Free daily puzzle
Cartouche of the Day
One real pharaohβs name a day. Put the right sound under every sign and read the king in 4 tries or fewer.
Campaign Β· free
Decipher: the Champollion mode
Work out the sign values yourself from Ptolemy, Cleopatra and Ramesses, the way it was done in 1822.
Lesson 1 Β· free
Learn all 25 alphabet signs
Twenty minutes with the uniliterals and tomorrowβs cartouche reads itself.
How to play Cartouche of the Day
Every day the ring shows a real royal name, copied sign for sign from a monument, a tomb or the Rosetta Stone. Each sign stands for a sound (the alphabet signs), a whole word (the sun disc is the god Ra) or a silent marker (the egg that ends a queenβs name). Tap a tile to put your reading under each sign, then press Read it. Correct sounds lock in place; a tilde means the sound belongs somewhere else in the name.
You have 4 rows. Win and your streak grows; miss a day and it resets, like Wordle. The reveal tells you who the king was, what the name means and why it is spelled that way, including the Egyptian habit of writing a godβs name first even when it is read last.
Which pharaohs appear?
30 cartouches so far, from Khufu and Pepi II to Cleopatra and Alexander: Khufu, Pepi II, Ptolemy, Cleopatra VII, Alexander the Great, Thutmose III, Thutmose III, Hatshepsut and more. Every sign sequence was checked against two published renderings, and the Unicode code points are audited against the Gardiner sign list before a cartouche goes live.
Questions people ask
- What is a cartouche?
- A cartouche is the oval ring, ending in a knot, that Egyptian scribes drew around a king's or queen's name. It is the reason royal names can be spotted on any monument, and the reason the Rosetta Stone could be deciphered: scholars knew which signs must spell 'Ptolemy'.
- How do you read a cartouche?
- Signs read in the direction the animals and people face, usually from the top. Most signs in a royal name are sound-signs (one, two or three consonants), some stand for a whole word such as the god Ra, and a few are silent markers. A god's name is often written first out of respect even though it is read last.
- Is Cartouche of the Day free?
- Yes. The daily puzzle and the Decipher campaign are free and need no account. Signing in (also free) keeps your streak across devices and adds XP to your scholar level. The full course of 8 lessons is a one-time purchase.
- Where do the cartouches come from?
- Each of the 30 names is copied sign by sign from a published rendering of a real monument or object, and checked against a second source. The Unicode code points are audited against the Gardiner sign list before a name goes live.