#the ctwc

[criticalthinkingwitches]

It's that time again!! Time for the next CTWC Witches' Brew! Come join us for this FREE VIRTUAL event!

Saturday, January 11th 10 AM PST/ 1 PM EST/ 6 PM GMT/ 5 AM AEST (1/12)

Lee Ignire hosts with special guests Bree NicGarran @breelandwalker , Kath Wallace, and Lozzie Stardust @lozziestardust to discuss Herbal Correspondence! Register for free on our website Critwitch.com or click the link in our bio!

Register here:

[Image ID: Maroon background with a curve of pink flowers in the top right and bottom left corners with a white frame of the CTWC logo: a question mark with a cauldron, featuring a sprig of rosemary under it in the top left and bottom right corner. Text is white and reads: "It’s time for a Witches' BREW! Saturday Jan 11th 6 PM GMT/ 1 PM EST /10 AM PST Featuring: Kath Wallace, Bree NicGarran, Lee Ignire, Lozzie Stardust! Register on our website!" Stamp on the bottom in white reads: Critical Thinking Witch Collective. Conjuring community since 2021. www.Critwitches.com]

[upthewitchypunx]

A SASS witch and friend of @criticalthinkingwitches who is also a journalist has made a zine and you should check it out! Here is where you can download it!

[dadwhosagirl]

so classic tetris has been one of my hyperfixations since the first game crash and i’ve been watching the classic tetris world championships

just happen to pull up the stream at like ten last night and logan paul was there?? just like. competing.

had to take a screenshot to confirm this was in fact reality

[startedwellthatsentence]

(By the way if any of you were interested in the Tetris news from earlier this year, the World Championships top 16 are happening now. They have four games live on CTWC on Twitch, and four more on CTWC2.)

[classic-tetris]

ALEX THACH IS THE 2024 CLASSIC TETRIS WORLD CHAMPION

[fncreature]

if fractal gets eliminated I am going to scream

[heeleryuta]

ERICCCC

[mikeperrucci]

Classic Tetris World Championship

CTWC 2024 starts today, and you can watch it here. If you're not familiar with it, it's a tournament where participants play on the 1989 version of NES Tetris.

Players are doing insane things these days. A new technique called rolling lets them move pieces faster than ever before, leading to scores of over 10,000,000 points and even lasting so long the game crashes. They inspired me to play the game again after many years.

While I'll never be as good as the pros, I set what I felt was an achievable goal. A lot of players dream of a maxout (999,999 points, the highest Tetris can display), but I would've been satisfied with half of that. I played for a few months, and on January 23rd, 2023, I got this game:

I was so close, and it looked like I'd reach 500,000 soon. Instead, my play seemed to get worse, and the fun slowly faded. I tried to tell myself it's just a game, but the failure to reach my goal reminded me of all the other failures in my life, and I had to stop.

I've barely played any Tetris since then. I put my focus into finishing my comic without my unrealized goal creating self doubt in the back of my mind. Maybe now that Chuck's Devils is done, I'll get back into the game.

I have nothing but respect for Tetris players, as well as speedrunners, who can start a game, not reach their desired score/time, and restart from scratch over and over again. That requires a level of mental fortitude I apparently don't have. And that's why I'll be watching CTWC 2024.

[dragonflute]

cannot believe its already the time of year where im insane abt classic tetris

[4lbon]

the way both the winner and runner up of tetris brought a special plushie to hug this weekend is so special to me

[orange-juice-speaks]

As a fan of competitive NES Tetris, I will say this is a good history! GameScout is a community icon and always a reliable source on the subject of NES Tetris.

But I will say no one really knows if Thor actually did pull off level 30 or ACTUALLY hypertapped because no video of it exists and he never participated in the Classic Tetris World Championships (CTWC) iirc. I'd give that credit to Joesph Saelee since he had video evidence. And Joesph Saelee was only 16. By far the youngest competitor in CTWC 2018, as well as being one of the earliest hypertappers; he dethroned 5x champion Jonas Neubauer, so he solidified hypertapping as a legitimate playstyle and was also really the reason so many young players came into the game and innovated it further--they saw themselves in him.

