Carte Rouge - Day Three

It’s been a busy couple of weeks - foster kittens, coronavirus, trying to ‘reopen’ at work. Sooooo much going on. But it was nice to sit down, virtually, with my puzzling pal and take another crack at the puzzles of The Enigma Emporium’s Carte Rouge. The kittens offered to help, but I’m afraid they were easily distracted. Nor do they know any runic languages.

Thankfully, however, I’d stumbled across one of the scripts on the cards while looking for something else entirely - if anyone knows where I can find a self-inking rotary date stamp with pretty calligraphic fonts, please let me know. The script that I came across is called Enochian, and in the cards, it can be found on:

• Jokers - intermixed
• King of Clubs - border
• Jack of Clubs - border

We started with the King of clubs - it turns out to be counterclockwise: THE TSAR HAS BEEN ADDRESSED - THE THRONE CAN BE REPOSSESSED

Then, the Jack of Clubs reads: BEST TO ACCEPT AND ASCEND - EACH OFFER CONCEALS AN END

We work on the Jack’s chest. Starting with the alphabet: N A E V K A Y E L K R E T I Y I A. (Assuming left to right orientation, not up-down)

Following the directions on the King’s chest: A N G V K N Y G S K R G T I Y I N

From the numbers side: I K D F L P J S R B N C G M E H A O Q. Again, assuming left-right, A=1. Following the flip side directions, we get: R K D F L T J C I B N S G M E H A O Q

Gobbledygook. 

Let’s try instead from top to bottom: (A=1)

I F S C K L R G D P B M H J N E A Q O. Other side: 

N E A K V Y R A K E E I A L T Y A I 

If we interweave them, we get: INFESACKKVLY....  Still gobbledygook. We have a look at the runes on the spades, but honestly my brain is fried - it’s been a long week and it’s only Tuesday. Time for kittens. Always time for kittens 

Carte Rouge - Day Two

When last we left off our delve into Carte Rouge, we had come to the terrible realization that the sneaky creators had used a unique variant of Pigpen/Napoleonic cipher. The three face cards of diamonds all have different messages around their borders. We split them up - I take the Queen, he takes the King, and we begin work. It doesn’t seem like a message, starting from the silver letter.

Queen: HERBOEORBOBO...
And then we tried the chests first, as those also have text:

King: WE HAVE ONLY ONE GOAL WE DESIRE TOTAL UTTER CONTROL
Queen: THE FIRST SECOND LADY - THE SECOND FIRST LADY
Jack: A REVOLUTION YOU WANT TO WIN - WE CAN TELL YOU HOW TO BEGIN

Hmmm. Ok. The first Second Lady was Abigail Adams, who was also the second First Lady. She was known, some times, as Mrs. President.

While I went down that rabbit hole, my compatriot figured out how to read the edges. Much like the last message, the messages themselves were interwoven. Time for a spreadsheet!

THE CARDS BELONGED TO THREE BEFORE

BEYOND YOU THEY MUST GO TO TWO MORE

IF YOU HAVE BEEN PAYING CLOSE ATTENTION

THEN YOU CAN LIKELY GUESS OUR INTENTION

WHEN YOUR WORK IS FINALY DONE

PASS THE CARDS TO MADAME LEBRUN

Madame Le Brun was a French portrait painter. The last card referenced John Paul Jones - the first US Naval Commander. Something tells me at some point we will have to put them in order.

Abigail Adams: 1744-1818

John Paul Jones: 1747-1792

Madame Le Brun: 1755-1842

We poke around for a while at a loss of where to go next, then my companion notices that the Jack of Spades follows a pattern similar to the King of Hearts. We get:

YOUR NATION IS IN TURMOIL

THERE IS A REBELLION YOU MUST FOIL

Still nothing on the interior meaning is of the Jack’s chest, which references other cards.

Poking around we see that I missed the message on the queen of clubs’ chest.

THERE IS ONE THING WE YEARN TO EARN

YOU MUST HELP YOUR PEOPLE LEARN

We realized, belatedly, that the key to unscramble that was on the Jack of Clubs - he appears to be holding a standard of some sort, in the order of the colors that I just brute forced

And that was a solid two hours’ work on these cards. Still so many to go! I love it :)
Many thanks to The Enigma Emporium, and my puzzling companion, as well as my cat and three foster kittens, for a lovely evening. We think the King of Clubs may hold the key for the Jack of Clubs’ chest, but we are le tired and it is time to sleep.