Oh, Christ, cryptograms...
"Cannon shot marine armour (5)"
"Shell" ??? A shell is an artillery projectile (cannon shot), and a protective cover, but specifically "marine armour"???
"Sounds like Mark turned white about the temples (6)"
This one baffles me, no idea whatsoever.
"Lack of scattered thread (6)"
"dearth" - it's the word 'thread' but scattered (i.e. an anagram), and it means "lacking".
"Monster concealed flower (6)"
"orchid" - a hidden orc is a concealed monster, and an orchid is a flower.
"Star running back curses! (4)"
"rats" - it's 'star' backwards, and it's a curse word.
"Everyone surrounded by lousy song (6)"
"ballad" - everyone (or 'all') surrounded by lousy (or 'bad') gives 'b-all-ad', which is a song.
"SPECTRE is tough, ostracized, concealed (5)"
"ghost" - a spectre is a ghost, and the word ghost is concealed in tou
gh ostracized.
"Paladin loses boy, bringing grief (4)"
"pain" - removing a boy (or 'lad') from the word 'pa-lad-in' gives 'pain', which is grief.
"I speak of a barrier brief and unknown, with a great weight (6, 6)"
This one baffles me, no idea whatsoever.
Some of my explanations for the cryptograms deserve a
As for the index card, my guess is that "Turnabout is fairplay" is a cryptogram itself. Turnabout may refer to it being an anagram, and fairplay is an anagram for 'Playfair'.
Playfair is a type of cipher that uses a 5x5 grid, and uses letters in blocks of two - which is just what the index card holds.
Thank you,
National Treasure: Book of Secrets, for telling me about the Playfair cipher, and thank you,
Wikipedia, for teaching me how to use the Playfair cipher.
Typically, a Playfair cipher uses a keyword, and all the letters of the alphabet except the J (because I and J are interchangeable). Here, however, we get a "no Q" hint, so this one probably DOES use a J, but no Q.
We'll be needing a keyword to decipher "AT IF BS PG OT", though, because without one, I get gibberish ("DP HJ CR RF NU"). Anybody have any ideas what the keyword could be???
(Those who want to help, there's a Playfair cipher decoder
here. And it gives us the option to omit Q instead of replacing J with I.)
