id int64 1 2.63k | title stringlengths 1 50 | image_title stringlengths 1 53 ⌀ | url stringlengths 22 25 | image_url stringlengths 29 77 ⌀ | explained_url stringlengths 49 96 | transcript stringlengths 0 18.9k ⌀ | explanation stringlengths 262 39.4k ⌀ |
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2,601 | Instructions | Instructions | https://www.xkcd.com/2601 | https://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php/2601:_Instructions | [The comic consists of one radio button, a small circle in the center of a large white panel. It is interactive. When pressing the radio button (selecting it), it turns blue. The second the radio button is pressed a more than 9-hour long audio file of coding instructions begins to play, and a mute button appears in the... | This is the 12th April fools' comic released by Randall . The previous April fools' comic was 2445: Checkbox , which was released on Thursday, April 1st, 2021.
When loading the comic just a small dot is shown, a radio button (or option button). Usually, there would be more than one to give the user options. Once it has... | |
2,602 | Linguistics Degree | Linguistics Degree | https://www.xkcd.com/2602 | https://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php/2602:_Linguistics_Degree | [Megan, who is wearing a graduation cap, receives a degree which is handed to her by Hairbun. They are standing on a podium with Ponytail and Cueball standing below as onlookers.] Hairbun: Congratulations on the degree! Your word is "Bassoon." Ponytail: Oh nice! Not as cool as my "Jackalope," but still not bad. Cueball... | Hairbun hands Megan a linguistics degree, and informs her she is now "in charge of" the word ' bassoon .' Watching this, Ponytail and Cueball compare the words they were assigned when they got their linguistics degrees, ' jackalope ' and ' slurp ' respectively. Ponytail thinks bassoon is a cool word but thinks her own ... | |
2,603 | Childhood Toys | Childhood Toys | https://www.xkcd.com/2603 | https://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php/2603:_Childhood_Toys | [Title:] Childhood Toys [Subtitle:] By Practicality for Commuting
[Caption of the first box:] Practical
[Cueball, wearing a helmet, drives by on an electric scooter, passing another Cueball and Hairbun, who is holding a briefcase.] Scooter Cueball: Hi, boss!
[Caption of the second box:] Less Practical
[Ponytail rides b... | This comic shows various objects, ranked by how practical they would be for long-distance transportation. The objects are described as childhood toys.
The "Practical" panel shows objects designed for convenient transportation, namely bicycles and electric scooters . Most people know how to ride a bicycle, and can easil... | |
2,604 | Frankenstein Captcha | Frankenstein Captcha | https://www.xkcd.com/2604 | https://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php/2604:_Frankenstein_Captcha | [A captcha design, with a header and four rows of four pictures each below it. The header, in white lettering on a blue background, reads:] To continue, please click All squares containing Frankenstein
[The pictures, all with gray backgrounds, are as follows, from left to right in each row:]
Row 1
Monster: GRRR
Row 2
R... | This comic strip is a play on the meanings (and misunderstanding) of the name "Frankenstein". Frankenstein; or, the Modern Prometheus is an 1818 novel by Mary Shelley about a medical student named Victor Frankenstein who creates an artificial life-form. The man he creates once describes himself as "the Adam of [Franken... | |
2,605 | Taylor Series | Taylor Series | https://www.xkcd.com/2605 | https://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php/2605:_Taylor_Series | [Miss Lenhart pointing a stick at a whiteboard, which has some scribbled text written on it and one line is circled.] Miss Lenhart: At this point, you're probably thinking, "I love this equation and wish it would never end!" Miss Lenhart: Well, good news!
[Caption below the panel:] Taylor series expansion is the worst.... | In mathematics, a Taylor series expansion is a polynomial power series approximation of a function [1] around a given point, composed of an infinite sum of the function's derivatives , each both divided by successive factorials and multiplied by the incrementally increasing power of the distance from the given point. S... | |
2,606 | Weird Unicode Math Symbols | Weird Unicode Math Symbols | https://www.xkcd.com/2606 | https://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php/2606:_Weird_Unicode_Math_Symbols | Weird Unicode Math Symbols
And their meanings
| This comic proposes joke explanations for various unicode symbols with obscure or no known uses.
