Classic comic 688 - Self-Description

The twenty eight words in my rhyme
Have vowels forty seven - a prime.
Its five lines (a surety)
And syllables thirty
Plus six, letters hold one one nine.

Original comic here.

Comic 854 - Learning to Cook

We'd all love to cook from ingredients
But we're baffled by their disobedience.
The best form of eats are
Still takeouts and pizza
Which win on both taste and expedience.

Original comic here.

Classic comic 757 - Toot

There once was a young man from Jackson
Who always would carry a klaxon.
When braggarts would warn
"Not to toot my own horn...",
BRAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAP! tooted that fellow from Jackson.

Original comic here.

Another one that might appeal to fans of the recent "Consecutive Vowels" comic.

Comic 853 - Consecutive Vowels

The delight of a man from Kauai
Were strings of a, e, u and i.
When vowels started queueing
The passion ensuing
Resounded all over Hawaii.

Original comic here.

Comic 852 - Local g

There was a pole vaulter from Mold
Who wowed London's crowd and won gold
But in spite of his brio
He'll struggle in Rio
Cause down there, g's value won't hold.

Original comic here.

An extrapolation from the comic's general theme, rather than a versification of the comic's events.

Classic comic 301 - Limerick

I used to love going on Slashdot
But now I'm shocked how bad that trash got -
My sarcasm tenuous
The mods disingenuous
Keep rating plus five (that's the cashpot).

Original comic here.

Comic 851 - Na

Na x 8 hey hey goodbye!
Na x 10 Katamari!
Na x 8 Batman!
But Wil Pickett's scat (man)
Takes na into infinity.

Original comic here.

Lots of the dreaded eye-rhyme here (for best results, I recommend pronouncing them all to rhyme with 'goodbye'). Too many nas tend to make things very difficult for the versifier who has limited syllables at his disposal.

Classic comic 217 - e to the pi Minus pi

e to the pi minus pi
Isn't twenty - in fact it's just shy.
So offer to share a
Test for rounding error
And watch as the programmers cry.

Original comic here.

A bit of a mean trick if you played it in real life.

Comic 850 - World According to Americans

There's a funny map doing the rounds
That defames the US, on the grounds
That they all couldn't do less
Geog, and are clueless;
The truth's not as bad as that sounds.

Original comic here.

And in case you aren't familiar, here is a link to the kind of funny maps that this comic is a response to.

Classic comic 760 - Moria

Behold, we approach Khazad-Dûm
Where the Dwarves met their end in the gloom
In the mines of Moria
Not shadow and fire
But short, stubby legs wrought their doom.

Original comic here.

Another Tolkien-inspired comic and limerick, to go with the one about Sam G from the other day.

Comic 849 - Complex Conjugate

A physicist working at Keele
Used root minus one with great zeal
But whenever the is
Came to rationalise
He had to quit - shit just got real.

Original comic here.

That's the plural of "i", not the word "is". Even so, I fear it may still not make much sense.

Apologies for use of the S-swear here, but the comic's joke depends on it so it has to go in.

Classic comic 477 - Typewriter

There once          news.google.com
Was          slashdot.org          a man from
digg.com          Tibet
boingboing.net
Who          reddit.com     ...     No, it's gone.

Original comic here.

A slightly experimental limerick for the goldfish generation.

Classic comic 425 - Fortune Cookies

Your loved ones will stand in good stead;
In everything, keep from bloodshed;
Your mettle presents
Cause for self-confidence...
IN BED! No, wait... EXCEPT IN BED!

Original comic here.

Comic 848 - 3D

Some suckers had tickets reserved
For String Theory 3D. They got swerved!
The key to the wheeze
Is that at normal Es
The third D cannot be observed.

Original comic here.

Classic comic 372 - To Be Wanted

There's a sailor girl whose lost love is
An office-bound Internet whizz
But he's just figmentation
Of her 'magination
And she's a creation of his.

Original comic here.

Comic 847 - Stingray Nebula

If you're bearing an arduous load
Like Sam did in Sauron's abode
You can find succour knowing
Your star's always glowing
So long as it doesn't explode.

Original comic here.

