emphasizes that this close approach will not be any hazard to the Solar System, but someone is envious of the long lifetime of Barnard's Star or annoyed by its unpleasant behavior(Yelling at the sun for 20,000 years would be a minuscule amount of time for the stars,but for humans it would be a vast length of time, and would get annoying very quickly).

=Transcript=
:[A black sky is shown with a yellow spot near the bottom, left of the center. Three smaller red spots at the diagonal from top left to bottom right indicate a moving star over time. Above these red spots lines are connected to a text that starts and ends with many ''A''s, first growing, and at the end getting smaller:]
:...AAAAHHi Sun! I was here billions of years before you formed and will shine for trillions of years after you dieEEEEEAAA...

:[Caption below the frame:]
:Sometimes, I wonder what Barnard's Star is saying to the Sun as it performs its 20,000-year-long high-speed flyby.

{{comic discussion}}

[[Category:Comics with color]]
[[Category:Astronomy]]

2062: Barnard's Star

2018-10-30T07:45:57Z

20040302: /* Explanation */ Sholtz.

{{comic
| number = 2062
| date = October 22, 2018
| title = Barnard's Star
| image = barnards_star.png
| titletext = "Ok, team. We have a little under 10,000 years before closest approach to figure out how to destroy Barnard's Star." "Why, does it pose a threat to the Solar System?" "No. It's just an asshole."
}}

==Explanation==
{{incomplete|Too much detail from Wikipedia about Barnard's star, hardly any explanation of the comic itself. Do NOT delete this tag too soon.}}

[[File:Near-stars-past-future-en.svg|thumb|300px|Distances to the nearest stars from 20,000 years ago until 80,000 years in the future]]
{{w|Barnard's Star}} is a very-low-mass {{w|Red dwarf|red dwarf}} about 6 light-years away from Earth in the constellation of {{w|Ophiuchus}}. It is the fourth-nearest known individual star to the {{w|Sun}} after the three components of the Alpha Centauri system and the closest star in the Northern Hemisphere. It is a red dwarf with a mass of 0.144 Solar masses, a fifth in diameter, and it is 7–12 billion years old. Because of this low mass the gravitational pressure in the core is much lower and thus the fusion rate is far smaller than in the core of the Sun. In fact this star is so dim, even though it's one of the nearest, it can't be seen by the naked eye. The low fusion rate also means that the lifespan of small stars is much longer. While huge stars might last a few hundred million years, and the Sun about 10 billion years, a small red dwarf has a lifespan of about a trillion years.

Barnard's Star is the star with the greatest proper motion in the sky. Proper motion is motion in the sky other than that caused by Earth's rotation or orbit. Barnard's star is both very close to the sun (as these things go) and moving now at a speed of more than 140 km/s toward the Sun. It will make its closest approach to the Sun in approximately 10,000 years, at a distance of about 3.75 light-years.

The image on the right shows different stars near the Sun over 100,000 years and it can be seen that none of them are getting closer than 3 light-years. This is a safe distance to our Solar System and the stars will not influence the orbits of the planets or smaller bodies. ''It's also obvious that much closer approaches never have happened since the Solar System formed 4.5 billion years ago because otherwise the nearly circular orbits of the planets in the same plane wouldn't be possible.'' (This last sentence is contentious. {{w|Scholz's Star}} actually passed through the Oort cloud about 70,000 years ago, and at least one estimate suggests that a star is expected to pass through the Oort Cloud every 100,000 years or so).

The comic shows the sizes and the distances not in a proper scale. If the Sun would be 1.4 cm (1.4 Mio km in real) in diameter Barnard's Star would be less than 3 mm at a distance of 356 km. Even Jupiter wouldn't fit into this picture, ten times smaller than the Sun it would be a few pixels, but at a distance of 7.8 m to the Sun and all the other planets would fit into a circle less than 100 meters in diameter. The distances to others stars are far beyond human imagination and at its closest distance a message still takes 3.75 years from one to the other star.

In regards to "20,000-year-long high-speed flyby", the joke here is suggesting Barnard's Star would need to scream out the maleficent, trolling statement as quickly as possible due to 20,000 years being such a small segment of time relative to the lifespan of the star (and our Sun, for that matter).

The title text emphasizes that this close approach will not be any hazard to the Solar System, but someone is envious of the long lifetime of Barnard's Star or annoyed by its unpleasant behavior(Yelling at the sun for 20,000 years would be a minuscule amount of time for the stars,but for humans it would be a vast length of time, and would get annoying very quickly).

=Transcript=
:[A black sky is shown with a yellow spot near the bottom, left of the center. Three smaller red spots at the diagonal from top left to bottom right indicate a moving star over time. Above these red spots lines are connected to a text that starts and ends with many ''A''s, first growing, and at the end getting smaller:]
:...AAAAHHi Sun! I was here billions of years before you formed and will shine for trillions of years after you dieEEEEEAAA...

:[Caption below the frame:]
:Sometimes, I wonder what Barnard's Star is saying to the Sun as it performs its 20,000-year-long high-speed flyby.

{{comic discussion}}

[[Category:Comics with color]]
[[Category:Astronomy]]