This comic may have been inspired by this blog post , which went viral (in a limited sense) the same day the comic was published.
Weird Unicode Math Symbols
And their meanings
| |
2,607 | Geiger Counter | Geiger Counter | https://www.xkcd.com/2607 | https://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php/2607:_Geiger_Counter | [Cueball and Ponytail are wearing hard hats and standing in what looks to be some sort of desert or rocky area. Cueball is holding a Geiger counter in his hands. Ponytail is holding a clipboard.] Cueball: At first I was confused about why they wanted me to carry a Geiger counter here, but then it clicked.
| This comic is a simple pun . Cueball and Ponytail are standing in what looks to be a desert, and Cueball is holding a Geiger counter in his hand. Cueball remarks that he did not understand why he was asked to carry a Geiger counter, but that it then "clicked" with him.
Geiger counters are devices used to measure the am... | |
2,608 | Family Reunion | Family Reunion | https://www.xkcd.com/2608 | https://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php/2608:_Family_Reunion | [Megan, White Hat, Cueball, Hairy, Danish, a white cat with black patches on its back, Hairbun, a chair with a half-full wine-glass on the seat, and a potted plant on a cabinet are "standing" in a line. White Hat is holding a glass and Hairy has his hands to the side in a "shrug" position. Megan and Cueball are facing ... | Because all humans are descended from a common ancestor , every human is, at some point, related to every other human, albeit distantly. Similarly, all life forms on Earth are presumed (with good reasons) to be descended from a single even more distant relative whose ultimate lineage became more relevant than any from ... | |
2,609 | Entwives | Entwives | https://www.xkcd.com/2609 | https://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php/2609:_Entwives | [A large treelike person (an Ent, maybe Treebeard) is holding one of his arms out towards six characters that are all looking at him. A man (Aragorn) with beard stubble and long hair, a dwarf (Gimli) with a helmet and a very large beard, an elf (Legolas) with long blonde hair (holding a bow down), and three short perso... | In The Lord of the Rings , the Ents are a species of tree-like humanoids, such as the one depicted in this comic. The comic shows an Ent, presumably Treebeard , meeting with some of the nine from the Fellowship of the Ring . The image is inaccurate inasmuch as it shows three hobbits : during the Ents' interactions with... | |
2,610 | Assigning Numbers | Assigning Numbers | https://www.xkcd.com/2610 | https://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php/2610:_Assigning_Numbers | [Cueball holds a hand up to his chin while he ponders the contents of what may be a whiteboard. There are five general lines of unreadable scribbling on the board, and between the two bottom lines, there is a square frame to the right with another scribble to the left. Cueball's thoughts are shown above him in a large ... | This explanation is by mathematical necessity either incomplete or incorrect.
Cueball is falling into a common trap, because a little knowledge is a dangerous thing. Faced with some sort of information, of an unknown kind but seemingly not intrinsically mathematical in nature, he has decided that one possible way to pr... | |
2,611 | Cutest-Sounding Scientific Effects | Cutest-Sounding Scientific Effects | https://www.xkcd.com/2611 | https://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php/2611:_Cutest-Sounding_Scientific_Effects | [A tournament bracket tree is shown with 16 scientific effect names, with 8 on the left and 8 on the right side. From both sides toward the middle the brackets reduce from eight to four, to two, then to one line where the latter join to a rectangle in the middle for the winners name of the final match. Above the bracke... | Randall has compiled yet another single-elimination tournament bracket for a knock-out competition, by public vote, between 16 different scientific effect names that he seems to consider worthy of being cute-sounding.
