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Many were shocked this week to discover a frightening new trend circulating throughout the server. Several prominent figures donned ominous tarot cards as their avatars, each drawn in a uniform pixel-art style. These icons were accompanied by similarly consistent nicknames, denoting the number of each user's card. It is unclear who's responsible for creating these facades—I mean, we know it was Panic and Prod, but we literally can't tell which is which.

Continued on page 4

Witscord Weekly Issue 2 is here! What? No, it’s not weekly. Why would it be?

Reactions to the first issue were overwhelmingly positive. We were so overwhelmed by the sheer positivity that we had to go to the hospital. Lav has three days to live.

News of the news spread wildly, and many people offered to contribute. Abi “Abi” Abi became a new editor of the paper. Additionally, Unsus P. Person and Place Holder both offered to create puzzles. But due to a miscommunication, both of them were let into the main editing group chat, which was supposed to be only for people who got to see the entire paper. Both of them had to be shot and killed. Person will be dearly missed, but Holder miraculously rose from the grave. It was initially theorized that this was because he had an invite link to the group chat, but we now know that Holder was, in fact, the second coming. We all celebrated this miraculous turn of events, and then we politely asked him to not come back to life this time, and he was shot and killed as well. He will be missed too.

All in all, Witscord Weekly was. It also is, and will continue to be as well. Hopefully.

WE’RE BACK! AGAIN!

Tarot Terror

Good afternoon, this is sus 1D1P report- ing to you live from my house. That's right, I am reporting this live, and by that I mean I am using the voice to type on my phone and I'm not going to edit anything that I say even if it's wrong and bad, which most articles usually are if they're here on Witscord Weekly so I don't think this will be a problem.

Continued on page 2

Live Report

Now with twice as many puzzles and comics! Check pages 9 & 10.

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lives and they are very cute together and they fight a lot, but in a playful way, not in a hate each other way. Just a yeah, okay. You're gonna get smacked right now kinda way.

OK, I am now walking through the kit- chen. And in the kitchen, there's not really much to see. There's a meal plan written by my mom on a sticky note. There's a pair of scissors. I got those scissors for Christmas. Actually this is yeah, that's right, this is post-christmas. The other article is about Halloween but this was written on… I don't even know what date it is. It's January something. January sixth, is it Jan- uary 6th? It's really January 6 right now. Let me look, I'm going over to my computer to look. Oh, it's the ninth. Oh wow, I'm really good at this. I'm just great right now.

We have a nice little porch outside. It's currently raining, but I'm in socks and I'm gonna go out because this is newsworthy, is it oh, it is okay. Yep, the door is unlocking, I'm Going Out. It's still raining and the floor is very wet and I shouldn't be doing this, oh yeah, it's cold. Yeah, and there's still snow out here too ok, yeah, this is not good. It's not okay. I'm going back in okay, it's very wet outside and I'll report from the other side of the glass. It's right on… the, the the house is right on the river. It's very nice. We have a lovely view. I mean, there's still snow on the ground but it's raining. There's not really much else to say.

Fun fact: we actually let the cats out here sometimes. The porch is, like, very raised up off the ground, so—which is why it is a nice view of the snowy mountain. Just like a normal, not really a mountain, but like a big Hill; like okay, it's a really big hill, but it is covered in snow just by the way it is, and also trees and stuff and there's little road over there that you see cars going past. There was a car going past just a second ago. I still see it, it's still going. It's going to the left from my point of view: the opposite .

Continued from "Live Report"

Anyways, I'm going to report on whatever I see in my house. And the reason I'm doing this is because we need to put out another issue. It has been far too long, and all of our material's outdated, and nobody wants to write an article. Myself included. I mean, I wrote one of them but no 1 else wants to write another. I don't want to write another, so I'm just gonna report on anything and everything that I'm doing here instead cause this will take like an hour, if not, at the most.

O k, so what we have here is our first correspondent. Hello, my cat Lily, do you have anything that you would like to say to our loyal readers at what's court weekly? No. Ok, the answer is no, she is putting her belly in the air rolling around—it is, it is very cute. She is very soft and stripey and warm. And you've all seen her, but what you may not have seen is my other cat, Shadow. Shadow. Do you have any words you'd like to say? She sniffed the phone, but otherwise she does not care, nope. She is also very soft, and unlike Lily, she is, well, okay, she's very well-behaved and polite. But in terms of physical appearance, she is black & white: a tuxedo Kitty, very fluffy, little bit fluffier than her sister. We don't know if they're actually sisters. I should say that there's no guarantee that they are, but they've grown up together all their .

