Countdown in header text

Theories

• Here are different theories for what the countdown is for and what the picture is going to reveal can be added.

The picture

• Theories about the picture:
  • From 2022-01-21 it became certain that it was a plane! Passenger plane. Door and windows are visible.
    • From 2022-01-22 it became clear that it was the rear end, so it was a tailfin that came into the panel to begin with. Up til the day before it was still a bit uncertain if it could have been a wing.
    • from 2022-01-24 a bottom line has appeared which doesn't fit well with a 'standard' airliner. perhaps the image is deliberately misleading (eg will transform into something else)
    • From 2022-01-26 something looking like a radar like the one on a Boeing E-3 Sentry began emerging in the top right corner.
  • What will this lead up to - theories about this.
    • It could be an airplane with a banner like in 1355: Airplane Message.
      • That would very soon be clear as the bottom part of the rear end seems to be coming into view during 2022-01-24, if the direction does not change again.
        • This is now ruled out, since the plane is clearly not towing a banner.
    • It could end up landing in a city, perhaps with a skyline pinpointing where Randall will be or move.
      • However, unlikely to manage this in real life as the count down ends.
      • Also, very unlikely (1 in 60, or even 1 in 3600) that such a landing would occur exactly on the hour.
        • But it could also just be the time when he announces he has moved...
    • Maybe Cueball will make a parachute jump, and Cueball could represent a real life Randall, as this could in principle be timed very accurately.
      • This is something you would schedule a month or more ahead, want to tell people about in advance, want to make a big deal about on your website, is not quite as bizarre as zero-G and probably more fun ^{[citation needed]}, could be done with an adventurous wife, explains why it’s the tail of the plane in the image, and (assuming no mechanical, medical, or meteorological problems, a safe assumption), might go something like “on my mark, it’ll be 9:59:56 A.M. in Boston... mark. 3, 2, 1, JUMP!” Maybe it’ll be just Cueball/Randall, but could more likely include Megan representing his wife.
      • However, it could very easily be that the weather in January could foil the attempt, or at least the timing.
      • The plane appears to be a commercial jetliner, though, rather than the small prop planes used for parachute jumps. Unless, of course, Randall is revealing his real identity has been Wesley Snipes all along
    • Perhaps the new item on top of the plane is the tail of a dinosaur? perhaps like the one on the cover of "what if..." book. perhaps it's a new book?
    • There are two flights originating in Boston departing at 09:59 on 1/31/2022: Spirit NK433 to Orlando Florida and Delta DL5696 to Washington D.C.
    • Frame 101-106 seems to be some kind of radar on top of the plane, like the one on Boeing E-3 Sentry. Or alternatively this plane is hanging beneath another plane. Not looking at all like Spaceshiptwo, but something similar, which could make this plane a spaceplane?
      • Predicting dinosaur
      • It doesn't look like radar (that's usually on the rear of the plane) and the plane itself looks odd - like it has a ventral fin or wings that attach at the back beneath the passenger door (an improbable arrangement.) The object coming into view on the right of the frame looks more like a person with big hair, reminiscent of the hair of Sideshow Bob - perhaps in the near foreground so as to appear much larger than the plane in perspective. I don't know what's up with the wings/fin on the plane but it seems possible we're going to see someone watching the plane fly away. Possibly the countdown and image relate to someone flying away, either on vacation or some other trip, and perhaps the thing coming into frame on the right is Randall or someone watching them fly away, missing them, etc.
      • the white element overlapping the fuselage could be the start of the wing-tip these fold up at the ends of many modern aircraft, could mean aircraft is banking left.

Early theories

Many early theories were generated before the picture was decisively revealed to be a plane.

