Main Page

Explain xkcd: It's 'cause you're dumb.
Revision as of 21:23, 18 June 2013 by Jeff (talk | contribs)
Jump to: navigation, search

Welcome to the explain xkcd wiki!

We have collaboratively explained 5 xkcd comics, and we've explained ALL THE COMICS! Great work everyone! There's still work to do, so please help extend incomplete descriptions!

Latest comic

Go to this comic explanation

Binary Star
The discovery of a fully typographical star system comes with a big asterisk.
Title text: The discovery of a fully typographical star system comes with a big asterisk.

Explanation

While a "main sequence star" is a real celestial object, a five-pointed star is how stars are often drawn. The comic uses a drawn star shape to be a part of a celestial star system.

The title text similarly uses the * symbol, which is sometimes called a star, to be another real celestial star. A "big asterisk" is used as a metaphor for a rather large caveat, symbolizing a long footnote.

Transcript


Is this out of date? Clicking here will fix that.

New here?

Last 7 days (Top 10)

Lots of people contribute to make this wiki a success. Many of the recent contributors, listed above, have just joined. You can do it too! Create your account here.

You can read a brief introduction about this wiki at explain xkcd. Feel free to sign up for an account and contribute to the wiki! We need explanations for comics, characters, themes, memes and everything in between. If it is referenced in an xkcd web comic, it should be here.

  • List of all comics contains a complete table of all xkcd comics so far and the corresponding explanations. The missing explanations are listed here. Feel free to help out by creating them! Here's how.

Rules

Don't be a jerk. There are a lot of comics that don't have set in stone explanations; feel free to put multiple interpretations in the wiki page for each comic.

If you want to talk about a specific comic, use its discussion page.

Please only submit material directly related to —and helping everyone better understand— xkcd... and of course only submit material that can legally be posted (and freely edited.) Off-topic or other inappropriate content is subject to removal or modification at admin discretion, and users who repeatedly post such content will be blocked.

If you need assistance from an admin, post a message to the Admin requests board.