Dinosaur Comics

really happy with how "assassination" was broken up into two lines in this comic, thank you english

Mon, 15 Mar 2010 09:44:26 -0700


archive - contact - sexy exciting merchandise - search - about–

← previous	March 15th, 2010	next
March 15th, 2010: I want to link you to the fantastic comics of Jason Shiga, who is both a gentleman and a comics genius. I just picked up Meanwhile, a choose-your-own-adventure comic that branches like crazy AND features both time travel and a doomsday device. It's impressive both in terms of content and structure - really awesome! I really recommend it! But if you're not reading this at a bookstore where you can pick up "Meanwhile" right now, I'd recommend reading his Fleep to tide you over until you do find yourself in this bookstore! – Ryan

sometimes you need to look in the mirror and say "my friend, i won't talk about last week if you don't."

Fri, 12 Mar 2010 05:12:44 -0800


archive - contact - sexy exciting merchandise - search - about–

← previous	March 12th, 2010	next
March 12th, 2010: I want to link you to the fantastic comics of Jason Shiga, who is both a gentlemen and a comics genius. I just picked up Meanwhile, a choose-your-own-adventure comic that branches like crazy AND features both time travel and a doomsday device. It's impressive both in terms of content and structure - really awesome! I really recommend it! But if you're not reading this at a bookstore where you can pick up "Meanwhile" right now, I'd recommend reading his Fleep to tide you over until you do find yourself in this bookstore! – Ryan

friendkapow, friendkapower, friendkapowest

Thu, 11 Mar 2010 04:59:27 -0800


archive - contact - sexy exciting merchandise - search - about–

← previous	March 11th, 2010	next
March 11th, 2010: Brad took the Qwantz Corpus I linked to the other day to help the efforts to solve my yet-unsolved anagram, threw in some Markov chains, and used it to write a program that generates new Dinosaur Comics automatically! He's posted some results and they're pretty awesome. And there's more of them today! – Ryan

it's 8 am and joey comeau of asofterworld.com is asleep upstairs, i'd like to dedicate this comic to joey comeau of asofterworld.com's sleepy sleepy ways

Wed, 10 Mar 2010 05:05:22 -0800


archive - contact - sexy exciting merchandise - search - about–

← previous	March 10th, 2010	next
March 10th, 2010: Brad took the Qwantz Corpus I linked to the other day to help the efforts to solve my yet-unsolved anagram, threw in some Markov chains, and used it to write a program that generates new Dinosaur Comics automatically! He's posted some results and they're pretty awesome. And there's more of them today! – Ryan

i wrote this comic shortly before hopping on my bike and riding off into the sunset, i mean, into work

Tue, 09 Mar 2010 05:07:05 -0800


archive - contact - sexy exciting merchandise - search - about–

← previous	March 9th, 2010	next
March 9th, 2010: Brad took the Qwantz Corpus I linked to the other day to help the efforts to solve my yet-unsolved anagram, threw in some Markov chains, and used it to write a program that generates new Dinosaur Comics automatically! He's posted some results and they're pretty awesome. Enjoy! – Ryan

ASK ME WHAT DIRECTION PURGATORY IS IN SO THAT I MIGHT FLEX WHILE POINTING YOU IN THE RIGHT DIRECTION

Mon, 08 Mar 2010 04:56:37 -0800


archive - contact - sexy exciting merchandise - search - about–

← previous	March 8th, 2010	next
March 8th, 2010: Guys, remember Adventure Time? IF NOT THEN CLICK THAT LINK FOR AN AMAZING VIDEO. Anyway it turns out Cartoon Network has made a whole series out of it! There's a trailer here. I am the excited one! – Ryan

"guys it's totally out of character that i'd ever admit to not being better than everyone else, SHEESH"

Fri, 05 Mar 2010 05:55:33 -0800


archive - contact - sexy exciting merchandise - search - about–

← previous	March 5th, 2010	next
March 5th, 2010: If you're working on the puzzle (qwantzle?) here are some tools to help automated analysis! Paul Stansifer has released Qwantzle Data, which scraped the OhNoRobot search engine to gather Dinosaur Comics text, and then converted it into ngrams, 2grams and 3grams. Nice! I've also released the Dinosaur Comics text as XML, which might help you, though it's pretty redundant given the work Paul's already done! I haven't cleaned the XML so there's some duplicate entries, etc. Also! In doing this I noticed there were transcriptions missing, which led me to discover I'd messed up the ONR code on this site for like a month! So that's fixed now, although this little bit of added data won't really make that much of a difference for puzzle solving. Finally, a lot of the entries I've seen are getting closer! People have hit on some key phrases that are in the solution, though of course with anagrams it's impossible to tell whether you're close or not. So here's one more hint: there's only one sentence in the solution, so the two exclamation marks appear right after each other. And don't forget the clues I gave earlier! – Ryan

t-rex's original fantasy was spider-man saying "oh no! now i'm more spider than man", but then i remembered i'd read that comic, they published it in like 1960, that idea was older than TWO ryans