As of the release day, he is determining the result in a series of Twitter polls . These results are s... | |
2,612 | Lightsabers | Lightsabers | https://www.xkcd.com/2612 | https://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php/2612:_Lightsabers | [Two Cueball like Jedi are engaging each other in a duel using lightsabers over 12 panels of equal size, with sound effects as the only sound. In the first panel the left Jedi has his lightsaber extended holding it in both hand pointing towards the other, who at this time is just turning his lightsaber on.] Tssssss Cli... | null | |
2,613 | Bad Map Projection Madagascator | Bad Map Projection: Madagascator | https://www.xkcd.com/2613 | https://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php/2613:_Bad_Map_Projection:_Madagascator | Bad map projection #248: Madagascator
Mercator projection but with the North Pole in the Indian Ocean so it exaggerates the size of Madagascar instead of Greenland. Various countries and oceans are labeled, and country borders are shown. | This is the fifth comic in the series of Bad Map Projections displaying Bad Map Projection #248: Madagascator. It came about 10 months after the fourth 2489: Bad Map Projection: The Greenland Special (#299).
This time, Randall used the classic Mercator projection but instead of placing the North Pole on top and the Sou... | |
2,614 | 2 | 2 | https://www.xkcd.com/2614 | https://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php/2614:_2 | [An apparent generalisation of a scientific expression consisting of a dotted rectangular 'box' outline, left empty, and various commonly-themed symbology around it:]
[as normal text, to the left of all the rest:] 2 [superscript to the immediate left of the box:] 2 [subscript also to the immediate left of the box:] 2 [... | This demonstrates the different ways in which the number 2 can be typeset in various scientific fields. While these ways of typesetting are used with any number, using the number 2 in this instance provides a clear illustration how adding numbers can significantly alter a feature of a concept (such as the number of el... | |
2,615 | Welcome Back | Welcome Back | https://www.xkcd.com/2615 | https://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php/2615:_Welcome_Back | [A large cloud fills the upper 3/4 of the panel. That it is a cloud is indicated by curved lines at the bottom of the cloud. Below the cloud lines is a tornado in the right part of the background. It is throwing up dust on or near the mid-distance horizon and creating an active debris cloud. In the foreground Cueball i... | Cueball is opening an app called TornadoGuard, a reference to comic 937: TornadoGuard . In that comic the app is described to have a function so it "plays a loud alert sound when there is a tornado warning for your area". Tornadoes are a recurring theme on xkcd.
In the background, a tornado is approaching, so presumabl... | |
2,616 | Deep End | Deep End | https://www.xkcd.com/2616 | https://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php/2616:_Deep_End | [Caption above the scene] How deep ends form in pools
[On the left of the image is the shallowest water in the pool, about the height of Megan. All the water in the image is grey. She is swimming in the water, and a duck floatie and a beach ball are floating to the left of her. It is labeled] Shallow End
[Underneath, a... | Pools, like oceans, contain water. This comic produces a schematic for the former, derived from science about the latter. On Earth, the surface consists of tectonic plates which move around. In this comic, Randall equates swimming pools with plate tectonics , to explain how deep ends form in said pools. In actuality, s... | |
2,617 | Maps | Maps | https://www.xkcd.com/2617 | https://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php/2617:_Maps | [Cueball is holding his hands up and is staring down at his open palms. Megan and White hat is looking at him.] Cueball: You look around one day and realize the things you assumed were immutable constants of the universe have changed. Cueball: The foundations of our reality are shifting beneath our feet. Cueball: We li... | The term "map" carries a double meaning within this comic. While it refers to an actual map, it also refers to the concept of "map and territory," where your map is your model of the universe, and the territory is the universe itself. Cueball has a map of the universe where Apple Maps is bad, and is surprised to discov... | |
2,618 | Selection Bias | Selection Bias | https://www.xkcd.com/2618 | https://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php/2618:_Selection_Bias | [Blondie is standing on a podium behind a lectern with a microphone. She is standing under a hanging sign with large text. In front of the podium is an audience of five seated persons all with their hands raised above their heads. The audience includes two guys that look like Cueball, Hairbun, and two other persons wit... | Selection bias is when a survey or poll of some sort comes up with incorrect results due to those who were asked. For example, if you asked a group of people how many acres of land they own, your average number will be higher if you ask a group of farmers rather than a group of city residents.
