explain xkcd - User contributions [en]

708: Sex Dice

2022-05-20T21:52:41Z

Radish: Undo revision 271344 by Explain xkcd server admin (vandalism) (talk)

{{comic
| number = 708
| date = March 1, 2010
| title = Sex Dice
| image = sex dice.png
| titletext = You roll for initiative, and... [roll]... wow, do you ever take it.
}}

==Explanation==
{{w|Sex dice}} consist of two dice, one listing various actions, and one listing various body parts ([https://i.imgur.com/2ryEaPV.jpg sometimes] a third specifying a manner in which the action should be done). Roll the dice, do the specified action to the specified body part, repeat as necessary.

Because most games require the same dice, in many peoples' game collections, the dice get mixed around between games. Unfortunately it seems [[Cueball]] and [[Megan]] have accidentally exchanged one of their sex dice (the one that contains actions) with a normal six-sided die; as a result, the people playing a {{w|role-playing game}} in the last panel find themselves doing unusual actions.

Given the situation, it's likely the player who fondled the guard was supposed to roll 2 or 3 six-sided dice to determine the damage of his attack. The sex die came up as "fondle," while the other dice added up to six; hence, he fondled the guard for 6 damage.

The title text is another possible situation that might arise: "rolling for {{w|Initiative (role-playing games)|initiative}}" in role-playing games is how the players determine who attacks in what order during combat. Here, the player rolled the sex die as part of his initiative roll, and therefore "took initiative" in an entirely different way.

Typically the missing sex dice will show different actions like these: Blow, bite, nip, lick, pat or suck (from a set that did not include fondle). The other dice with places on the body like breasts might also have these options: Ass, thigh, ear, navel or lips. Other dice may show positions to use, like doggy style, or places in the house on which to perform these, as in the kitchen. It is a little difficult to imagine any of the actions mentioned above resulting in the response in the title text: ''Wow, do you ever take it.'' Maybe there are other types of dice, but they are not easily found with a Google search...

==Transcript==
:[Cueball and Megan kneel on a bed, Cueball, on the foot of the bed, is shaking a cup of dice. Behind Megan is a pillow and the bed poles.]
:Cueball: All right, baby. Get ready for...
:''Shake shake shake roll''

:[There is no frame around the next drawing of the two dice that have been rolled. The first is a regular five (seen almost from the top, but the sides with one and three can be seen). The second die has text written on it:]
:Breasts

:[Cueball and Megan are bent over the dice lying on the bed staring at them. Beat panel.]

:[Cueball leans back on one hand while taking the other to his chin while Megan sits straighter.]
:Cueball: I really need to organize the game cupboard.
:Megan: Wait, so where's the other sex die?

:[A Cueball-like guy lies on his stomach, and another Cueball-like guy sits to the left. Hairbun is sitting and Ponytail also lying on her stomach, hands beneath her chin. They are sitting/lying down around a game board. On the board is what appears to be two dice.]
:Guy lying: I... ''fondle'' the castle guard? That doesn't seem right.
:Hairbun: It did 6 damage, though.

{{comic discussion}}

[[Category:Comics featuring Cueball]]
[[Category:Comics featuring Megan]]
[[Category:Comics featuring Hairbun]]
[[Category:Comics featuring Ponytail]]
[[Category:Multiple Cueballs]]
[[Category:Sex]]

2619: Crêpe

2022-05-16T22:13:03Z

Radish: Undo revision 269122 by 108.162.246.212 (talk)

{{comic
| number = 2619
| date = May 13, 2022
| title = Crêpe
| image = crepe.png
| titletext = A medicine that makes you put two dots over your letters more often is a diäretic.
}}

==Explanation==
{{incomplete|Created by a ÇRÊPË - Please change this comment when editing this page. Do NOT delete this tag too soon.}}
[[File:crêpe.png|thumb|The word "crêpe" in the comic]]
[[Cueball]] has made a {{w|crêpe}}, a thin pancake known for its legendary status in French cuisine, which he proudly announces. However, the {{w|circumflex}} (the accent above the e) is written strangely. Instead of the usual simple angle (^), it looks more like the outline of a flattened arrowhead (<span style="text-fill-color: transparent; text-stroke: 1pt currentColor; -webkit-text-fill-color: transparent; -webkit-text-stroke: 1pt currentColor;">⮝</span>). [[Megan]], who can apparently {{tvtropes|PsmithPsyndrome|hear the orthography}} of spoken text, comments on the odd shape with an appropriate pun.

Megan's response, "Weird circumflex but okay" is a play on the recent expression [https://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=Weird%20flex%20but%20ok Weird flex, but ok]. A "flex" is bragging about something. A "weird flex" is used when the speaker acknowledges (perhaps ironically) that the first person is attempting to brag about something, but doesn't recognise the thing as brag-worthy.

