The Gargoyle King on Riverdale works in mysterious ways. The central figure in Season 3’s most dangerous game Gryphons & Gargoyles may be a stick monster. He or she may be imaginary. Or, he/she may not have even shown up on screen yet! But there is one aspect of The Gargoyle King we can figure out, and that’s how to read the weird alphabet that’s been showing up all over the Town With Pep.

The script first popped up in the Season 3 premiere, “Labor Day,” when Dilton Doiley (Major Curda) passed a strange map Jughead’s (Cole Sprouse) way. Jughead followed the map, and discovered Dilton dead, next to Ben Button (Moses Thiessen), which is an actual character name on Riverdale and not something I accidentally typed. And then it started showing up everywhere, tagged on signs, on the bottom of chalices, and even branded on Archie’s (KJ Apa) beautiful body.

While Juggie has gotten closer to discovering The Gargoyle King’s motivations, on the next episode it sure looks like we’re going to delve more into this strange alphabet. But don’t worry, you can beat Riverdale‘s prime investigative duo of Betty (Lili Reinhart) and Jughead at their own game, as intrepid fans (and a little digging of our own) will potentially help you decipher the font right now — as well as revealing some aspects of its surprising origins.

The whole thing was actually figured out pretty quickly back on October 18 by writer Hannah Shaw-Williams of ScreenRant, who took one look at Jughead’s map and knew what was what:

As Williams details, in order to figure out a code, you look for repeated patterns, and simple words. In this case, it looks like you’ve got a six letter word, a three letter word, an eight letter word and a four letter word. There are a limited number of three letter words that could be there, and if you sub in “the” for those letters you can very quickly figure out the message is: “Beware The Gargoyle King.”

In case that seems like too much of a logical leap for you, check out the tag found in the same episode as Archie’s prison bus heads out of town:

Those letters could mean anything, but if they are initials — “TGK,” for “The Gargoyle King” — then it continues to help flesh out the code above, and certainly backs up Shaw-Williams’ findings.

You can find the same three letters on Dilton and Ben’s backs when Jughead discovers them in the woods:

Later, after Alice Cooper (Mädchen Amick) tells her flashback story to Betty on “The Midnight Club,” the younger Cooper investigates at Riverdale High and finds two chalices, each which the third letter on them:

That would be “K” for “King” if the code holds true.

Then Archie got branded, and according to what Joaquin (Rob Raco) tells us in the promo for the next episode, the letter is an “S” for “Sacrifice.”

For those of you keeping track, that’s 14 letters of the alphabet accounted for, which is great! But here’s where things get interesting, and potentially confusing.

On November 4, the Riverdale podcast “Dial M for Maple” dug up a Lovecraft inspired font that certainly looks exactly like the glyphs used on the show:

Author H.P. Lovecraft has been referenced before on Riverdale, specifically with his name showing up on a crate during Season 2’s “Tales From The Darkside.” It also ties in nicely thematically with the Gargoyle King storyline, as Lovecraft’s writing is often focused on beings from beyond our reality slowly driving us insane with obsession. You know, exactly what’s going on with Jughead.

So to use a Lovecraft-inspired font makes sense. Only problem is, no “official” one exists. Lovecraft himself never included any part of this otherworldly alphabet — in his text, reading it would drive characters insane, so it was left to the reader’s imagination. But fans and professionals have created numerous takes on a potential alphabet, like the one in the tweet above. Having looked through a dozen or so of these, I can attest that they’re all different, no two alphabets are the same, and the one above is the only one (that I found, at least) that looks like the Gargoyle King’s alphabet on the show.

“Dial M for Maple” spent a bit of time wondering why the letters on the Riverdale town sign translate to “TGH,” as per the key from this font. But a little digging on our end turned up a few surprising additions.

First of all, the font referenced above is called “Cthulhuian,” created by DeviantArt user The Vaults of McTavish. Real name Stacey Marshall, when we reached out to him he told us the font’s origin over email.

“I’m a big Lovecraft/Cthulhu Mythos fan and play the Chaosium Call of Cthulhu role-playing game,” he said. “I originally designed the font so I could make some prop handouts of pages from the Necronomicon.”

The whole website (Vaults of McTavish) was intended to be about an imaginary explorer named Stapleton McTavish, with the font and pages all tying into that, expanding on the descriptions available on the site.

And the font was originally offered for free, until the creator deciding to make a living from his art and started charging (currently) $2.59 for the download. Marshall also offers a commercial license for the font on request. And in fact, it’s a relatively widely used Lovecraftian font: Chaosium ended up using the font themselves in several publications, and Cyanide Studios licensed the font for the PS4 game Call of Cthulu.

A few years back, Marshall discovered that some of the glyphs he created were similar to those used in another Lovecraft alphabet, so updated the font to version two, which is what is now offered online. However, the graphic snagged by “Dial M for Maple” is the first version of the font, and if you compare it to the map Jughead holds up has extremely similar glyphs with one exception: Riverdale seemingly switched the “H” and the “K.” Hence why the podcast read it as “TGH” instead of “TGK,” which is what those letters actually indicate.

Otherwise, the fonts are identical, down to the “S” branded on Archie’s side. So if you’re looking for a good key to use going forward, the above graphic is your guide; though with the caveat that some of the letters may switch up here and there.

There’s a bit of an asterisk here, by the way. When Decider reached out to Marshall about the font, not only had he not watched Riverdale, he was unaware of the font’s seeming use, and the production had not at the time reached out for a commercial license.

Good news, though: in the process of putting together this story, Warner Bros. was alerted to the issue, and subsequently their legal department got in touch with Marshall and settled the matter. Though details were not publicly disclosed, Marshall seemed satisfied with the resolution. And that also seems to confirm that the Cthulhuian font is, in fact, the one being used on the show (or is a direct inspiration). So kudos to Warner Bros. for doing the right thing here… Too often, television production companies seem to err on the side of “well, we’re just giving the artist exposure,” so it’s nice to see them admit an error and make things right in this case.

Oh, and happy decoding.

Riverdale airs Wednesdays at 8/7c on The CW

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