This is in no way to discredit the accomplishments of Jonas Neubauer! Be a 5-time champion in ANYTHING and you will be a legend to its fans. In fact, Joseph Saelee has even said that watching Jonas play is the reason he started playing.

Sidenote: A month or so before his untimely passing in January 2021, Jonas released a video on YouTube teaching Tetris to a fairly well-known Guitar Hero player, who said there had to have been a faster way of playing than tapping every input. This brief flicker of his attempting a new way of playing after this statement is sometimes considered an early version of rolling, which wouldn't have happened without Jonas.

BUT I DIGRESS. How did Joseph Saelee discover the CTWC to begin with?

Boom, Tetris for Jeff.

Jeff was an unlikely candidate to go far in CTWC 2016, but he made it all the way to the finals against, you guessed it, Jonas Neubauer. This was a huge underdog story.

Now, fun thing about the CTWC and other similar tournaments of Tetris is, it has live commentary. One of the quirks of this commentary that someone noticed was the tendency to say "Boom, Tetris for __!" Since Jeff was the big story of that year, someone made a compilation, in the meme-embroiled style of 2016 YouTube, of every time "Boom, Tetris for Jeff" was called by a commentator. To date, it has nearly 800k views, which is quite viral for the subject, especially in the era when maxing out, or reaching the built in scorecap, was rare among elite players.

ALL THIS TO SAY, a real argument can be made that we owe this massive gaming moment that has been covered in the New York Times to a humble 2016 shitpost that I will provide below.

Boy, I wish Jonas could see how much people who never cared about Tetris before this moment could see how far the game has come.

So apparently the pro-Tetris scene is exploding right now because a 13 year old nerd just reached the game's true killscreen for the first time ever

[criticalthinkingwitches]

Join us for the next Brew!

Glamour and You! FREE!

Sat January 20th

11 AM PST / 2 PM EST / 7 PM BST / 8 AM NZDT (1/21)

featuring: Bree NicGarren ( @breelandwalker ), Savannah Rayne, and more!

Register for FREE tickets on the Events page of our website!

[Image ID: Light pink background with unintelligible script with light blue cloud in the middle. Lavender butterfly, mid-flight on left hand side. Charm font is used throughout image. Text matches above.]

[logan-exe]

There's not a big community (on Tumblr) for Classic Tetris World Championship.

[sgtmuffinz]

Alex T wis ctwc 2025!!!

Good job to meme and all the other competitors!!!

[startedwellthatsentence]

CTWC 2025 was as awesome as expected. Excellent quals, really fun round zero and one play, major upsets throughout top 16 for some crazy drama, Meme (🩷) made it all the way to finals, and Alex Thach played a PERFECT tournament from number one seed to 100% sweeps. Dog and Scuti might be the top players based on the stats, but Alex Thach has UNMATCHED CTWC tournament play.

[classic-tetris]

ctwc 2024 is this weekend!

the two agreed favorites to win the whole tournament would probably have to be alex and fractal - alex has been on fire these last few months, and fractal will look to be defending his world championship title after a ridiculous streak of wins at the start of the year!

sidnev and blue scuti are perhaps the next most likely contenders for the title! blue scuti got 3rd at the world championships last year and has since become a cultural phenomenon - and as for sidnev, she'll want to improve on her 2nd place from 2023 and win the whole thing!

but even in this new era of tetris, we can't count out the artiaga brothers... since 2020, at least one of them have made the top four, and it's usually been both of them! could andy win his first world championship, or could dog become the first and only person to win the title with two different playstyles?

with how good tetris players are getting in 2024, though, someone unexpected could always come out of nowhere and pull off an incredible bracket run! noah, myles, danv, rahmations, huff - all of these players are regulars to the top level and have potential to cause some chaos for the favorites! or maybe even... someone else???

the classic tetris world championships are taking place june 7th to june 9th, and all the action will be livestreamed on the ClassicTetris twitch page! be sure to check it out this weekend

-jynx, signing off