• It seems after two days and 12 pictures like either something is moving into the frame or that it is a zoom out from a white area of a large picture. Maybe it is the arm of Cueball that will come into view.
• The second line makes it look somewhat like the tail fin of an aircraft.
  • Or the wing of an aircraft (left if looking down at it). Perhaps the plane is towing a banner that will fly through the frame.
    • After almost a week this looks like the most promising suggestion so far. Now that the direction of the camera movement has changed, we might get to see the rest of the aircraft soon.
      • From picture 63, it more and more seems like it was the tail fin of a plane and now we can see the body.
        • It's almost certainly the tail (and now a bit of the rear fuselage) of an aircraft.
          • It could just as easily be the left wing and part of the fuselage (showing windows on the right side of an airliner), with the tail fin out of view to the rear, as being the tail fin from an angle where the left wing is out of view behind the fuselage.
            • judging by the relative size of the (presumed) windows, I think it's more likely to be the left wing than the tail fin.
            • Based on the way planes are drawn in 1868: Eclipse Flights. 1355: Airplane Message and 1669: Planespotting, plane wings have a point on their edge and tail fins have a flat side, and (if a line is present) a thick line separates wings from the body, whereas thin lines or no lines separate tail fins, so this is a tail fin.
            • In the bottom left there appears to be the top part of a horizontal stabilizer, implying this is the tail.
              • It’s a tail fin, that’s finally clear, but that’s the underside of the stabilizer. Which means this would be the best angle to view Cueball/Randall parachuting out of that door, something that would be predictable to the exact minute (barring all kinds of things that could go wrong).
            • Appears to be a door to the left of the windows
            • It could be an airplane with a banner like in 1355: Airplane Message
    • Tail of a space shuttle, perhaps?
      • While I think Randall would've also drawn in the signature black part of the rudder, the shape fits perfectly
      • Timing is close (though not exact) to the Columbia disaster anniversary (2003-02-01 1359 UTC)
    • I'm thinking the tail of a Zeppelin.
      • Although those normally have longer tail fins.
• Maybe it is some kind of vehicle rolling into frame, like a car?
• Or the word xkcd? (or xkcd 2?)
• Could have been "Hangman", but it looks like it's zooming in on the diagonal instead of continuing to make a gibbet.
• With the new second line appearing in the corner as of frame 28 it looks like it's definitely zooming out of an image. It looks like it could be someone's arm in a running position.
• I think it could also be two legs of a reclining stick person.
• The lines suggest a shark fin and the movement would suggest it swimming across the frame.
  • If it was a shark fin, then the most likely candidates would be the first dorsal fin and the pectoral fin, but both end in points rather than edges like in the pictures of the header puzzle. An aircraft tail fin still seems most likely.
• Maybe it's a two-dimensional shape viewed from a weird angle?
  • Like a rectangle viewed from a floating, tilted perspective
  • Or the top of the k in xkcd
  • Or a boat dock?
• The r/xkcd subreddit produced some early theories :
  • Cueball's arm
  • The letter D, as in "The End"
  • A spider's web, in reference to comic 1688
    • With the airplane revelation, this reference turned into a meme in the subreddit, where users tried to justify the presence of an airplane shape inside a bigger-scope spider picture
    • Some joke theories included:
      • A giant spider flinging airplanes from the sky, as a new potential "What If?"
      • The lines are a web and the apparent windows the eyes of a giant spider
      • The airplane is a complex-looking spider leg, and 8 of them form a spider
    • Another redditor made the airplane part of a dragon's head

