Statistics Saturday: The Six Differences

• Flower pot.
• Cat.
• Mouse’s tail.
• Mailbox.
• Pillow.
• Steering wheel.
• Shadow.
• Eggs.
• Puddle.
• Eyeglasses.
• Flag.
• Table leg.

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In Which I Wonder About Slylock Fox and Count Weirdly

So Count Weirdly has created a handheld ray beam to alter the genetic code of creatures. Only it has terrible aim. That’s all right. I understand Count Weirdly’s thing is that he doesn’t really have to have a purpose to all this stuff he’s doing. He’s just in it for the kicks.

Detail of Bob Weber Jr’s Slylock Fox for the 17th of April, 2016. The narrator seems sure that Count Weirdly has lousy aim, but isn’t it possible the spider thing was his plan all along? “Ha ha ha, I shall add antennas to the heads of spiders all over the world and none of you can stop me!” I guess the narrator knows his business but it seems like the deliberate spider thing is at least as plausible a plan as some of Count Weirdly’s schemes, considering how he poorly applies things like his holodeck and his timeship. Not included: the six-differences panel in which a poor raccoon has his dinner, an even poorer fish, stolen by a not-poor-at-all bird, while being watched by a mouse, a frog, and a bunny whose states can’t be determined from the action depicted.

So he’s made a gadget that gives you antennas. I don’t want to tell Slylock his business, but let’s think things out here. Of all the insect body parts, the antennas are about the only ones that aren’t creepy or horrible or possessed of a name like “mandible” that I don’t even want to know what it does. OK, an insect antenna can be long enough to be unsettling, but the ones on the spider there aren’t nearly it. So hey, free insect antennas! Why is Slylock dodging this? OK, antennas would make his hat more complicated. And I agree his hat is an important part of his style. But isn’t having to work out a modified hat policy a reasonable price to pay?

Inspector Danger’s Realized He’s The Only One Who Could Catch Himself, Right?

I want to point out Werner Wejp-Olsen’s comic Inspector Danger’s Crime Quiz. It’s a nice little reasoning-puzzle feature for people who like Slylock Fox but are scared of Count Weirdly. This was Tuesday’s feature. Sidekick Alfie was sent on a bridge capable of supporting exactly 4,000 pounds of live weight and not a bit more, in a car with prisoner and cargo weighing exactly 4,000 pounds and not a bit more.

Werner Wejp-Olsen’s comic Inspector Danger’s Crime Quiz for the 2nd of February, 2016. No, the soda being drunk has nothing to do with the solution and you’re silly for suggesting it.

Inspector Danger is just counting on, like, a second car or a seagull or a leaf getting somewhere on the two-mile span and sending Sidekick Alfie to a watery doom, right? I’m not reading this wrong? I grant Alfie is no Max Mouse in terms of general usefulness or tendency not to be threatened with being eaten by a snake, but still. He wears a yellow trenchcoat, he deserves at least some respect for that.

Anyway, less murderous but more mathematically-themed comic strips are over at my humor blog. Please give those a try, won’t you?