3217: Home Remedies

Home Remedies

|< < Prev #3217 (March 9, 2026)

Title text: As always, you are permitted to call one person for guidance, but that person must be a grandparent.

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Explanation

This is one of 74 incomplete explanations: This page was created but can be easily removed with this one great trick!. Don't remove this notice too soon. If you can fix this issue, edit the page!

Many household problems have a range of commonly-circulated supposed solutions using easily available items and ingredients, such as using salt to lift a stain out of a carpet. Sometimes, when one of these problems presents itself, several competing remedies may be offered by those present. This comic imagines this as a competitive sport, in which the final test is to combine several of these problems into one grand challenge to be solved. Specifically, the contestants in this case are presented with:

• removing unpleasant odours (in this case, that of a skunk)
• curing a hangover
• removing chewing gum stuck in hair

and possibly

• removing a wild animal from the premises

The title text's requirement that any assistance must come from a grandparent may reference the fact that such treatments are sometimes referred to as 'old wives' tales', or possibly just that they are often handed down as family lore.

Transcript

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[Cueball, holding a microphone, is addressing 3 contestants (Megan, White Hat & Hairbun), each standing at desks, with shaking lidded boxes on the desks]

Cueball: And now, for the final round, you have each been given a skunk with a hangover & chewing gum stuck to it's fur.

Cueball: You have 30 minutes. Good luck.

[Caption below the image:]

The Home Remedy World Championships

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Discussion

Wow that came out late. I guess it is still technically Monday in California? Or at least was when it came up on explain xkcd half an hour ago? --Kynde (talk) 08:03, 10 March 2026 (UTC)

Very late comic Broseph (talk) 08:13, 10 March 2026 (UTC)

Even later explanation. 82.13.184.33 09:30, 10 March 2026 (UTC)

For anyone perhaps wondering how you get a skunk with a hangover, all you need to do is find one of them that is famously inebriated, then wait. The chewing gum bit probably 'just happens' at some point during this whole process... 82.132.231.180 10:40, 10 March 2026 (UTC)
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