Haikus? “People waiting for the toilet on planes”? And that’s poetic? The post Seventeen syllables, right? appeared first on Cipher Mysteries.

My bibliographic search for more information about the Hollow River Cipher led to Sterling Ramsay’s (1973) “Folklore: Prince Edward Island”. It’s a nice little book, that tries to enjoy local folkloric tales of ghosts, spirits and buried treasure from Prince Edward Island without the intrusion of too much critical thinking, a tradition that has (apparently) … Read More → The post “Folklore: Prince Edward Island” by Sterling Ramsay… appeared first ....

For more than forty years, the late historian Gustina Scaglia researched 15th and 16th manuscripts containing drawings of machines. This led to her writing (some with Frank D. Prager) a number of highly regarded books, a good number of which I can afford (and have copies of) and a fair few my budget cannot easily … Read More → The post Gustina Scaglia, the Machine Complex Authors, and weak vs strong research questions… appeared first on Cipher Mysteries.

The story of the ‘Scorpion’ letters to John Walsh, host of “America’s Most Wanted” and (more recently) “The Hunt with John Walsh”, is now reasonably well known. From 1991, Walsh received a string of threatening letters from someone signing themselves “SCORPION”, and also containing cryptograms. Since 2007, two of these cryptograms (“S1” and “S5”) have … Read More → The post Scorpion S1, a different view… ....

Apologies again for previously repeating the incorrect identification of “Ronald Francis” as Dr Douglas Buxton Hendrickson. However I can fully rectify that in the best way possible, by passing on today’s announcement courtesy of Gerry Feltus: from which we can say (hopefully definitively) that “Ronald Francis” – in whose car the Rubaiyat was found – … Read More → The post At last (Take #2): “Ronald Francis” was chemist John Freeman ....

I’ve just had a nice email from Derek Abbott, who tells me that even though the recent documentary’s producer Wayne Groom was – for a long time – convinced that Ronald Francis was Dr Donald Buxton Hendrickson of 13 Pier-street etc etc, he is now no longer sure. Did someone come forward with a name? … Read More → The post Hendrickson REWIIIIIIIIIIIIND….?!?!? appeared first on Cipher Mysteries.

It is both interesting and intriguing that Voynich f116v – the final page of the Voynich Manuscript – contains several lines of as-yet-unaccounted-for text. What is interesting is that these lines are almost entirely unlike the “Voynichese” text that fills the rest of the manuscript, and are written in a recognizably European gothic hand typical … Read More → The post Trying to identify the mysterious letter ‘^’ on the top line of Voynich f116v… ....

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To decipher the sequence of numbers that make up the second Beale Cipher (‘B2’), you use them to index into a slightly-mucked-around version of the Declaration of Independence (AKA a dictionary cipher), the sequence of initial letters yields the plaintext. Errm… except that this isn’t the whole story: thanks to the Committee of Five’s inexplicable … Read More → The post Introduction to Beale Cipher B2… appeared first on Cipher Mysteries.

During 5th August 1996, a number of unmoderated Usenet groups were deluged by computer generated spam. Catherine Hampton, a group administrator for alt.religion.christian.boston-church, wrote: We have a problem in alt.religion.christian.boston-church — a flood of vertical spam with varying From: lines, posted from different locations, and with no common string to allow us to killfile the … Read More → The post The Usenet “Markovian Parallax Denigrate” mystery… ....

It’s one of those strange stories that sounds oddly romantic at first, then somewhat confusing, before ultimately ending up sad. The tale of Nora Emily (‘Netta’) Fornario’s curious death on Iona in November 1929 was recently picked up by Mental Floss (which is where I first heard of it), and if you just want to … Read More → The post Netta Fornario’s missing papers… appeared first on Cipher Mysteries.

I’m cautiously optimistic that a breakthrough has just emerged to do with the Art History origins of the Voynich Manuscript’s puzzling zodiac pages, that would appear to connect them with Diebold Lauber’s fifteenth century manuscript copying house. Errrm… who he? I’ll explain… The Voynich Zodiac section Even though we cannot decrypt the Voynich Manuscript’s text, … Read More → The post Voynich Zodiac Gemini and the workshop of Diebold Lauber… ....

Lots of fragments of research into the Hollow River Cipher to pass your way. The Monthly Chronologer Even though I haven’t (yet) had a chance to go into the British Library to trawl through 1738 newspapers, I did recently find scans via Google Books of a monthly magazine from 1738 called “The Monthly Chronologer”, which … Read More → The post Searching for L’Aigle… appeared first on Cipher Mysteries.

An excellent article by Berthold Hub (though in Spanish) on Antonio Averlino’s Sforzinda appeared not long ago, where Hub attempted to trace through many of the ideas / preceding documents that fed into Averlino’s libro architettonico. One of those ideas was astrology: for example, Averlino talks about working out the astrologically best date for starting … Read More → The post Notes on Battista Piasio [Part 1] – Nicolaus Lucarus’ funeral oration… appeared ....

While trawling through the dear old Adelaide Advertiser’s Law Court section for the weeks following the Somerton Man’s death (where cases from Adelaide Juvenile court were occasionally reported), I found the following story about interstate car crime, which I wanted to keep a copy of on the blog. Interstate Men Charged Two interstate men — … Read More → The post Interstate Men Charged appeared first on Cipher Mysteries.

