Mysteries
Mysteries
[In a frame at the top left of the panel:] Mysteries
[A chart with two crossing lines with double arrows. Each arrow is labeled:] X-axis left: Not that weird X-axis right: Weird as Hell Y-axis top: I have no explanation Y-axis bottom: Explanation seems pretty clear
[In the chart there are 22 bullets. Each bullet is labeled. Below the labels are given from top to bottom in each of the four quadrants of the chart:]
[Top left quadrant:] Who Carly Simon is singing about in You're So Vain UVB-76 Lindbergh baby Toynbee tiles Jimmy Hoffa
[Top right quadrant:] MH370 Lead Masks Case DB Cooper The Wow signal Salish Sea feet Mary Celeste
[Bottom left quadrant:] Voynich manuscript JFK Why I keep putting ice cream back in the fridge instead of the freezer Oak Island Money Pit
[Bottom right quadrant:] Zodiac letters Amelia Earhart Lost Colony Kentucky meat shower Bigfoot Loch Ness Monster Dyatlov Pass incident

This comic shows a graph in which several "mysteries" are mentioned and placed on the graph according to how weird they are on the x-axis and the y-axis indicates whether Randall has an explanation or not for the mystery. Each item is listed in the table below .
Items near the top-right corner (such as the MH 370 disappearance) are both mysterious and strange. Items near the bottom-left corner (such as Randall's absent-mindedness regarding ice cream) have a clear explanation and are not really strange either. Items near the top-left corner (such as the meaning of You're So Vain ) are mysterious but not really strange. Items near the bottom-right corner (such as the Dyatlov Pass incident ) have a clear explanation but are quite strange.
The title text refers to the mystery of Randall staying up late to read Wikipedia articles, when he was already supposed to be asleep an hour ago. This is apparently not very unusual for him (see for instance 214: The Problem with Wikipedia ). And this mystery actually has an obvious explanation: Following up on an idea that eventually led to today's cartoon.
Some of these mysteries have already been explored in xkcd. See 950: Mystery Solved where Randall "solves" Amelia Earhart, Lost Roanoke Colony, Jimmy Hoffa; 593: Voynich Manuscript ; and 1400: D.B. Cooper .
Note that Randall uses similar diagrams in both 388: Fuck Grapefruit , 1242: Scary Names and 2466: In Your Classroom , which also contain different items. The first two also have an extra point, and the last two extra points mentioned in the title text. But all these points are in the title text because they are far off the chart, whereas in this comic it's the description of the point that is too long to fit on the chart. Extra info outside the chart is also used in the title text of 1785: Wifi , but this is a line graph.
The X axis in the graph indicates weirdness. The table assumes that the item to the far left is 0% (not that weird) and the item to the far right is 100% (weird as hell). The Y axis indicates if Randall has an explanation. The table assumes that the item at the bottom is 100% (Randall has a clear explanation) and the item at the top is 0% (Randall has no explanation).
[In a frame at the top left of the panel:] Mysteries
[A chart with two crossing lines with double arrows. Each arrow is labeled:] X-axis left: Not that weird X-axis right: Weird as Hell Y-axis top: I have no explanation Y-axis bottom: Explanation seems pretty clear
[In the chart there are 22 bullets. Each bullet is labeled. Below the labels are given from top to bottom in each of the four quadrants of the chart:]
[Top left quadrant:] Who Carly Simon is singing about in You're So Vain UVB-76 Lindbergh baby Toynbee tiles Jimmy Hoffa
[Top right quadrant:] MH370 Lead Masks Case DB Cooper The Wow signal Salish Sea feet Mary Celeste
[Bottom left quadrant:] Voynich manuscript JFK Why I keep putting ice cream back in the fridge instead of the freezer Oak Island Money Pit
[Bottom right quadrant:] Zodiac letters Amelia Earhart Lost Colony Kentucky meat shower Bigfoot Loch Ness Monster Dyatlov Pass incident
