Club Code Book 1: The Mysterious E-Mail Chapter 3

Chapter 3: How To Solve A Puzzle By Goofing Off

"RRRRRIIIIINNNNNGGGGG!" Carl and Karl jumped out of their bed "Yahoo!" they said quietly so they wouldn't wake up B-Bo. "It's time to get up! It's fou - um..4:56." Karl looked at Carl angrily. "It's your fault for setting the alarm wrong!" he said as he slapped Carl in his face. "Ya-know.." started Carl. "B-Bo's pretty good at sleeping through alarms." Karl rolled his eyes. "Only this once, because you set the alarm clock to ring too early!" B-Bo suddenly woke up and started to jump on the bed again. "Cot as cheez!" and he instantly fell back asleep. Karl said to Carl. "Well, let's go wake up Judy!" A baffled expression leaped onto Carl's face. "This early?" he said as he jumped into the air. "Yeah!" responded Karl as if it were obvious. Karl grasped Carl's hand and lead him toward Judy's room. Once they were in, Carl told Karl, "You do it, I'm not waking her up!" "Okay." started Karl. "1...2..3!" "WAKE UP! IT'S - um.." Karl dashed back to his room. He came back pretty quickly. "4:58!" he continued. "YOU'RE NOT GOING TO WASTE YOUR SUNDAY SLEEPING IN, ARE YOU?" Judy snored. "I guess so.." said Carl. "Well, I'm going to go downstairs to the playroom and look at my E-Mails." stated Karl. "I'm coming too." replied Carl. They held onto the rail and walked casually downstairs. Carl and Karl walked in the playroom. They left off at where they were when they were goofing off. "That's a hilarious symbol!" said Karl as he looked at his IM. It said: ʱ (Alt 689). They were laughing their heads off untill Carl hit Alt 3..."Hey!" he shouted. Carl quickly opened the E-Mail with the weird puzzle on it. "That's the same symbol as the 1st one in the puzzle!" Karl asked, "What did you press?" Carl responded automatically, "Alt 3!" "Okay," started Karl. "Think off all the things that have to do with the number 3." They thought for about 5 minutes untill Carl had an idea. "C is the 3rd letter in the alphabet!" "Hmm...maybe that's it! Make a key up to 26! Carl made this:
A-☺
B-☻
C-♥
D-♦
E-♣
F-♠
G-•
H-◘
I-○
(etc.)
He didn't literally put etc, but you get it. "Okay," Karl said as he rubbed his hands together. "Let's decipher it!" They succesfully decoded it, and it said this:
Contest 3 days after.
"Sweet, we did it! I guess that means the contest is 10 days from today." Carl said. Karl replied, "We planned to show mom, but we solved it first!" "Mmhmm...let's show her now!" Carl said. "Sure!" said Karl in a sarcastic little girl's voice. "Let's show her a bunch of symbols at 5:14 in the morning!"