Her answer could also be applied to the shape of the crêpe, as circumflex means "bent around".

In some dialects of English (e.g. British English), and in the original French pronunciation, "crêpe" is said so that the ê is pronounced as in "get", i.e. "cr-eh-p", but American English speakers pronounce it like an "A", i.e. "cr-ay-p".

The title text continues the wordplay by saying that "A medicine that makes you put two dots over your letters more often is a diäretic".

The word diäretic is a pun on {{w|diuretic}} (a substance promoting increased urine production), {{w|Diaeresis (diacritic)|diaeresis}} (a symbol in the form of two dots placed above a vowel, as the ä in the made up word diäretic; the adjective form of diaeresis can be spelled "[https://www.thefreedictionary.com/Diaresis dieretic]") and {{w|diacritic}} (a glyph added to a letter to distinguish its sound from the normal version, what both the circumflex and the diaeresis are). See also the comic [[1647: Diacritics]] about the use of these. Taking a diäretic medicine would supposedly cause you to use diaeresis (also known as umlaut) över möre lëtters thän wöuld üsuallÿ bë thë cäse.

Diacritics are rarely used in English, potentially because of the diverse set of origin languages it developed from, or the wide variation of pronunciations within a same nation, but are a common feature of other languages. In English, they are normally only seen in specific loanwords (such as crêpe) or used for emphasis or decoration (for example the {{w|metal umlaut}} seen in rock bands like {{w|Motörhead}}, {{w|Mötley Crüe}}, {{w|Queensrÿche}}, or {{w|Spın̈al Tap}}). The exception to this is the diaresis, which when it is used at all, is placed over the second vowel in a double-vowel word to indicate a morphological break between them as opposed to a dipthong, e.g. naïve or coöperation. The diaresis is optional, and, especially with words beginning with the co- prefix (e.g. cooperation, coevolution, or coincidence), rarely used. The New Yorker magazine is a famous outlier, advising consistent use of the diaresis in [https://www.newyorker.com/culture/culture-desk/the-curse-of-the-diaeresis its style guide].

==Transcript==
:[Cueball is holding a plate up in both hand, showing Megan the crepe lying on the plate. His word for crêpe has a different diacritic over the "e" than the normal circumflex (^). Instead it looks more like an open arrow head.]
:Cueball: Check out this crêpe I made!
:Megan: Weird circumflex, but okay.

{{comic discussion}}

[[Category:Comics featuring Cueball]]
[[Category:Comics featuring Megan]]
[[Category:Language]]
[[Category:Puns]]
[[Category:Food]]

1165: Amazon

2022-05-04T18:07:58Z

Radish: Undo revision 240390 by Ex Kay Cee Dee (talk)

{{comic
| number = 1165
| date = January 25, 2013
| title = Amazon
| image = amazon.png
| titletext = Amazon.com took a surprise early lead with 'Time required to transport a package from Iquitos, Peru to Manaus, Brazil' but then lost it at 'Minutes to skeletonize a cow'.
}}

==Explanation==
The {{w|Amazon River}} in South America is the second longest river in the world and by far the largest by waterflow. {{w|Amazon.com}} is a website that specializes in commerce and selling goods over the internet. The "round 14" suggest they are being compared in different criteria in a sort of competition. With such different systems, we can assume that most of those comparisons were similarly funny. The title text mentions two other criteria of comparison.

The measure of flow for the Amazon river (cubic meters per second) indicates the volume of water that passes a given area in the river at any second. To illustrate how much 220,000 cubic meters is, the comic shows a car parked next to 220,000 cubic meters of water. 220,000 cubic meters equals a cube with an edge span of 60.4 meters. By comparison the 0.9 cubic meters (900 l) of goods that are shipped by Amazon.com seems very small (note that 900 liters of goods per second is still a lot). To illustrate this size, the comic shows an Amazonian fish (or possibly an {{w|Amazon river dolphin}}) investigating the packages.

{{w|Iquitos}} and {{w|Manaus}} are cities near the source and middle respectively of the river; the title text suggests that it is shorter to have a package shipped between the two than let it drift downstream. "Minutes to skeletonize a cow" refers to {{w|piranha}}, an Amazonian predatory fish with a popular reputation of being capable of the mentioned act when hunting in groups. (It should be noted that, while not fictional per se, the legendary cow-killing piranhas had been starved beforehand by local humans.)

In [[1599: Water Delivery]] Amazon.com takes the fight against the Amazon to a new level by delivering water within one hour; however, the Amazon River is not mentioned in that comic.

