hansel-and-gretel
Original: hansel-and-gretel on Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal
Transcript
Panel 1 (narration caption): In the year of a great famine, Hansel and Gretel's mother decided to leave them in the woods to fend for themselves.
[A man sits at a table with his hand to his mouth, looking worried, while a woman stands with arms spread, gesturing emphatically. A round window is on the wall behind them.]
Panel 2 (narration caption): Overhearing the conversation, Hansel had an idea.
Hansel (speech bubble): I will take these bright pebbles and leave them along our path. Then, we can follow them home.
[A blond child, Hansel, speaks; another child is nearby.]
Panel 3 (narration caption): Little did they know, their mother had overheard THEIR conversation.
[The mother is shown listening near the window.]
Panel 4 (narration caption): That night, she created loops of shiny pebbles at various points in the woods.
[A wide forest scene. Small glowing/shiny pebbles are scattered and arranged in loops among the bushes. A figure stands at the edge.]
Panel 5 (narration caption): The following evening, she left them in the forest.
The mother (speech bubble): It's easy! Just always go to the nearest pebble. Keep doing that until you arrive home.
[The mother smiles and speaks to the two children at the forest's edge.]
Panel 6 (narration caption): On the path home, they encountered a loop, which caused them to go in an endless cycle until they passed out from exhaustion.
[The two small children stand inside a closed loop of glowing pebbles in the dark forest.]
Panel 7: [A house with smoke rising from its chimney sits in the woods.]
Voice (caption / off-panel): What's the moral of this story?
Panel 8 (narration caption): There are arts far darker than witchcraft...
[A close-up of hands holding open a red book titled "Introduction to Algorithms." A pentagram-like geometric figure is drawn below.]
Votey:
[A handwritten note on a sheet of paper:]
This idea derived/stolen from a sentence in the book "Once upon an Algorithm" by Martin Erwig
[A man sits at a table with his hand to his mouth, looking worried, while a woman stands with arms spread, gesturing emphatically. A round window is on the wall behind them.]
Panel 2 (narration caption): Overhearing the conversation, Hansel had an idea.
Hansel (speech bubble): I will take these bright pebbles and leave them along our path. Then, we can follow them home.
[A blond child, Hansel, speaks; another child is nearby.]
Panel 3 (narration caption): Little did they know, their mother had overheard THEIR conversation.
[The mother is shown listening near the window.]
Panel 4 (narration caption): That night, she created loops of shiny pebbles at various points in the woods.
[A wide forest scene. Small glowing/shiny pebbles are scattered and arranged in loops among the bushes. A figure stands at the edge.]
Panel 5 (narration caption): The following evening, she left them in the forest.
The mother (speech bubble): It's easy! Just always go to the nearest pebble. Keep doing that until you arrive home.
[The mother smiles and speaks to the two children at the forest's edge.]
Panel 6 (narration caption): On the path home, they encountered a loop, which caused them to go in an endless cycle until they passed out from exhaustion.
[The two small children stand inside a closed loop of glowing pebbles in the dark forest.]
Panel 7: [A house with smoke rising from its chimney sits in the woods.]
Voice (caption / off-panel): What's the moral of this story?
Panel 8 (narration caption): There are arts far darker than witchcraft...
[A close-up of hands holding open a red book titled "Introduction to Algorithms." A pentagram-like geometric figure is drawn below.]
Votey:
[A handwritten note on a sheet of paper:]
This idea derived/stolen from a sentence in the book "Once upon an Algorithm" by Martin Erwig
Alt text
An eight-panel SMBC comic retelling Hansel and Gretel as a parable about greedy algorithms. Panel 1 caption: "In the year of a great famine, Hansel and Gretel's mother decided to leave them in the woods to fend for themselves" — a worried man sits at a table while a woman gestures emphatically. Panel 2: "Overhearing the conversation, Hansel had an idea." A blond child says, "I will take these bright pebbles and leave them along our path. Then, we can follow them home." Panel 3: "Little did they know, their mother had overheard THEIR conversation." Panel 4: "That night, she created loops of shiny pebbles at various points in the woods" — glowing pebbles arranged in loops across a forest. Panel 5: the mother smiles and tells the children, "It's easy! Just always go to the nearest pebble. Keep doing that until you arrive home." Panel 6: "On the path home, they encountered a loop, which caused them to go in an endless cycle until they passed out from exhaustion" — the children stand trapped inside a closed loop of pebbles. Panel 7: a cozy house with chimney smoke; a voice asks, "What's the moral of this story?" Panel 8: "There are arts far darker than witchcraft..." while hands hold open a red book titled "Introduction to Algorithms," a pentagram drawn beneath it — the joke being that a naive nearest-neighbor (greedy) algorithm can get stuck in an infinite loop. Votey: a handwritten note reading "This idea derived/stolen from a sentence in the book 'Once upon an Algorithm' by Martin Erwig."
Transcribed by Claude Opus 4.8.