A few days ago, Cipher Mysteries commenter Paul Relkin very kindly sent me through a copy of a document listing James Crowshay’s marriage to Margaret Seaton in 1745: This inspired me to hunt for more information, mainly via the LDS’s (frankly astonishing) familysearch.org website. And I was genuinely astonished at what I was able to … Read More → The post In search of James Crowshay… appeared first on Cipher Mysteries.

To my eyes, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle left two quite distinct legacies. The first, of course, was Sherlock Holmes, his searingly-flawed-but-unstoppably-insightful detective, whose long shadow still hangs over the entire detective fiction genre, 130+ years after A Study in Scarlet. Yet the second was Conan Doyle’s literary conceit that one can combine wide-ranging observation with … Read More → The post Sherlock Holmes, the Somerton Man, and the Case of the Missing Socks… appeared ....

(This is a little off-topic, but what the hey.) When I’m not trying to crack unbroken historical ciphers, my day job is as a software developer: and over the last few years, I’ve got more and more frustrated with the abysmally low productivity of the whole industry. And so I’ve been putting a lot of … Read More → The post Nick Pelling talk on “The Ten Times Manifesto”, Google Campus London, 6pm, 10th August 2018… appeared first on Cipher Mysteries.

As a quick reminder, we’re looking for historical evidence (a) of a brig sailing out of England (probably London) to Massachusetts (probably Boston) in late April 1738, and (b) of a proclamation that appeared in a London newspaper listing a reward for the capture of a 4-gun French privateer sloop called “The Eagle” or “L’Aigle”. … Read More → The post 1738 London newspapers… appeared first on Cipher Mysteries.

I’ve been carefully reading the diary entry scanned in from the Prince Edward Island Magazine by Matt Malone, and wondering if it might be possible to reconstruct the secret history yet further. We now have what seems likely to be a name for the person who constructed the cryptogram: while the account gives a number … Read More → The post Tracing The Eagle and J Crowshay… appeared first on Cipher Mysteries.

Thanks to help from Cipher Mysteries commenters Paul Relkin and Thomas, it became clear that though my initial attempt at cracking the Hollow River Cipher was close, it wasn’t as close as it could have been. Essentially, even though I worked out the upper case / lower case trick and what I thought was a … Read More → The post The Hollow River Treasure…? appeared first on Cipher Mysteries.

Here, courtesy of Cipher Mysteries reader Matt Malone, is a new historical cipher that he calls the “Hollow River Cipher”, which he found in a magazine from the early 1900s called “The Prince Edward Island Magazine” while on vacation. (There are 67 issues scanned online here from 1899 to 1905, so other interesting stories may … Read More → The post Cracking the Hollow River Cipher… appeared first on Cipher Mysteries.

In 1992, the American Congress ruled that all documents related to President Kennedy’s death should be released within 25 years: and when President Trump raised no objection last October, that is essentially what happened. Except, of course, that there were still numerous redactions. (Did you really believe it would be otherwise? *sigh*) Arguably one of … Read More → The post David F. Christensen and Kennedy’s assassination… appeared first on Cipher Mysteries.

An open question to the house, really: even though I have all manner of books and papers relating to other cipher mysteries, it struck me as odd a few days ago that I have next to nothing on the Zodiac Killer that I’d consider any sort of capsule library on the subject. Despite his love … Read More → The post What’s the best non-theory Zodiac Killer book? appeared first on Cipher Mysteries.

The logic is ineluctably Vulcan: unsolved historical ciphers are cool… novelists like to lard their books with cool stuff… ergo here’s yet another cipher mystery novel to review. The book’s author, Jess Lourey, is a Sociology/English professor: and if I told you that she also lectures in creative writing, you may have a good idea … Read More → The post Review of Jess Lourey’s “Salem’s Cipher”… appeared first on Cipher Mysteries.

What connects “perpetuity”, “Galahads”, and “zzz”? Moreover, why might the French struggle to solve this puzzle? The post A quicky word puzzle for you… appeared first on Cipher Mysteries.

In the somewhat 2d world of anime fandom, fans (whether Weeaboo or Wapanese) express their like / preference / undying love for a specific female character within a given anime / show / political party / whatever by describing them as their ‘best girl‘, e.g. “Kim Pine = Totally. Best. Girl. Ever.”, or “Angela Merkel … Read More → The post Who is your Voynich best girl / nymph? appeared first on Cipher Mysteries.

To summarize, we have a 1716 treasure map from Philadelphia that leads to a particular small brick building in Cherry Garden, leading downwards from the southeastern corner of Society Hill to the Delaware River. In the early 18th century, Cherry Garden was (as its name suggests) gardens, apart from a single building: while in the … Read More → The post The Franklin Sugar Refinery… appeared first on Cipher Mysteries.

Thanks to the help of commenter Thomas, we now have an excellent online source for the brick-built Cherry Garden cottage, courtesy of the American Philosophical Society Museum and the Ghost Gardens, Lost Landscapes? exhibition put together by Erin McLeary. The cottage in Cherry Garden This contained not only John Fanning Watson’s drawing of the cottage … Read More → The post How to find the Cherry Garden cottage… appeared first on Cipher Mysteries.

Before revealing the precise modern equivalent of the location near Cherry Garden where the Society Hill treasure was allegedly buried ?? , I think we need to take a brief detour into the world of Philadelphia’s pirate treasure lore. Our guide is the ever-detailed (and not infrequently skeptical) (1830) “Annals of Philadelphia, being a collection … Read More → The post John Fanning Watson on Philadelphia’s pirate treasure… appeared first on Cipher Mysteries.