strategy
Explanation
This comic is about chess grandmasters and memorization. It opens with the well-known fact that chess grandmasters have been shown to be able to rapidly memorize positions from real games -- they can recall entire board states after brief exposure. However, this ability breaks down when presented with random arrangements of pieces that do not arise from actual gameplay, because their memorization relies on pattern recognition from experience, not raw memory.
A character then humorously notes: "I remember 6 things: white squares and an old German's green hat" -- suggesting their own memory is far more limited and random. Another character points out that this research about grandmasters is often cited as evidence that chess expertise is about deep pattern recognition rather than brute-force calculation, a "tactic that can be used against all forms of expertise."
The final punchline features someone shouting "Squirrel! Squirrel! Squirrel! Mouserbugan!" in response to a chess position, suggesting they are testing whether someone is a genuine expert or a fraud by presenting gibberish. The joke plays on the idea that if experts rely on pattern recognition, you could theoretically break their expertise by presenting them with random nonsense -- essentially the intellectual equivalent of throwing a handful of confetti at someone to see if they flinch.
The humor draws on cognitive science research about expertise and chunking, making it accessible through absurdist escalation. It is a classic SMBC move: take a real and interesting scientific finding, explain it clearly, then push the implications to a ridiculous extreme.