Thu, 04 Mar 2010 05:50:21 -0800


archive - contact - sexy exciting merchandise - search - about–

← previous	March 4th, 2010	next
March 4th, 2010: If you're working on the puzzle (qwantzle?) here are some tools to help automated analysis! Paul Stansifer has released Qwantzle Data, which scraped the OhNoRobot search engine to gather Dinosaur Comics text, and then converted it into ngrams, 2grams and 3grams. Nice! I've also released the Dinosaur Comics text as XML, which might help you, though it's pretty redundant given the work Paul's already done! I haven't cleaned the XML so there's some duplicate entries, etc. Also! In doing this I noticed there were transcriptions missing, which led me to discover I'd messed up the ONR code on this site for like a month! So that's fixed now, although this little bit of added data won't really make that much of a difference for puzzle solving. Finally, a lot of the entries I've seen are getting closer! People have hit on some key phrases that are in the solution, though of course with anagrams it's impossible to tell whether you're close or not. So here's one more hint: the longest word is 11 characters long, the second-longest is 8 characters long, and they're side-by-side in the solution. And don't forget the clues I gave yesterday! – Ryan

kant was the one who thought genius meant originality, but kant thought a lot of things

Wed, 03 Mar 2010 12:46:04 -0800


archive - contact - sexy exciting merchandise - search - about–

← previous	March 3rd, 2010	next
March 3rd, 2010: I thought I'd made up "head-explosion disease" in yesterday's comic, but Paul wrote in to let me know that not only does it exist (what??), it's curable! PHEW. Okay, so the anagram from Monday's comic has still not been solved, so I thought I'd give a few clues before letting it stand for ALL ETERNITY: All words in the solution are dictionary words. What's more, all words in the solution are in the Jadrian's awesome Qwantz Corpus! The solution is natural-sounding, reasonably-grammatical dialogue that T-Rex would say, using phrasing that T-Rex would use. The punctuation :,!! is in the solution, in that order! The longest word in the solution is 11 characters long. The solution does not refer to anagrams or puzzles or winning t-shirts. However, what T-Rex is saying is directly related to the content of the comic the puzzle appears in. The letters given are case-sensitive! The first word of the solution is "I". I tested out Joel's puzzle-solving tool and it does let you know that the correct answer works! Also linked on Joel's page are some brute-force scripts and even a branch-and-bound solver (awesome!), but the solution is long enough to make pure brute force not really feasable. You'll have to use your head. I think that's pretty much it! Some of these clues I'd posted on Twitter or hinted at, but now they are explicit! And there's a few new pieces of information there too. Since this puzzle has gone unsolved for three days, the prize is now two t-shirts AND an adorable T-Rex Squishable! – Ryan

head-explosion disease: curable? hopefully curable, if caught in the early stages of explosion

Tue, 02 Mar 2010 05:12:46 -0800


archive - contact - sexy exciting merchandise - search - about–

← previous	March 2nd, 2010	next
March 2nd, 2010: The cryptogram in yesterday's comic has not yet been solved, so I've upped the prize to two shirts! Here's a link to Joel's puzzle-solving tool he's released - awesome! And finally here's a link to a picture of Samantha, whom USA Today informs me is working on video games at the best-rated video game school in the States, AND who has excellent taste in clothing. Thanks Samantha!! – Ryan

first person to decode it wins a t-shirt!! then i'll put the decoded version here. GO GO GO

Mon, 01 Mar 2010 05:42:24 -0800


archive - contact - sexy exciting merchandise - search - about–

← previous	March 1st, 2010	next
March 1st, 2010: It was a really good gold-medal hockey game last night! Afterwards downtown Toronto went nuts, they turned the CN tower gold, and I saw a one motorist who obviously hadn't heard about the game and was really stressed out about driving, because EVERYONE WAS HONKING. He flipped off a bus – Ryan

skip all the classes and ace the final, you'll feel great

Fri, 26 Feb 2010 07:05:50 -0800


archive - contact - sexy exciting merchandise - search - about–

← previous	February 26th, 2010	next
February 26th, 2010: Guys the Canadian Olympic Women's Hockey team played some really good hockey last night, and then they won some gold medals! – Ryan

deleted dialogue: "When i die cool dies with me! Tell everyone so they don't forget."

Thu, 25 Feb 2010 05:40:49 -0800


archive - contact - sexy exciting merchandise - search - about–

← previous	February 25th, 2010	next
February 25th, 2010: Thanks to Nur, T-Rex finally got that rockoon he wanted last month! – Ryan

i am beginning to think the lyrics to pop songs DON'T have all the answers

Wed, 24 Feb 2010 04:59:35 -0800


archive - contact - sexy exciting merchandise - search - about–

← previous	February 24th, 2010	next
February 24th, 2010: I forgot to mention with yesterday's comic, but if you pay me a reasonable bribe, I will totally send you an awesome t-shirt! – Ryan

i pay my insurance company "protection money"

Tue, 23 Feb 2010 05:22:34 -0800


archive - contact - sexy exciting merchandise - search - about–

← previous	February 23rd, 2010	next
February 23rd, 2010: We FINALLY got a great snowstorm in Toronto. It was basically the first good dumping of snow all year! This has been SUCH A WIMPY WINTER, you guys. – Ryan