The joke is that she is t... | |
2,619 | Crêpe | Crêpe | https://www.xkcd.com/2619 | https://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php/2619:_Cr%C3%AApe | [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.
| Cueball has made a crêpe , a thin pancake known for its legendary status in French cuisine, which he proudly announces. However, the 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 ( ⮝ ). Megan , who can apparently ... | |
2,620 | Health Data | Health Data | https://www.xkcd.com/2620 | https://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php/2620:_Health_Data | [Cueball and Doctor Ponytail are talking to each other. Cueball is sitting on an examination table and Doctor Ponytail, in a doctor's coat, is looking down and reading from a clipboard with some illegible writing on it.] Doctor Ponytail: I'm taking a look at your numbers, and it doesn't look good. Doctor Ponytail: You ... | Cueball tries to cut to the root of the issue by asking his chances of survival. Ponytail asks whether Cueball has a family history, but rather than asking for a history of specific illnesses, she is merely asking whether he has any family history at all. Her apparent concern on discovering that he does is presumably d... | |
2,621 | Mainly Known For | Mainly Known For | https://www.xkcd.com/2621 | https://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php/2621:_Mainly_Known_For | [Megan holds her hand palm up towards Cueball.] Megan: ...And her dad looks exactly like the Pixar guy. Steve what's-his-name? Jobs? Cueball: "Pixar guy"? Cueball: You always know famous people for such weird reasons.
[Megan puts her hand down.] Megan: What do you mean? Cueball: Who is John Lennon? Megan: Wasn't he in ... | Frequently, when people can't remember a celebrity's name, they will point out other works they are known for in hopes someone else will recognize them from that and remind them of the name. The comic, for its demographic of nerds, is joking on how it can come across to have lived a life separate from popular culture,... | |
2,622 | Angular Diameter Turnaround | Angular Diameter Turnaround | https://www.xkcd.com/2622 | https://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php/2622:_Angular_Diameter_Turnaround | [Cueball and a row of 7 spiral galaxies, the first 5 growing sequentially smaller and the last 2 growing larger] Angular Diameter Turnaround [A spiral galaxy emitting light and Cueball in a small circle with closely spaced grid lines, captioned "T=1b yr."] [A stretched truncated circle with widely spaced gridlines, wit... | This comic references multiple physics and maths concepts, including Angular diameter , Angular diameter distance , Redshift , and mobile phones , although mobile phones are not a core science at this time. [ citation needed ]
The comic shows the galaxies of the universe as Samsung Galaxy mobile phones, pairing the age... | |
2,623 | Goofs | Goofs | https://www.xkcd.com/2623 | https://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php/2623:_Goofs | [An excerpt from an Internet Movie Database web page showing a list of goofs from a film. Each item has some small illegible text below it, which on the real IMDb would say something like "7 of 72 found this interesting | Share this". The first and third items have a faint yellow-tinted background. The third item is on... | IMDb is the Internet Movie Database , a website that contains detailed, user-contributed information about movies and TV shows. One of the sections in many entries is " Goofs ". This may list bloopers, inconsistencies, implausible actions, anachronisms, etc. in the movie. While some people find enjoyment in searching f... | |
2,624 | Voyager Wires | Voyager Wires | https://www.xkcd.com/2624 | https://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php/2624:_Voyager_Wires | [In the bottom right corner is a space probe, with large satellite dish and long antenna. Behind it runs a long wire, that makes three loops before it is connected to North America on the Earth in the top left corner. To the left of the Earth there is a second wire, which goes off-panel to the left.]
