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Post by tetravus on Aug 20, 2019 11:13:37 GMT -5
Just saw the latest Kickstarter from Enigma Emporium (creators of Wish You Were Here and Blowback). Instead of postcards, this time 'round it's a deck of cards, promised to be chock full of codes, ciphers, and mystery. Check it out:
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Post by Memosinstilettos on Aug 20, 2019 16:35:25 GMT -5
Backed.. I also saw miskatonic papers, an all in one premium style at $500!!!! has launched today.
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Post by minamurray on Aug 21, 2019 5:55:24 GMT -5
Backed! I've been quite happy with the Wish You Were Here series.
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Post by dmikester on Aug 21, 2019 12:17:31 GMT -5
Definitely backing Carte Rouge, but that Miskatonic one gives me pause despite me being both a huge Lovecraft fan and someone who's spent insane amounts of money on Lovecraft collector's items. I don't know why, but the pricing structure is really annoying to me. $500 is already crazy high for what it is but then you only get 1/6th of the artifact and have to spend an additional $300 for the rest?!
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Post by Memosinstilettos on Aug 21, 2019 12:55:14 GMT -5
Definitely backing Carte Rouge, but that Miskatonic one gives me pause despite me being both a huge Lovecraft fan and someone who's spent insane amounts of money on Lovecraft collector's items. I don't know why, but the pricing structure is really annoying to me. $500 is already crazy high for what it is but then you only get 1/6th of the artifact and have to spend an additional $300 for the rest?! I agree $500 is insane for a book with a portion of the artifacts, no matter how good it is. I only paid $400 for Codex Silenda which is a 7 page handcrafted wooden puzzle book with insane detail and craftsmanship.
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Post by thegingerbarrister on Aug 22, 2019 15:37:56 GMT -5
Broke down. Backed.
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Post by minamurray on Mar 26, 2020 20:47:49 GMT -5
Carte Rouge (and Parabola: Wish You Were Here Part III) arrived today!
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Post by thegingerbarrister on Mar 26, 2020 23:55:02 GMT -5
Carte Rouge (and Parabola: Wish You Were Here Part III) arrived today! My Carte Rouge arrived today!
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Post by tetravus on Mar 27, 2020 21:57:53 GMT -5
Carte Rouge reached me today, and after dousing it in hand sanitizer, I gave it a preliminary look. The tuck box is replete with gold, foil, on, all, six, sides. It opens in landscape instead of portrait, which I've never really liked in card boxes. The cards are printed by the Expert Playing Card Company, who are a big name in the world of playing cards. The are only 55 cards instead of the standard 56 that you get in a new deck, with two Jokers and a story card rounding out the normal 52. The cards are all custom faces, and while the spot cards are mostly normal, a few of them have letters in the center. The face cards are where the bulk of the codes lie, with each card containing something to be deciphered. All in all, it looks like a broad range of ciphers - I saw everything from hexadecimal to runes to maybe some sort of book cipher. The backs of the cards also have a series of Roman numerals running along their outside edge, although the backs of all the cards appear identical. Should be fun. I decided to... dig into @infinitiinstitues, and found www.infinitiinstitutes.org/. I look forward to uniting myself with the universal consciousness, or some such. I'll try to decode some of the easier ciphers and then check back here. I'm curious to know what TheGenii thinks of all this
edit: the Roman numerals around the edge of each card read as if these cards have come to you then we are quite sure you know what to do. There's a tiny misprint where a numeral is blended together with a corner box line, but it is distinguishable. I'm currently working on the pigpen cipher but am coming up empty.
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Post by thegingerbarrister on Apr 6, 2020 12:59:47 GMT -5
Looking at the Queen of Spades. I am having a tough time finding an equivalent runic alphabet. Any assistance out there?
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Post by thegingerbarrister on Apr 10, 2020 9:43:02 GMT -5
Carte Rouge reached me today, and after dousing it in hand sanitizer, I gave it a preliminary look. The tuck box is replete with gold, foil, on, all, six, sides. It opens in landscape instead of portrait, which I've never really liked in card boxes. The cards are printed by the Expert Playing Card Company, who are a big name in the world of playing cards. The are only 55 cards instead of the standard 56 that you get in a new deck, with two Jokers and a story card rounding out the normal 52. The cards are all custom faces, and while the spot cards are mostly normal, a few of them have letters in the center. The face cards are where the bulk of the codes lie, with each card containing something to be deciphered. All in all, it looks like a broad range of ciphers - I saw everything from hexadecimal to runes to maybe some sort of book cipher. The backs of the cards also have a series of Roman numerals running along their outside edge, although the backs of all the cards appear identical. Should be fun. I decided to... dig into @infinitiinstitues, and found www.infinitiinstitutes.org/. I look forward to uniting myself with the universal consciousness, or some such. I'll try to decode some of the easier ciphers and then check back here. I'm curious to know what TheGenii thinks of all this
edit: the Roman numerals around the edge of each card read as if these cards have come to you then we are quite sure you know what to do. There's a tiny misprint where a numeral is blended together with a corner box line, but it is distinguishable. I'm currently working on the pigpen cipher but am coming up empty. Did you crack the Pigpen Cipher? I finally got it.
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Post by tetravus on Apr 10, 2020 16:20:49 GMT -5
No, unfortunately. I got hung up when I realized there were four different orientations for each of the four cipher cards and four different orientations for each of the code cards, leading to thousands of permutations
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Post by dmikester on Apr 15, 2020 0:52:18 GMT -5
tetravus, I'm working on this now. It's not a traditional pigpen cipher. Pay close attention to all of the Kings and note their ribbons...
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Post by dmikester on Apr 15, 2020 11:11:31 GMT -5
So I've finished most of this and am very, very impressed with it. I don't want to go into too many details, especially given that I haven't finished the very last part, but the way the codes work in this is fascinating to me. I'll put this in spoilers because it spoils a general aspect of this in case you want to go into it completely cold (and you do if you're serious about solving everything): I've never seen something quite like this where the ciphers are almost entirely unique to the puzzle itself and are self-referential. For example, you may think there's a traditional substitution cipher but it's actually derived entirely from elements within the deck of cards itself and doesn't act the way you might expect. Other ciphers are the same way. It makes it so that if you're familiar with traditional ciphers, you need to think outside of the box and can't use online decoding tools because you need to derive the ciphers yourself. It's disconcerting at first, but after a while it becomes really satisfying and challenging in a good way.
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