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When making crèpes for my children this morning, I recalled a comics strip I would like to identify.

It is American, contemporary and I saw it a few years ago.

It features a father who is about to make pancakes for his children. There are at least three of them, with a girl being the youngest (about 6-8 yo) and she has a big brother (and one+ other sibling).

The father is asking the children which shapes he should make the pancakes. The older ones ask for normal shapes and the younger one - for a complicated mathematical composition.

The father then asks one of the kids to hold his laptop so that he can check what this is. The older brother who is at the table with the young girl tells her that Wikipedia should be grateful (or something like that) for the traffic she brings them.

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    Read in physical form, in a comics magasine, something like that? Online comic? Official publication, fanmade thing?
    – Jenayah
    Commented Jun 21, 2020 at 10:59

1 Answer 1

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This is a Foxtrot strip from October 14, 2012.

Jason requesting complex pancakes

Paige: Can you make my pancakes heart-shaped?
Roger: Not a problem!
Peter: Can you make my pancakes football-shaped?
Roger: You got it!
Jason: Can you make my pancakes heptagon-shaped and tile them on the plate in a Poincaré disk model of the hyperbolic plane? You can make as many as you want, by the way.
Peter: Wikipedia should thank you for all the traffic you send their way.
Roger: Jason, can you come hold my laptop while I pour the batter?

Just to over-explain the joke, the Poincaré disk model of the hyperbolic plane with heptagons looks like this:

Poincaré disk model of the hyperbolic plane with heptagons

When I read your description, it sounded very much like a Bill Amend joke, so I Googled foxtrot pancakes and it came up. Jason is not female, but his big hair could be mistaken for that.

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    Thank you very much. When glancing though some of the other strips I see this is a comics I will like.
    – WoJ
    Commented Jun 21, 2020 at 18:07
  • One of the things I enjoy about this strip is that Roger, for all that he's incredibly incompetent in many ways, tries really hard. Jason is obviously giving him a nearly impossible task (and it's implied this is far from the first time this has happened) and he's still game to try, maybe in part because he has difficulty relating to Justin's extremely nerdy hobbies. Commented Jun 22, 2020 at 2:09
  • Who is Justin? I did not find him in the cast of characters: foxtrot.com/cast-of-characters. I read several (many) of the strips since yesterday and it is really nice. The family, <del>though somehow dysfunctional</del> a typical family, is really really likable and reminds me of Gerald Durerell's one (especially in My Family and Other Animals: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/My_Family_and_Other_Animals). Thanks again for helping me to (re)discover this great comics.
    – WoJ
    Commented Jun 22, 2020 at 7:26
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    @woj Auto-correct strikes. Jason is who I'm referring to. Commented Jun 22, 2020 at 10:56

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