But it was far from being a small or normal comic! It was the first 'real' game comic released on xkcd (albeit not the first interactive comic). On the day of the book's release (even though it was a Tuesday) Randall also released the comic 1608: Hoverboard, which was a direct celebration of the book's release (it says so in the comic). 4 The ten hundred words people use the most.3 Things in this book by page (Contents).When the book was released, Randall collaborated with Minute Physics to publish a 'commercial' version of the Upgoer comic.

It was published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt on November 24th and is available from among others Amazon to which a link has been posted on xkcd for a long time. The book is a collection of diagrams and line drawings similar in style to the Up Goer Five comic, which can also be purchased as a poster. Thing Explainer is Randall's second published book, not including xkcd comic books, which he announced on May 13th, 2015 in the blag following the amazing success of his what if? book based on the what if? blog. See a summary below and also the entire index from the book listing all the 45 different explanations. The book explores, among other things, computer buildings (datacenters), the flat rocks we live on (tectonic plates), the things you use to steer a plane (airliner cockpit controls), and the little bags of water you're made of (cells). Randall found his own method to determine which words would go on his list, a list that is revealed in the book. Thing Explainer: Complicated Stuff in Simple Words is a book by Randall Munroe which explains things in the style of Up Goer Five (also included in the book), using only blueprint like drawings and a vocabulary of the 1,000 (or ten hundred) most common words in the English language.

Xkcd book thing explainer