3151: Window Screen
| Window Screen |
 Title text: The Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine or Home Improvement or DIY |
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This is one of 52 incomplete explanations: This page was created by Alfred Nobel's screen saver. Don't remove this notice too soon. If you can fix this issue, edit the page! |
Cueball believes he should receive a Nobel Prize for creating a custom screen
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This is one of 27 incomplete transcripts: Don't remove this notice too soon. If you can fix this issue, edit the page! |
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The 'standard' and '2x' sized images had unexpected sizes, so an imagesize parameter has been added to render the image consistently with other comics on this website. See the web archive for more details. --TheusafBOT (talk) 03:15, 7 October 2025 (UTC)
- Oh cool the bot can comment too TheTrainsKid (talk) 04:06, 7 October 2025 (UTC)
Is the comic not fitting into the section right on the original xkcd website? Is this some kind of meta joke? 138.67.132.61 04:10, 7 October 2025 (UTC)
- Since this has changed during the day. I think it is intentional62.220.2.194 15:14, 7 October 2025 (UTC)
- This is Randall's mistake. Since comic 1084 from 2012, comics usually have two versions: normal and double resolution (2x). If you read on a high-DPI screen (like a phone) or zoom in, you'll see a high-resolution version of the comic, but if you read on a desktop or laptop without zooming in, you'll see the normal resolution. In this case, Randall accidentally uploaded the 2x version into both comics, making the normal one twice as big as it should be. If you zoom in just a tiny bit, it'll look normal again.
I'll add this in a Trivia sectionSomeone already did. --NeatNit (talk) 07:35, 7 October 2025 (UTC) - I suspect Randall was inspired by the U.S. President's outsized ego insisting he deserves the Nobel Prize for Peace when he hasn't actually solved any international problems at all, and in the view of many has made things much worse.68.116.0.20 05:33, 7 October 2025 (UTC)
- ...and in objective reality has made things much worse. --45.143.82.106 06:52, 7 October 2025 (UTC)
- It's such a shame that this is true. Well, obviously, but in frivolous terms too: it would be nice to have this just as a representation of how it feels to get a tricky task right, without referencing the tangerine toddler's nonsense. I think most people know that feeling that they've maxed out their efforts and achieved something brilliant (measured in terms of the how well or how badly the project should have been expected to go). Human effort is human effort, and so it feels like any successful overcoming of a problem is legitimately comparable with any other, if measured from the perspective of the one who performs the task. I love the way this handles that feeling. It was very difficult; I did it successfully; that was an impressive achievement. "It" could be stopping a war or making a window screen. Yorkshire Pudding (talk) 10:38, 7 October 2025 (UTC)
- Thanks, you've made the world a worse place by dragging the dumpster fire of partisan politics into a comic that originally had absolutely NOTHING to do with it. Please forever avoid doing this in the future. MeZimm (talk) 19:40, 7 October 2025 (UTC)
- So it would appear Randall wasn't as precise as cueball. No Nobel prize for Randall, I'd guess 85.159.196.177 (talk) 17:33, 8 October 2025 (please sign your comments with ~~~~)
- Thanks, you've made the world a worse place by dragging the dumpster fire of partisan politics into a comic that originally had absolutely NOTHING to do with it. Please forever avoid doing this in the future. MeZimm (talk) 19:40, 7 October 2025 (UTC)
- It's such a shame that this is true. Well, obviously, but in frivolous terms too: it would be nice to have this just as a representation of how it feels to get a tricky task right, without referencing the tangerine toddler's nonsense. I think most people know that feeling that they've maxed out their efforts and achieved something brilliant (measured in terms of the how well or how badly the project should have been expected to go). Human effort is human effort, and so it feels like any successful overcoming of a problem is legitimately comparable with any other, if measured from the perspective of the one who performs the task. I love the way this handles that feeling. It was very difficult; I did it successfully; that was an impressive achievement. "It" could be stopping a war or making a window screen. Yorkshire Pudding (talk) 10:38, 7 October 2025 (UTC)
