And QUBCK, unlike QUACK, does not echo. That is where the confusion comes from.
(actually, now I got this image of a duck dressed in a mounty uniform going “Quack, eh?”)
Sorry if I missed this…
Did Locke know it was Claire’s birthday? It’s hard to believe he just happened to build a crib for her on her birthday. And if he knew, how?
Hmmm.
Not going into details, but I have salt in my nose after reading that. 
Good question. I couldn’t figure out how that would work either.
Then Oscar the Grouch pops out.
One alternative is 48151623*42 = 7,418,880. At 10 beans per cubic inch (okay, them’s small beans), that’s a cube about 90 inches (7.5 feet) per side. That’s a whole lotta beans, but a feasible number for a near-impossible-to-guess game.
Now I’m tempted to dial 741-8880 and tell the person who answers to watch out for the curse.
Do we have any proof that Walt’s luck is different than Hurley’s. The people around him seem to have bad luck. His parents split before he was born. His mother died. His father-in-law was freaked out by him. He was on a plane were many (most?) of the passengers died.
I guess the father-in-law might make Walt different. He saw that there was something going on with Walt. Hurley has to deal with everyone getting upset whenever he mentions the curse. Even the widow of the guy in Australia.
It’s worth noticing that Hurley seems to be able to counter the curse sometimes. E.g., stopping the guy from replacing the light bulb and helping Charlie get off the bridge.
The other alternative is that it is a phone number - 481-516-2342.
However, 481 isn’t a US or Canadian area code. Oh well…
Perhaps he read her diary, too, but he tends to notice more detail than Charlie. Like the entry she made one year before on that date that said “Happy Birthday to Me!”.
Or perhaps he was just lucky that he happened to decide to make her a cradle and give it to her on the day that happened to be her birthday.
Father-in-law?
Walt’s married?
Man, that’sworse than Kentucky! 
Well, if you’re going to be picky, then let’s say “scantily-clad interesting castaways.” Happy now? If I want to look at fashion plates, I have the internet.
Those numbers (4, 8, 15, 16, 23, 42*) are all retired uniform numbers on the New York Yankees. Maybe one of the writers is a Yankees fan?
Zev Steinhardt
*42 was retired all around MLB for Jackie Robinson in 1997. However, players that were wearing it at the time were allowed to continue wearing it. No doubt had MLB not done so, the Yankees would have retired it for Mariano Rivera after he retired.
This whole episode reminds me of 2 shows. First is a show called “strange luck” in which the main character had tremendous good and bad luck, horrible things would happen around him, but he would always escape unscathed.
The other is an episode of X-files which this is almost a duplicate of. The character had great luck, but the better his luck got, the worst everyone around him luck became. He eventually bought a lotto ticket, won and then everyone started dieing around him.
Widow: On the way 'ome, pickup truck blows a tire on the 'ighway. Hits us head on. Lost my let that night.
Hurley: What about Sam?
Widow: Barely a scratch. Most people would consider themselves lucky. But not him. He was never the same after that. He started keeping a record. Anything terrible that happened to anyone 'round us, he believed it was all because he used those numbers. He moved us out here in the middle of nowhere, hoping it would stop.
Hurley: Did it? Did he ever find a way to make it stop?
Widow: Yep… He put a shotgun in his mouth and pulled the trigger… What is it you’re looking for, Mr. Reyes?
Hurley: I used them… the numbers. To win the lottery. And now I think I’m under the same curse.
Widow: Curse? There’s no curse!
Hurley: But you just told me…
Widow: Do you think I’d still have my leg if Sam hadn’t have picked the right number of beans? You think that floods wouldn’t have happened, that homes wouldn’t have burned down? that people wouldn’t have died?!
Hurley: Well… yeah.
Widow: You make your own luck, Mr. Reyes. Don’t blame it on the damn numbers! You’re looking for an excuse that doesn’t exist.
LEG. Grrrrrr… “Lost my leg that night.”
A lot of people have speculated that Walt has some power that can make things happen. What if Hurley has the same power? Maybe everyone else is right - maybe he is making his own luck. Perhaps the only reason these bad things are happneing around him are because he believes he is cursed by the numbers.
Well the orginal “numbers” broadcast was supposed to be a distress call as well, CFL just changed it. I assume that the broadcasters were stuck at one time as well. (maybe the numbers are even co-ordinates to the island in some way we have not determined)
My big question is how did getting CFL and her team there help the orginal broadcasters(referring to the “luck” of the numbers). My thought is that they are still there, and are what CFL is so afraid of.
Knowing JJ Abrams and the story so far, I would guess that there will be a “good vs evil” battle at some point. With some people possibly going to the other side. This may have been playing out on the island for a long time and CFL is the last survivor of her “side” from the most recent round and explains the “mystery illness” that her crew had.
Yeah, my bad for saying the broadcast was picked up in Australia. Got that mixed up in my brain. But still, I think it’s a valid question (so much so that I’m repeating this conversation in the Lost Questions thread). The guy was at some sort of listening post (right?? Now I’m paranoid) which to me implies that it’s at least a semi-permanent type of thing where one could expect someone to be stationed for a long time. Once the first guy left, someone else should have replaced him and been in position to pick up the CFL’s broadcast.
But to me, the more important point is that it pretty securely demonstrates (to me, anyway) that the island is physically located on our Earth and communication with the outside world is not impossible.
The thing is though, Hurley wasn’t thinking he had bad luck when he won with the numbers, so that whole “you make your own luck” thing doesn’t fly with me. It wasn’t until he was at his bank(?) that he found out about the numbers.
Yes, but as most of the people around him said, sometimes bad luck just happens. Perhaps his grandfather just died because he was 70 years old and it really was just a freak lightning storm that killed the priest. But then, by thinking he was under a curse and believing bad things were going to happen around him, Hurley’s “power” caused them to happen. If Walt can make a polar bear appear by reading a comic book, then Hurley could make a house catch on fire or a guy jump out a window.
Interesting. Are you speculating the numbers can be benign but that Hurley’s power over them manifested itself negatively because he was expecting it to?
Also, would anyone be surprised if Walt had seen those numbers before?
Walt’s luck, while good for him, has been bad for others as well.