Frazz by Jef Mallett for November 06, 2016

It took me a minute to get this.

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In binary, it’s only alphabetical through two.

By “losing it” he means before you have to use C, M, and L.

How rare is it when Caulfield breaks the IVth Wall?

Caulfield, that’s reverse alphabetical order, i.e.; X comes after V comes after I.

I don’t get it – how is XXXIIIIIIIII to XXXX any different than the transition from twenty-nine to thirty (or nineteen to twenty, for that matter)? Now, forty-nine, sure: XXXXIIIIIIIII to L clearly breaks the order.

So, is VMI = 996 ? Or only on the parade ground?

Doesn’t XXXX come after XXXVIIII?But it breaks when you try to put L after XXXXVIIII

In fact, I think that, if you ditch the subtractive principe, fourty becomes XXXX, and you can get to fourty nine without losing it! :-)

in what universe does “V” come before “I”? Unless we are supposed to be reading right to left, but Latin does not read right to left.

Gotta agree, if you’re dropping the subtractive principle, then you get to XXXXVIIII before it “breaks”.

So in fact, it was Caulfield, or Mallett himself, who lost it (i.e., got it wrong) in panel VI.

Panel VI Mrs. Olsen put a stop to it.

Roman numerals make even less sense than daylight savings time, and we’ve all been recently reminded just how stupid that is! I hope the NFL comes to its senses about numbering Super Bowls and keeps going with digits from 50 onward (unless they’re trying to appeal to Chinese audiences with “LI”).

Someone once said that there is no zero in Roman numerals. But since V V is not used anywhere, wouldn’t that mean Zero (using the “subtractive” principle)?

My antique clock face has IIII for four, but IX for nine.

“Who’s smart enough…? Evidently not you.Frazz was talking about her patience not her intelligence, Tool. (More genteel than”dick" according to you who calls a child a tool)

Go rake your leaves and get up early and take a pick, Dick.

Pic, not pick that is. Wouldn’t want the Comic Fairy to have to explain that to you. You never disappoint though, that’s for sure.

Can someone explain what “unless you continue to nine” means, please? That’s the only panel I didn’t understand.

BTW, the Romans didn’t use the subtractive principle. That was a medieval invention. Once they switched to Arabic numerals, saving space became more important than ease of calculation.