Shadow and her favorite high explosive

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I'm going to go. Go back downstairs. These stairs are also kind of rickety, and there's a window right by them, so I often look out and get distracted and Then I Feel like I'm going to Fall and die, which luckily I haven't because I'm Still Here reporting the news to You. All of this is very newsworthy, and I Don't Really Know how to do it. This. I will say that it really is not picking up my words very well. I'm going to have to go back and try and reconstruct what the hell I was saying because I don't know.

Anyways, this has been sus 1D1P report- ing to you live from an uneventful location. I really thought this would be more fun, it really kind of wasn't and I'm not sure how much fun it will be to read, but I mean, we'll see. Maybe I'll have to do another take of this at a more eventful location, like outside or something, where I can report on the little creatures scurrying past. As of right now, the only moving thing in this house is the river. And that's not really in the house, is it?

No, no, it isn't. Okay. Anyways, have a wonderful day. You. Reader. And keep reading the newspaper. We're so sorry.

Continued from previous page

direction of the river. Maybe you can figure out the location of my house by that. Probably not, let's be real.

Okay, the recording just paused without me realizing it, and I don't know what I was saying when it did it. It doesn't really recognize my voice very well. I think I'm speaking too quickly and not clear enough so I'm going to adjust that. And I think I was saying that the cats like to go out there sometimes onto the patio, and Shadow especially loves to ask you to go out there. She'll jump up and, like, tap the door handle and everything. It's very sweet, but she recently tried to do that while it was still snowy out there and she very quickly realized that this was not a good idea and she had to scamper back inside. And it was very funny, and I have a video. But you are not going to see it because you are reading this in a newspaper. That's right, this is still a newspaper. I kinda forgot that I was what I was doing this for.

And now we are in my bedroom… sort of my bedroom. The bedroom, the bedroom I'm in at the moment. And there's not really much in there. Cause I kind of just got here, and I just put all my clothes on the floor and then I Haven't been really staying in here for any reason. There's a little bit of stuff: I have my chargers in here, and the bed is very big. It has like this whole big canopy, which you would think is nice. But because this house is fancy, there's a bunch of sunroofs in the ceiling, so one of those leaked and now there's a little bit of water that has been dripping onto the canopy for a while. I think that might have been how I woke up this morning. And it, like, collects at the bottom of the canopy and just drips right onto the bed. Which is really cool.

This is the bathroom. There's a sun roof in here too, which is interesting. I'm not gonna stay in there for any longer. .

This isn't really relevant, just cool as hell

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Continued from "Tarot Terror"

Regardless, after some thorough number- crunching, we have identified that there are a total of 12 different anonymous members under these guises.

The Fool. According to our research, this user was actually the very first to change their avatar into this style. The inspiration likely came from an ancient prehistoric really old Mac OS game from 1789 or something entitled "The Fool's Errand". This implies that this user must themselves be ancient prehistoric really old to possess the archaic knowledge of what an MS-DOS is. Prediction: Panic

The High Priestess. Although vaguely mysterious, this masquerader was somewhat obsessive about the tarot, cataloging every single card into a tidy little color-coded chart. Sounds like a waste of time. Also sounds awesome. Prediction: Sus1d1p

The Chariot. According to this user, their card was selected based on its real tarot mean- ing. And according to some random website I've already forgotten about, the Chariot signifies having a healthy, assertive ego and triumphantly succeeding in your goals. That doesn't really sound like any of us, so clearly they're a liar. Prediction: Zimodo

The Hermit. An experienced developer, this user appears to have contributed their skill to the embetterment of the community, though our so-called "elite" research team can't even find what was made. At the very least, they found rumors of an ambitious new project this mystery member is developing. Everyone's excited for it, even though we all know it will never exist. Prediction: Prodzpod

The Wheel of Fortune. Due to the intrin- sic nature of this card, our researchers have recommended an alternative method of divining its owner's identity. …"Reply hazy". With some minor tweaks (to counteract the noise generated .

by cosmic bitflip turbulence), the answer is easily revealed. Prediction: RazuRazu

Justice. This one's easy; they're the one who was mistakenly added to the editors' chat. Prediction: Unsuspiciousperson

The Hanged Man. Rumor has it, this user is well-known enough to have had a secret custom tarot card designed to depict their avatar. In general, they're something of a celebrity, hav- ing shaped much of modern Witscord's pop culture, if you can call it "modern" or "popular" or "culture". Prediction: Lavender

The Tower & The Moon. Interestingly, these two members are extremely similar. Both are jack-of-all-trades-es, being well-versed in music, programming, game design, and being gay. Additionally, as our researchers exasper- atedly report, both of their usual identities are yellow birds. The only distinction they could find is that the Tower has a slightly brighter shade of yellow. Prediction: Kube and Ember. In that order

The Star. They mentioned Touhou at one point. Prediction: Gui

The Sun. Somehow, all signs point to this being Gui as well, despite the obvious im- possibility. This stumped us for several hours, and we've had to dispel countless incorrect theories—but luckily, the past few months hold an answer. Prediction: Non impersonating Gui

Judgement. This final one, on the other hand, is easy, as we can conclude by process of elim-… wait, Judgement? I think we got this confused with Justice. That one's actually Place- holder, sorry. Prediction: Unsuspiciousperson

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Continued from previous page

Additionally, two custom tarot cards were created: one depicting the TDR "angryman" and one depicting Kermit the Frog. Obviously these were worn by Staz and Trashbot, who are very easy to tell apart. I mean, one has the power to delete the whole server, and the other isn't even accessible from half of its channels.