[Caption below th... | This comic claims that the Voyager probes communicate with NASA though ridiculously long copper wires. These wires would have to be continuously lengthened as the probes travel away from Earth. Supposedly, because of "high copper prices and budget constraints," they may not be able to afford to lengthen the wires much ... | |
2,625 | Field Topology | Field Topology | https://www.xkcd.com/2625 | https://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php/2625:_Field_Topology | [A row of four signs, each held up by two posts, followed by a row of four rounded lozenge shapes, one for each sign. The signs and lozenge shapes are shaded as if three-dimensional objects, all being flattish with a small third dimension; the four lozenge shapes each have one pair of sides horizontal and the other pai... | Field Topology is a subject in mathematics , but in this comic, Randall is instead examining the topology of playing fields used for various sports. The comic strip depicts a situation in which the common practice of multi-use athletic facilities has been organized by the "topology department" and constructed to be sha... | |
2,626 | d65536 | d65536 | https://www.xkcd.com/2626 | https://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php/2626:_d65536 | [A large sphere with a several lines, and in some places grids, are shown. Cueball, standing next to it, is dwarfed by its size, as it is at least seven times as tall as he is. The sphere has many lines following various great circles or parallel lesser circles around the curve of the sphere, and some patches of cross ... | In binary computing, 16 bit unsigned numbers range from 0 to 65535, for a total of 65536 unique numbers, a number which is hence well-known to software engineers. Generating large numbers in a manner that is truly random is a recurring problem in cryptography, required to send private messages to another party. People ... | |
2,627 | Types of Scopes | Types of Scopes | https://www.xkcd.com/2627 | https://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php/2627:_Types_of_Scopes | Content is a table, with column headings "Regular Blank Scope", "Electron Blank Scope", and "Radio Blank Scope". Row headings are "Micro", "Tele", "Peri", "Stetho", "Kaleido", "Gyro", and "Horo".
Regular Microscope Look at small stuff Electron Microscope Look at really small stuff Radio Microscope Figure out why your ... | Electron microscopes , electron telescopes and radio telescopes are special forms of microscopes and telescopes , respectively. This comic explores what you could do with a hypothetical "electron ___-scope" and "radio ___-scope" for other "regular" items whose name also ends in -scope (namely: periscope , stethoscope ,... | |
2,628 | Motion Blur | Motion Blur | https://www.xkcd.com/2628 | https://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php/2628:_Motion_Blur | [White Hat is holding a camera up to his face looking to the left away from Cueball and Ponytail standing to his right. Cueball is holding one hand, with a balled up fist, up towards White Hat] White Hat: Okay, I'm going to pan around. Cueball: No, wait, your shutter speed is too fast, it will look choppy if—
[White Ha... | This is analogous to something much more common that people do, by practicing moving their bodies relative to the motion of the camera: reducing blur when the shutter speed is too low.
The title text refers to the fact that only one object - in this case, Cueball - appearing blurry while everything else in the frame is... | |
2,629 | Or Whatever | Or Whatever | https://www.xkcd.com/2629 | https://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php/2629:_Or_Whatever | [White Hat and Cueball are looking out on a skyline with six smaller skyscrapers and one much taller. The tall building has three plateaus, where it gets thinner before the top. On the top there are also two tall antennas, one twice as high as the other. Around the buldings therare 7 small clouds and two distant birds ... | The Willis Tower (formerly the Sears Tower) is a 108-story, 442.1 meter skyscraper in Chicago. It is currently the third tallest building in North America, and was indeed the tallest building in the world for 25 years, surpassing the World Trade Center upon opening in 1973, and being surpassed by the Petronas Towers up... | |
2,630 | Shuttle Skeleton | Shuttle Skeleton | https://www.xkcd.com/2630 | https://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php/2630:_Shuttle_Skeleton | [In the upper right part of the panel there is a small drawing of the Space Shuttle as seen from above. Beneath it, and to its left, is a much larger drawing with the same outline as the Shuttle. But this time the outer layers have been removed to reveal the inside. This has revealed a skeleton taking up the entire spa... | The Space Shuttle was a reusable spacecraft system used by NASA from 1981 to 2011, after which it was decommissioned. In this comic, Randall suggests that the nature of the shuttle was in doubt or misunderstood until either an intact 'specimen' (of which there are four) had been dissected, or possibly the remains were ... |
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