==Transcript==
:Round 14
:Estimated outflow volume
:in cubic meters per second
:[A cube of water representing the outflow of the Amazon, with various marine life in it and people standing around it.]
:Amazon 220,000
:[A pile of boxes representing the outflow of Amazon.com, dwarfed by the large cube of water next to it.]
:Amazon.com 0.9
:Advantage: Amazon

{{comic discussion}}
[[Category:Comics with color]]

User talk:Char Latte49

2021-10-22T13:23:01Z

Radish:

[[File:beretguy.jpg]]

This is not, in fact, a bakery.

==Talk==
Hi! [[User:BlackHat|BlackHat]] ([[User talk:BlackHat|talk]]) 17:53, 22 November 2020 (UTC)
:Hello! Want a scone? [[User:Char Latte49|Char Latte49]] ([[User talk:Char Latte49|talk]]) 17:10, 11 March 2021 (UTC)
:Actually, never mind. I don't want you to get crumbs on the ceiling. [[User:Char Latte49|Char Latte49]] ([[User talk:Char Latte49|talk]]) 19:40, 11 March 2021 (UTC)

"I will happily give anyone scones; you don't have to '''steal''' them ''[[User:Danish|Danish]]''" Ah, but what about lug nuts? [[User:Danish|Danish]] ([[User talk:Danish|talk]]) 21:43, 11 March 2021 (UTC)
:Oh, those are usually just lying [https://xkcd.com/452/ around]. [[User:Char Latte49|Char Latte49]] ([[User talk:Char Latte49|talk]]) 21:44, 11 March 2021 (UTC)

Hecking fast transcript writing. I'd tip my hat to you if it wasn't stapled on my head [[User:Radish|Radish]] ([[User talk:Radish|talk]]) 05:06, 21 October 2021 (UTC)
:Why thank you! :D Here, have a scone [[User:Char Latte49|Wielder of the Staple Gun]] ([[User talk:Char Latte49|talk]]) 03:04, 22 October 2021 (UTC)
::I too am proficient in the dark arts of staple-gun wielding. [[User:Radish|Radish]] ([[User talk:Radish|talk]]) 13:23, 22 October 2021 (UTC)

User talk:Char Latte49

2021-10-21T05:06:46Z

Radish:

[[File:beretguy.jpg]]

This is not, in fact, a bakery.

==Talk==
Hi! [[User:BlackHat|BlackHat]] ([[User talk:BlackHat|talk]]) 17:53, 22 November 2020 (UTC)
:Hello! Want a scone? --[[User:Char Latte49|Char Latte49]] ([[User talk:Char Latte49|talk]]) 17:10, 11 March 2021 (UTC)
:Actually, never mind. I don't want you to get crumbs on the ceiling. --[[User:Char Latte49|Char Latte49]] ([[User talk:Char Latte49|talk]]) 19:40, 11 March 2021 (UTC)

"I will happily give anyone scones; you don't have to '''steal''' them ''[[User:Danish|Danish]]''" Ah, but what about lug nuts? [[User:Danish|Danish]] ([[User talk:Danish|talk]]) 21:43, 11 March 2021 (UTC)
:Oh, those are usually just lying [https://xkcd.com/452/ around]. --[[User:Char Latte49|Char Latte49]] ([[User talk:Char Latte49|talk]]) 21:44, 11 March 2021 (UTC)

Hecking fast transcript writing. I'd tip my hat to you if it wasn't stapled on my head [[User:Radish|Radish]] ([[User talk:Radish|talk]]) 05:06, 21 October 2021 (UTC)

2531: Dark Arts

2021-10-21T03:30:13Z

Radish:

{{comic
| number = 2531
| date = October 20, 2021
| title = Dark Arts
| image = dark_arts.png
| titletext = You think, 'okay, THIS is an ideal use case for hardlinks!' but then 6 months later you're doing some extremely cursed Google search like 'javascript ext4' and wondering where things went wrong.
}}

==Explanation==
{{incomplete|Created by a CURSED GOOGLE SEARCH - Please change this comment when editing this page. Do NOT delete this tag too soon.}}

==Transcript==
{{incomplete transcript|Do NOT delete this tag too soon.}}
{{comic discussion}}

2531: Dark Arts

2021-10-21T03:29:26Z

Radish:

{{comic
| number = 2531
| date = October 20, 2021
| title = Dark Arts
| image = dark_arts.png
| titletext = You think, 'okay, THIS is an ideal use case for hardlinks!' but then 6 months later you're doing some extremely cursed Google search like 'javascript ext4' and wondering where things went wrong.
}}

==Explanation==
{{incomplete|Created by a cursed google search - Please change this comment when editing this page. Do NOT delete this tag too soon.}}

==Transcript==
{{incomplete transcript|Do NOT delete this tag too soon.}}
{{comic discussion}}