- ...and in objective reality has made things much worse. --45.143.82.106 06:52, 7 October 2025 (UTC)
I suspect all the math could have been avoided if the screen were just carefully laid out on top of the window and cut to a matching shape. Why trig when you can trace? --45.143.82.106 06:53, 7 October 2025 (UTC)
It's easy when building a flat screen to accidentally get the tension wrong on one side and *generate* non-coplanarity--174.127.176.33 08:24, 7 October 2025 (UTC)
- Yeah, I agree with this interpretation of non-coplanarity. Probably the most aggravating part about trying to screen a window is getting the tension perfect so it lays flat. 136.49.188.43 13:47, 7 October 2025 (UTC)
Is the "overly large image mistake" really a mistake, considering it’s about the "size" of an image displaying on a "screen"? 89.91.92.1 (talk) 08:34, 7 October 2025 (UTC) (please sign your comments with ~~~~)
- There is the opinion that Randall made a mistake, but because Cueballs sentence just stops at "how well the screen fits... (the window)" and the panel DOES NOT fit it's window, I believe that this is intentional and the punchline of the comic 195.49.224.20 09:36, 7 October 2025 (UTC)
- If so, can someone edit the image above to fit the punchline? EDIT: I did it.138.43.101.123 12:06, 7 October 2025 (UTC)
- Aww 138.43.101.123 18:10, 7 October 2025 (UTC)
- If so, can someone edit the image above to fit the punchline? EDIT: I did it.138.43.101.123 12:06, 7 October 2025 (UTC)
- I don't see the problem. For me (on Firefox), while the hi-res image is loaded, it's displayed in the usual size on xkcd.com. I wouldn't even have noticed if I hadn't read it here. --Coconut Galaxy (talk) 13:00, 7 October 2025 (UTC)
- Update: I see it on a different computer (also Firefox). Well that's weird.--Coconut Galaxy (talk) 13:37, 7 October 2025 (UTC)
- It was displaying normally for me a few hours ago, but now, on the same browser on the same machine, it's outsized. 82.13.184.33 15:02, 7 October 2025 (UTC)
- Update: I see it on a different computer (also Firefox). Well that's weird.--Coconut Galaxy (talk) 13:37, 7 October 2025 (UTC)
Interesting that Cueball has hair in the last two panels --Darth Vader (talk) 08:40, 7 October 2025 (UTC)
- Obviously with all the screen building he hasn't had time to shave his head. 82.13.184.33 09:28, 7 October 2025 (UTC)
- In the last two panels he also wears some kind of bracelet. 82.54.66.129 10:59, 7 October 2025 (UTC)
- Practically everything I own has been taken. The game should pause until my things are returned. 209.133.116.38 (talk) 22:27, 15 October 2025 (please sign your comments with ~~~~)
Joke's on Cueball: this problem can be seen as mathematical, and Nobel Prizes famously exclude that field in theor awards (the closest is the relatively new award on Economy). He'd have a better chance asking for a Fields Medal.--94.73.49.72
One must imagine Norm Abrams happy. Fephisto (talk) 13:56, 7 October 2025 (UTC)
- I see what you did there, and Albert Camus loves you for it. So do I. :) 45.74.123.106 18:02, 8 October 2025 (UTC)
Whatever issue you guys have solved is still happening for me. Comic is huge. (on chromeOS) --DollarStoreBa'alconverse 16:27, 7 October 2025 (UTC)
- ditto here. also chromeOS, specifically a Chromebook is that means any thing -- Black Hat's Hat (talk) 18:08, 7 October 2025 (UTC)
BOT COMMENTS《プロキシ》(XKCD中毒者) 14:05, 8 October 2025 (UTC)
- No comment. 82.13.184.33 15:40, 8 October 2025 (UTC)
sounds like the glasssmith or whatever could also be a nominee, or maybe they have larger equipment and CAD for custom windows idk --146.70.200.61 13:44, 9 October 2025 (UTC)
There's no point in putting a screen on a window that clearly does not open. 15:53, 13 October 2025 (UTC)
i think 1994: Repairs could use a mention. "that was heroic and i deserve a nobel prize." 64.189.140.111 04:24, 18 October 2025 (UTC) Add comment[Cueball is looking out through a window with a straight bottom, slanting sides and a curved upper edge.]
This weekend, I had to make an oversized screen for a porch window.
[Cueball is shown pondering various problems involving geometry and angles.]
It involved countless tiny problems, each somehow way harder than it should be. Oblique angles, curved edges, noncoplanarity.
[Cueball with slightly more hair, looking at the window covered by a bordered mesh.]
...I solved them all. I measured precisely. I did trigonometry. I made custom parts. And it fit perfectly. No gaps, no ripples.
[Cueball is revealed to be sitting at a computer, typing a message.]
I know that your foundation normally limits its purview to physics, medicine, peace, chemistry, and literature. However, if you review the attached photos showing how well the screen fits into the...
