Category / CIDU

by EditorM

I hope he doesn’t think all three rhyme

This quiz from Wrong Hands is probably not meant to be hard – the answer key was printed rightside-up and not disguised. But even if meant mostly as a joke, we can get more fun from it, I think, by trying out our answers and seeing if there is anything to be found in the logic of it.

For a similar post in the past, we withheld the answer key and then posted it as a comment within the thread after enough answers had been posted. Here I think we can try the honor system: the answer key will be here, but obscured in a slider. You can leave it closed, then check after you comment; or skip commenting and just have a look after satisfying yourself that you know what it will be. (Slide up to see answers.)

by EditorM

EDM

This Eyebeam from Chak is a perplexing CIDU. And no relief coming from the GoComics comments.

Some “classical” composers in the later parts of the 20th Century (or we could say “new music”), did have some fun with putting scribbles and illustrations onto their scores, for performers to interpret under guidelines. I don’t know if Electronic Dance Music performers work from anything like a conventional score, but this might instead be a “transcription” score, with the artist capturing the song in notation as best they can. The cloudburst notes and shaky-lines eighths are nice touches, even if we’re not sure what they mean.

HOWEVER, none of that explains why the guru is surrounded by that music, or if the hiker/seeker is exposed to that type of music so much that he has to go climbing in the hope of getting away from it.

by EditorM

The newer collection of Oopsies, Quickies, We-can-improve-its, Semi-CIDUs, Mysteries, and flops (11th Series)

This is just a blah. But can we improve it?

Sure, there’s a fix just calling out to us! Change the thought balloon to “Can I come up with the atomic symbol for Sodium?” and the bottom caption to “Na, he can’t.”

Other improvements from y’all?

And on this train of thought, for those with trigonometric inclinations, “Can he remember the sixth of the basic circular functions?” and the answer “No, of ____ __ ___ “.

This Breaking Cat News comes from AndrĂ©a as a problem of the physics. “Won’t the eggs fall out if they’re in the holder like this? I’ve not dyed eggs for YEARS, but I distinctly remember putting the egg in the holder small end DOWN . . .”

Here’s a new sub-category. It’s not LOL material, there is no joke to be understood, and it’s not a comic flop either. It’s just something you gotta see!

Okay, the joke here isn’t that far away from easy understanding — it’s that she’s at home, not in a hotel lobby or restaurant waiting area, yet her remark is appropriate only to the latter kind of situations. But the furnishings are not that different from what a public place might have. So how is the casual reader to know this is her home (the regular reader might be expected to recognize the furnishings and decor).

A “quickie CIDU” because it is entirely opaque while misinterpreting the artwork; then becomes a clear and simple joke the instant you re-interpret the artwork.

I think we’ve argued this point before: If a question is posed which is not answered within the comic itself, and is not clearly discernible after thinking about it, can we say “Well there isn’t meant to be an answer, but that’s part of why it’s meant to be funny”? On this one I just don’t get it.

Oh but wait! This was the 4-19 panel so of course it was a 4-20 joke. Ermmm.

Well this one might be called a second-take CIDU. I thought I had gotten it, or enough for a chuckle, when originally reading it – the guy hanging on the wall is a (baseball) catcher, and is the ideal one for the husband/fan-guy, so is his “dream” catcher. But the offstage wife takes that phrasing to mean a “dreamcatcher” wall hanging, whose proper placement she issues a reminder about. I didn’t give any significance to the nickname “Pudge” which the husband bestows on the catcher.

But then now Mark M sends it in and notes some complicating factors: I’m thinking if you’re not a MLB fan AND a geezer, this comic will be confusing.  I’m both and it’s still confusing.  Pudge was a nickname for Carlton Fisk, who played as a catcher some 50 years ago.  A very good player, so “dream catcher” is a great pun.  Maybe this belongs as an Oy or LOL.  But the CIDU part is the response in Spanish.  Fisk was born in the U.S. and had no Latino connections that I’m aware of. And then there’s maybe even more to this if we start to worry about him saying “This is how it works” which may go on only some readings.

(P.S. A few days later, he got down from that wall, and the husband caught him rifling in their liquor cabinet, and strewn about him were several bottles of this family’s favorite kind of American distilled grain whiskey. Which made him the catcher in the rye.)