Countdown

• Theories about the countdown:
• Several have already been mentioned in the discussion:
  • Maybe Randall is going on vacation?
  • Notice that as of now - 22-Jan-2022 7am PST - (not sure exactly when it happened) the countdown has disappeared. Temporarily (perhaps to make the image cleaner?) or permanently? Pharmacovigilant (talk) 15:38, 24 January 2022 (UTC) The next time I looked (Sunday?), the countdown was back. No idea if it was a glitch or what.
  • Randall's next book, either the countdown is counting down to the start of promotion or it is released when the countdown ends.
    • Usually Randall has made month long book promotions before release. So if it is the release day it is a new way to do it. But he will get a lot of attention. If it is just the start of promoting it, people might get disappointed…
      • For instance he began promoting his new book Thing Explainer in the header text. That was in May 2015 and the book was first released late November 2015. Most of this time the header text was promoting the book.
  • James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) going into orbit about L2 Lagrange point.
    • Randall has already made several comics about the telescope. The latest 2564: Sunshield was released just five days prior to the countdown was started.
    • But the telescope will not reach the point but rather go into a large orbit around it, so a precise timer counting down to it seems a bit farfetched.
    • On NASA's page on JWST it seems like it will go into orbit 29.5 days after its December 25th Launch, on Christmas Day, so it should have already started the orbit by the 23rd or 24th of January - 8 days before the countdown.
    • Also No based on the image.
  • Lunar New Year
    • In China it starts on February 1st and a countdown for China is 8 hours behind.
      • The South Korean time zone is UTC+9, hence 14:59 UTC = 23:59 in South Korea, one minute to Feb 1.
        • But it's weird if Randall that has basically never mentioned this holiday suddenly makes a three week countdown for it, and why choose South Korea when most would think of China in this context…?
  • Randall will stop making xkcd (Goodbye in the image).
    • Hopefully not.
      • Agreed, to be avoided
    • It might be a temporary stop (hiatus).
  • National Backward Day
    • This is not a day mentioned on Wikipedia at the time of release of the countdown, so seems unlikely.
  • Maybe it will be an announcement of xkcd 2, a new and improved version for… some reason?
    • Seems unlikely…
  • Black History Month. The Greensboro sit-ins started on Feb 1 1960. Black History Month also begins on February 1st, also in 2022.
    • But this countdown stops early on January 31st so seems unlikely.
    • However, before changing the Header recently it was about Black Lives Matter for more than 1.5 years, first ending on December 20th 2021, less than a month before the countdown began. In between that there was a short Christmas sale reminder until a week into 2022. So it could just be another way of reminding of us the issues faced by black people in the US.
      • If this was true, I feel like it would be simpler to just change back to the Black Lives Matter text at the top of the screen. Also, it seems increasingly likely as of Jan. 20th that the image is some kind of plane, which doesn't really have much to do with Black History Month (that I know of?)
  • The accompanying header says specifically "xkcd updates Monday, Wednesday, and Friday"--maybe the countdown is to the reveal of a new update schedule?
    • Very unlikely. This was the standard header for a long time. It was used when Randall had nothing better to say. But with all his books and the trouble in US with elections and BLM, he has used the header as a platform most of the time many years now. So the standard text is rare. But he did return it for two days before adding the count down, making it seem just like normal.
    • A guess is that it returned to this, so the header text did not take any focus away from the countdown.
  • Red spider attack?
    • Un-Likely
  • He will become a father - could be a planned C-section.
    • As this is unpredictable, and could go wrong, then this would be a dangerous countdown, people can be very superstitious, even if scientist.
  • As it currently looks (after a few days into the countdown) it may be a trip he is taking by plane.
    • Maybe going somewhere people could meet him.
      • Book tour?
    • Moving a long way from home (down under or the like).
      • Maybe he's moving to Japan? Could be a plane, and the time zone would fit, at least.
        • Then the countdown would be until when the plane lands, not to midnight.
          • What has time zones to do with this clock? It counts down to the same time all over the world, and will reach zero at the same time no matter what time zone you are in.
          • Time zones have to do with where it will be midnight when the countdown reaches zero. If it's a countdown to when January ends (a moment before February begins), then it's until that moment in the time zone where the countdown reaches zero at that time.
      • If it is a plane, then maybe it will land in a new city Randall moves to when the counter ends, and the skyline will be visible...
  • Perhaps it's a start to a new series like 1190: Time.
    • It is already a series that works like Time, so seems unlikely.
  • Zero-G flight, really looks like plane to me.
    • Could be time he will first go weightless which could be fairly well known except for bad weather
  • A parachute jump by Randall. Could be predicted as well as the zero G.
  • How about the new series of Picard?
    • Star Trek: Picard (season 2) is set to run from March 3 2022, which both Wikipedia (link before) and IMDb agrees upon so bad to miss by more than a month, and what would the plane in the image have to do with this anyway?
    • So No!
  • The xkcd world tour!! I wish
  • I'm beginning to see another part of the picture entering into view, underneath the arc and above the body of the plane. To me, it looks like it could be a leg of sorts (Early bet: it could be a dinosaur)
  • Maybe something to do with aliens? Randall posted two comics about aliens secretly observing earth in a row now, could that be related?

count-wimRikmef

• The identifier of the script contains what is probably an acronym, but for what?
  • count / wim (?) / Rik (name) & me f(light)
  • Or it's just the output of whatever js minimizer was used.
  • R = Randall?
  • Randall is travelling to Germany? "Wo ist mein Reisepass? Ich komme mit einen Flug"
• The "img" tag has a misspelled "heigth" attribute. Probably just a typo?