Classic comic 89 - Gravitational Mass

A programmer from Alabama
On mass and inertia would yammer
But his ravings abstruse
Were all an excuse
For a tenuous joke 'bout yo' mama.

Original comic here.

Some credit for the above must go to the Penguin Rhyming Dictionary (1985), a delightful book and a boon to the limerick writer.

Comic 846 - Dental Nerve

There was a pop singer called Ke$ha
Whose teeth and gums could have been fresher.
She brushed them with Jack
Risking far more than plaque
So please Ke$ha, use toothpaste! (No pressure.)

Original comic here.

The Jack/plaque rhyme comes from the comic's mouse-over text. Did you know that if you hover your mouse pointer over a comic on the XKCD site, you get a little bonus joke?

Comic 845 - Modern History

There once was an old man of Queens
Who acted out military scenes.
From the Civil War? No,
He aped troops in full flow -
That childish old person of Queens!

Original comic here.

Both the US and England have active societies that like to act out the countries' respective Civil Wars. If the childish old man is English and so not a New Yorker, it can be assumed that he is an alumnus of Queens' College, Cambridge.

Classic comic 391 - Anti-Mindvirus

There once was a game called The Game
(Not the most original name)
It isn't much fun
But it's OK - you've won!
Let's all now move on from The Game.

Original comic here.

Comic 844 - Good Code

The way out of programming hell
Is to either code fast or code well.
But fast makes a pickle
And specs are so fickle
They'll change if you don't go pell-mell.

Original comic here.

Classic comic 245 - Floor Tiles

There once was a fellow from Dorking
Who followed some strange rules when walking.
When asked why this was
He said, "It's because...
Forget it. I walk fine. Stop talking."

Original comic here.

A side note: "When asked why this was / He said, "It's because" is one of my favourite couplets to use in a limerick.

Comic 843 - Misconceptions

Every Feb, the whole middle school crew
Reads Wiki's debunking list through,
So they won't annoy smarties
At future drinks parties -
How I wish that this statement were true!

Original comic here.

Classic comic 276 - Fixed width

There once was a young man from Dingle
Whose girl set his heart all a-tingle,
But IM line-length
Trumped emotional strength
And heartbreakingly, he wound up single.

Original comic here.

A cautionary tale for anyone conducting a romance via MSN.

Sadly I was unable to make the limerick itself come out in fixed width. If any of you clever clogs out there can, I would love to hear from you.

Comic 842 - Mark

A credulous fellow from Diss
Got a dark cabal's call to enlis'.
He blew buildings sky-high,
Though he never knew why -
Or that "Pen Fifteen" didn't exis'.

Original comic here.

I've now caught up with the festive backlog ... until tomorrow, of course.

Comic 841 - Audiophiles

There once was a girl from Grasmere
Who demanded top audio gear.
She tried hard to impress
With her high bps
But nobody wanted to hear.

Original comic here.

Nearly up to date now.

Comic 840 - Serious

There once was some serious putty
Which wouldn't be silly or nutty.
When kids came to play
It yelled, "Go away!"
Because it was Serious Putty.

Original comic here.

Comic 839 - Explorers

A bishop plus knight on a mission
Had differences, causing division.
His Grace (stuck on white)
Kept the food from Sir Knight
As the product of black-square derision.

Original comic here.

I'm not sure I fully understand this comic, so I've just described what I can see in the picture, in the form of a limerick.

Improved slightly from the original version on 25.01.11

Comic 838 - Incident

It's a popular programmer's sport
To sneak more privilege than one ought
But you'd better not try
And I'm telling you why:
Because Santa Claus gets the report.

Original comic here.

Nice to get this one up with a couple of days of Christmas still remaining.

I'm afraid that the computer commands featured in this comic are one form of Gibberish in which I am not well versed, so it's possible I may have misunderstood something. Even if this turns out to be the case, perhaps you will enjoy the limerick for its own sake.

Comic 837 - Coupon Code

If my quest for a coupon should fail
When I order through online retail
I can dredge up the past
So the seller, aghast,
Waives all charges. Hurrah for blackmail!

Original comic here.

And so the great Christmas catch-up commences. More limericks very soon.

Happy New Year to one and all.