We hope this analysis can provide some comfort during these frightening and confusing times. Some people say "it's Halloween" and "they do this every year", but last time I checked my solar-powered calendar, it was the middle of May, so I don’t know what they're talking about. In any case, the tarot-masked masqueraders arrived swiftly, and we hope to Jon that they leave swiftly as well.

Oh, and I've fired all our researchers. All future articles will be written based off of the consensus of twelve billion pigeons and a fog machine.

The New Zealand Men’s National Water Polo Team is New Zealand’s national men’s water polo team. People involved with the team include Zoltan Boros, Quentin Quin, Bae Foun- tain—these are not real people. Bae Fountain!? Hell, I could come up with better names than that. Carmichael Jones. Wesley Harbinger. Steve Nutch. Anyway, the team placed 16th at the 2019 World Championship, which sounds almost impressive until you remember that there were only 16 teams competing because water polo sucks. Also Bae Fountain is younger than I am and I don’t know how to feel about that.

Triple Editorial:

On the New Zealand Men's National

Water Polo Team

Is easterhunt 2023 out yet?

no, and i havent really worked on it in

a while

Where were you on the night of the murder?

in the study with the candlestick

Hey what’s that behind you?

a google home and two packets of

microwaveable jasmine rice

If you could go back in time, why?

probably because my future self went

back in time to the present and gave

the time machine to me

Where are they?

depending on what you're referring to,

either in the top drawer on the right or

like midwestern new york

Did you know there’s more water?

yes

Do you love communication?

only when its with people i like

Does communication love you back?

i would assume so

What’s your favorite food?

a nice steak cooked rare

What’s your least favorite food?

probably a ghost pepper in terms of

stuff thats agreed upon as edible

What food is in the exact middle?

yogurt, it's not great but i eat a lot of it

Is this enough questions?

yes but i think it needs more answers

definitely

several hot pockets

GLAUCOUS

usually around 2 but 3 is not uncommon

Interview:

Q&A with sus1d1p

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How do you learn things best?

- Visually: +1200

- Listeningly: +12

- Hands-on-ically: +20

Do you plan out everything beforehand or just go with what gets thrown at you?

- I plan everything: +1001

- I go with what gets thrown at me: +10

- Depends on the situation: +100

How close do you have to be to someone before you'd call them a friend?

- We see each other a lot: +100

- They like to listen to me talk: +1

- We have similar perspectives: +1000

- They know my inner thoughts and shit: +10

What do you like most about being outside?

- The warm sunshine: +1000

- The cool shade: +100

- The overall ambience: +1

- Being outside sucks: +10

You're trying to work through a hard problem and you get stuck. What do you do?

- Keep pushing, I'll get through eventually: +120

- Try to look at the problem differently: +1000

- Focus on whatever detail I'm missing: +111

What's your personal philosophy on how to tackle difficult problems?

- They'll get harder and harder, so you should

refine and perfect a single approach: +1001

- Each one needs its own unique approach: +10

- Somewhere between the other two: +100

Results on next page

Continued on next page

Not to be confused with the prior issue's review, Insight is a minimalist puzzle game created by small indie developer Maou. Given that one of their only other releases is called An Architect's Adventure, unreasonably astute on- lookers may jump to the conclusion that Insight is just a knock-off of Understand; however, I'm here to tell you that despite these similarities, it's a worthwhile game with some very novel ideas. Probably.

In Insight (or maybe "Infight", can't be sure), you are given many interestingly-shaped grids, which you must then divide into regions based on a wide variety of constraints. Now, barring the dividing into regions thing, I just described 14 and a half games. However, what sets this game apart from the rest is that the variety really is wide. Insight boasts a total of nearly 50 mechanics, exploring many different aspects of the input method—though admittedly I bought the game solely for the Islands of Insight joke and have only experienced about half of what the game has to offer so far. Some symbols inevitably do bear resemblances to ones seen in other witlikes, but even those have some sort of twist to them. I'm especially fond of the developer's take on the squares from The Witness.

