Carte Rouge - Day Four?

I feel like we’ve done more than four days of puzzling on Carte Rouge, but I don’t seem to have documented them. It’s been a while, and we needed a break from the news, so my puzzling companion and I cracked open the deck once more.

While we debate looking for clues, I try to identify what we’ve gotten so far, and put it in some sort of order:

Suit	Card	Edge Message	Chest Message	Other
Clubs	King	The Tsar has been addressed - the Throne can be repossessed	Angel Script
Clubs	Queen	Once your own fate is known, pass the cards to John Paul Jones.	There is one thing we yearn to earn - you must help your people learn	Captain
Clubs	Jack	Best to accept and ascend - each offer conceals an end
Diamonds	King	The cards belonged to three before, beyond you they must go to two more	We have only one goal - We desire total utter control
Diamonds	Queen	If you have been paying close attention, then you can likely guess our intention	The First Second Lady - The Second First Lady	Abigail Adams
Diamonds	Jack	When your work is finally done, pass the cards to Madame LeBrun	A revolution you want to win -  we can tell you how to begin
Hearts	King	Black: My Dear Queen it is a pleasure to know you Red: Our love is poetry like Venus and Adonis	Pigpen cipher key
Hearts	Queen		The Bard is a King to Me
Hearts	Jack	My fine lady the Good Queen Bess, as beautiful as she as powerful	You will be our pawn until your final hour	Queen Elizabeth I
Spades	King	Helping you is our pleasure but you must share your treasure.	Morganwg Alphabet
Spades	Queen	Face to face, men of all trades - a shared secret between Heart and Spade	Madame Deficit	Marie Antoinette
Spades	Jack	Your Nation is in turmoil - there is a rebellion you must foil	You will be our pawn until your final hour

We get stuck on the Spades because, for the life of us, we cannot find the appropriate runic alphabet - one that has both an up arrow and a down arrow. A quick search for a hint suggests that we need to go back to the alphabet on the King of Spades’ chest. Which, of course, we haven’t fully gotten yet, or at least, I hadn’t written it down - we HAD done another session which I forgot to record which had sorted that out at least. We have the alphabet key - Black suits are A-M, Red suits are N-Z.   Except, that didn’t work. Something with our alphabet was wrong. We had to go look for a hint. Our alphabet was close, but not quite - we had neglected to figure in suit order. That had come up in our discussions, but I couldn’t make it work before. Now we have it sorted. 

Going off that, we were able to read the King of Spades’ chest: MORGANWG ALPHABET. That turns out to also be known as the Coelbren y Beirdd, which was a script made by a forger who sometimes went by the name of Iolo Morganwg. After a quick trip down that Wikipedia rabbit hole, we translate the text around the rim: HELPING YOU IS OUR PLEASURE BUT - YOU MUST SHARE YOUR TREASURE.  But, I don’t wanna share! Fine... I put all of this into the chart above as we move forward to keep track. 

Next to the Queen of Spades. Her chest has an interesting patter of dots, which make me think of a macrame code that I came across but can’t for the life of me remember the name of. While that bothers me, we do the outer rim of the card: FACE TO FACE MEN OF ALL TRADES  - A SHARED SECRET BETWEEN HEART AND SPADE

The knots are still bothering me. I know I’ve seen this before. Somewhere. A quick google reveals Quipu - Incan coded knots for record keeping. After I yell that at deafening volume, possibly damaging my companion’s ears permanently, I dive in.  And hit a wall. 1, 100, 1 meh. There’s something I’m missing.

Meanwhile, my puzzling companion has taken on the chest of the Queen of Hearts, using the same code that we found earlier. THE BARD IS A KING TO ME. Hmmmm, who called Shakespeare a king? 

Giving the Quipu up for a bit, I take on the chest of the Jack of Spades: YUILEUPW - UTLORIAHU

Yep, that’s gibberish. But, maybe if I intertwine them like the edge? YUUTIL... nope... and no way to get it that isn’t two U in a row... drawing board again. Thankfully, my puzzling companion remembered what we had just solved  - a shared secret between heart and spade. The Jack of Hearts is: OWLBORAN - NIYUFNLOR. Interweaving those gives: YOU WILL BE OUR PAWN - UNTIL YOUR FINAL HOUR

Steal our treasure, call us pawns, I’m not liking these folks. Next to the Edge of the Jack of Hearts: MY FINE LADY THE GOOD QUEEN BESS - AS BEAUTIFUL AS SHE IS POWERFUL. Good Queen Bess was better known as Queen Elizabeth the 1st (1533-1603), which is well before the other three names we’ve come across so far. 

Back to the Queen of Spades, I’ve been overthinking this: 13-1-4-1-13-5: MADAME 4-5-6-9-3-9-20 DEFICIT: MADAME DEFICIT. Turns out that that was a name for Marie Antoinette (1755-1793), due to her rather extravagant habits (or at least their rumors). 

That gives us 5 names - three before us and two after us. If they are in purely chronological order, we get:

• Queen Elizabeth I: 1533-1603
• Abigail Adams: 1744-1818
• John Paul Jones: 1747-1792
• Madame Le Brun: 1755-1842
• Marie Antoinette: 1755-1793

A quick check of the website confirms that we’ve got the names in order. Thank you! One question answered! 

Staring at the numbers around the Queen of Hearts only gives me a headache. I decide to work on the Woman Joker, using the Alphabet code we’ve found. The edge reads: FOR EACH FAVOR THERE IS A PRICE - THE EQUATION IS QUITE CONCISE. Across the chest, we get: 

EVEN                                             FOUR

THGUOS                                       THGUOB

QUEENS                                        THINGS

ERA                                                EBNAC

Once we interlace them, we get: FOUR THINGS ARE SOUGHT - EVEN QUEENS CAN BE BOUGHT

While I was staring at that, my puzzling companion made a discovery that had me both angry and bemused. The King of Clubs’ chest is not another pattern, it’s merely telling us that the script is Angel script - which I found by accident. Still haven’t found a nice date stamp, either. Harumph. 

That leaves us with four remaining puzzles: the edge on the Queen of Hearts, the chest of the Jack of Clubs, and both the edge and the center of the male Joker. 

We decide to take a break for the day - Progress!