Comic Transcripts

ELLIE: No matter what I do, I can’t seem to stop my students from cheating on tests!
DORA: Oh, I know. It’s institutional at this point. It’s not a matter of IF, but HOW.

DORA: Last semester I had a student devise an elaborate scheme where he reduced vast swaths of the textbook into a shorthand notation that he printed onto his hands with ultraviolet ink… …then he put a tiny L.E.D. blacklight in the bridge of his glasses. Much harder than simply studying, of course.

DORA: So he sits there squinting at his hands the whole time, trying to decode the textbook… really a totally unworkable solution. He barely managed a C-plus.
ELLIE: Oh my gosh! You didn’t just flunk him for cheating?
DORA: Well, it was a cryptography class.

{{header: perfect score at WONDERMARK.COM}}
{{alt-text: class motto is ‘try it, let’s see what you got’}}

#414; In which there may be Shortcuts to Success transcribed by in

ELLIE: No matter what I do, I can’t seem to stop my students from cheating on tests!
DORA: Oh, I know. It’s institutional at this point. It’s not a matter of IF, but HOW.

DORA: Last semester I had a student devise an elaborate scheme where he reduced vast swaths of the textbook into a shorthand notation that he printed onto his hands with ultraviolet ink… …then he put a tiny L.E.D. blacklight in the bridge of his glasses. Much harder than simply studying, of course.

DORA: So he sits there squinting at his hands the whole time, trying to decode the textbook… really a totally unworkable solution. He barely managed a C-plus.
ELLIE: Oh my gosh! You didn’t just flunk him for cheating?
DORA: Well, it was a cryptography class.

{{header: perfect score at WONDERMARK.COM}}
{{alt-text: class motto is ‘try it, let’s see what you got’}}

#414; In which there may be Shortcuts to Success transcribed by in

ELLIE: No matter what I do, I can't seem to stop my students from cheating on tests!
DORA: Oh, I know. It's institutional at this point. It's not a matter of IF, but HOW.

DORA: Last semester I had a student devise an elaborate scheme where he reduced vast swaths of the textbook into a shorthand notation that he printed onto his hands with ultraviolet ink... ...then he put a tiny L.E.D. blacklight in the bridge of his glasses. Much harder than simply studying, of course.

DORA: So he sits there squinting at his hands the whole time, trying to decode the textbook... really a totally unworkable solution. He barely managed a C-plus.
ELLIE: Oh my gosh! You didn't just flunk him for cheating?
DORA: Well, it was a cryptography class.

{{header: perfect score at WONDERMARK.COM}}
{{alt-text: class motto is 'try it, let's see what you got'}}

class motto is 'try it, let's see what you got'

#414; In which there may be Shortcuts to Success

  — June 6th, 2008

[ Tags: , ]       Permalink: https://wondermark.com/c/414/

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My newest game: Noodle Battle! At PAX!

September 2, 2026 by David Malki !

The past few weeks have been a frenzy of assembling the very laborious, very bespoke first print run of NOODLE BATTLE, the puzzle game I am releasing this weekend at PAX West in Seattle!

PAX has an event called the PNW Tabletop Game Market (Saturday night ONLY), which is a curated selection of short-run games from local designers. As I’ve mentioned in this space before, I applied for a space in this fall’s event mainly as a way to force myself to finish a new game. And here it is!

The drawings are all by Jason Poland, good pal and cartoonist of My Dad Is Dracula. Jason played an early version of this game at Alaska Robotics Comics Camp this spring, and really liked it!

So I said, “Do you want to help me make it?” And so he has! It was his idea to make all the characters fun little animals, and I think it adds a ton of charm.

Because this edition is limited-run, it has been incredibly labor-intensive to make! The boxes and cards were made by a game factory in the usual fashion, but separately. The blank tiles were made by a woodworker dude out of Connecticut. For each game, we have had to:

  • Cut a piece of plastic and install the box window
  • Paint all the tiles, hundreds at a time
  • Apply a sticker to both sides of every tile
  • Apply stickers to the box (we couldn’t get the box back printed in time, so the whole back side of the box is a sticker too)
  • Apply the “Nutrition Facts” sticker, which was a late suggestion by my kid that I just had to run with
  • Fold up the rule sheet (they come from the printer as big strips of paper)
  • Put all the components into the box and seal it all up

I knew it would be a lot of work and would require some inefficient, expensive compromises AND I WAS RIGHT. But the final product is turning out great, which is the important thing!!

I will have 50 copies with me (if all goes well) at PAX, and then between now and the holidays we will be putting together additional copies to round out this first edition.

I will announce additional copies on Patreon first, once they are available online!! And here too, naturally, before long.

You can also sign up here if you’d like me to email you once the game is available online!


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