However, despite the originality of these mechanics, the sheer volume of them can be overwhelming. Each of the 40-something real symbols is a fairly simple abstract shape. Many of them do vaguely illustrate their function, but many of them are also, like, a circle. This can make it especially difficult to remember what each one does. In fact, the entire game is minimal to an extreme extent. Everything on the screen is monochrome UI, and there's no audio aside from a few simple sound effects—I had to .

Insight

Quiz: What Witness

Mechanic Are You?

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Find the highest digit of your result number. (If there’s a tie, just pick one. I don’t know.)

If it was the first digit:

You're a sun-reflection puzzle! It's all about per- spective with you; anything is possible if you look at it from the right angle. All your problems can be solved if you just find the right spot to stand in. You enjoy being in the sun and look at yourself in the mirror a lot.

If it was the second digit:

You're a shadows puzzle! You see the shadows on the ground, the little things no one else pays any mind to, and let them guide you. But watch out! Sometimes you have to follow them, and sometimes you have to avoid them. Every problem is different, but there are patterns. You know the difference, and it gets you far.

If it was the third digit:

You're a hedge maze! You tackle problems hands-on, getting into the weeds and really working out what makes them tick. Every problem is different, and while there are a handful of similarities, the differences are vital to getting through them. You also look over your past problems from the other side from time to time and really consider what you learned from them.

If it was the fourth digit:

You're a sound puzzle! Screw all those other people trying to look at the problem; you know the real solution is to hear the problem. Ask your friends, and a little birdie might just give you the crucial piece of information you need. Sometimes, that's enough; other times, you need to put the pieces together in the right order yourself, but you're more than capable of that.

Continued from prior page

put on my own music to not drown in the silence (thanks, Louie). There isn't anything inherently wrong with minimalism, but coupled with the difficult and rather "static" puzzles, it can make the game quite draining to play for long periods of time.

Speaking of, some aspects of the puzzle design could maybe also stand to be fleshed out just a tad more, in my very subjective opinion. At one point I struggled to learn one of the symbols to such a point that I legitimately thought something was broken. I've still got no idea what it wants. The actual input system also feels a bit wonky at times: in addition to seem- ingly not being able to retry a puzzle once you've solved it, some mechanics allow you to make multiple cuts, but the validation system appears to activate depending on whether or not making another cut would actually be able to solve the puzzle, or something. I couldn't figure it out, which is maybe not a great sign if it's the internal foundation for the entire game. However, I am absolutely willing to admit that these problems are only a result of me missing something, so take them with a grain of salt or perhaps just a handful of atoms.

After all, out of the few other Witscord members that have played the game, each of them have had nothing but positive things to say about it. User Prod once claimed that Insight is in fact "better than Understand", and user Kate has said multiple times before that "Insight is very good"—even titling it as "probably one of [her] favorite puzzle games". Not much has been said about game design specifics beyond this, but that's not the point of journalism anyway.

All things considered, Insight is a great game, provided you're looking for a game where the puzzles get hypodermically injected directly into your bloodstream.

Rating: 7.5/10

Quiz Results

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Whether Forecast

Upcoming Birthdays!

Aquarius: start a new project that you know damn well you'll never finish

Pisces: idk look it up yourself there's a trillion horoscope websites these days

Aries: commit identity theft for fun

Taurus: always be the brightest one in the room AT ALL COSTS

Gemini: always be the second-brightest one in the room (if it suits you)

Cancer: you're famous! everybody hates you

Leo: i think you're mistaken, you're actually a capricorn

Virgo: everything is quantifiable if you waste enough time trying

Libra: grow up. get older. age

Scorpio: YOU are actually a touhou reference. my condolences

Sagittarius: it is decidedly so

Capricorn: walk into a government building and just like chill there

Horoscope

EH23 Update

eh24

KF2015

January 16th

—

Likes: Pixel art, fonts, cute cats, speedruns, Kirby (allegedly)

Guishark

January 19th

—

Likes: Touhou, hunt puzzles, Outer Wilds, sharks (allegedly)

Stock Info

Janet Cetera asks: “How do I witness?”

Well, Miss Cetera, there are a few different ways you could interpret that question. If you’re asking how to play the hit 2016 indie puzzle game The Witness, you can purchase it for $40, digitally pirate it for $0 and eternal damnation, or come hang out in my basement. I have a Playstation down there.

If you’re asking how to witness some- thing, just use your eyes! Maybe you’ll see a crime and then you’ll be a witness. You can even get someone to commit a crime in front of you if you don’t want to wait, although the judge will probably consider you to be an accomplice instead if you don’t have a very good lawyer, so you’ll want to shell out the cash for one of those, or pay $0 and eternal damnation if you choose to digitally pirate your lawyer.

Advice Column

sensible

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Puzzles

Where is Watson's friend hiding?

δ ζ γ ε α, μ ζ α γ δ γ

What do the Tarot and the Zodiac have in common?