In the end credits of the movie Fair Game (2010) some letters are marked. Blog reader Rossignol has now provided me screenshots that are very helpful for studying this code.

In  2014 blog reader Ralf Jäger made me aware of a little known crypto mystery: In the end credits of the movie Fair Game (starring: Naomi Watts and Sean Penn) a code is hidden.

After Ralf’s hint I bought a DVD of this movie. I ignored the main part and only looked at the end credits. It turned out that Ralf was right. Some of the letters in the end credits are marked yellow. According to the web site AboveTopSecret, the marked letters form the following sequence:

CES?OAPCHFHTEOPISFMNADAMECAOREDATN
RAYUURNQWKNUFRCOJRWRMDGSEHUWTOAKRA

The question mark is included because the fourth letter of the sequence is not visible (see below).

As far as I know, the meaning of these marked letters is not publicly known. This means that although millions of people have watched the movie Fair Game, the Fair Game code has never been solved. In April I covered the Fair Game code in my series about the 50 most important unsolved cryptograms.

Earlier this week blog reader Rossignol, a skilled codebreaker and crypto history expert from France, provided me a complete set of screenshots of the Fair Game end credits. Here they are:

BFG01 BFG02 BFG03 BFG04 BFG05 BFG06 BFG07 BFG08 BFG09 BFG10

BFG11 BFG12 BFG13 BFG14 BFG15

BFG16 BFG17 BFG18 BFG19 BFG20 BFG21 BFG22 BFG23 BFG24 BFG25

Thank you very much to Rossignol for providing these screenshots. They are very helpful for studying this unsolved crypto mystery.

So far, not much has been published about the Fair Game code. After I had published my first blog article about it, I received the following comment from a reader calling himself Martin Halpin:

Fair-Game-Comment

The comment says (in German): “Don’t focus on the yellow letters, better take them as markers for the following letters.” It is the only comment that has ever been published on Klausis Krypto Kolumne under this name. The author is probably not a native speaker of German, as the words “kaprizieren”, “Letter”, and “Marker” are quite uncommon in this context. Martin Halpin is a character in James Joyce’s novel Finnegan’s Wake.

It seems possible that the production company of Fair Game is behind this comment. After all, the producers have an interest in increasing the popularity of their code. In any case it would be interesting to look at the sequence of letters that occurs if one takes the characters that stand directly behind the marked ones.

If a reader has some new clues about the Fair Game code, please let me know.


Further reading: Who can find the hidden messages in these 16th century texts?

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Kommentare (15)

  1. #1 Rich SantaColoma
    https://proto57.wordpress.com/
    24. Juni 2017

    I come up with a “next letter” sequence of:

    TAT(K?)DMOTAEAYE(MA?)LEFCICEASEARTIRINSEORANAEOUIUGLEA(SC?)ADOAUEAYRUSSVWEBRR

    My “two letter” sequences in parenthesis, with question mark, are because of an asumption that two yellow letters would be followed by two “next” code letters.

    I see nothing in there as direct plain text, except for a few words such as “cease”, “rinse”, “art”, “russ” and “web”.

    That is all I have… but maybe it will be of help to someone else?

  2. #2 BREAKER
    27. Juni 2017

    Nein you didn’t Hollywood!!! How nice of you to hint at an up and coming event !!!!!

    My first article in town here….opening my bizzy biz….

    Fare Warning….https://www.sevendaysvt.com/vermont/fare-warning/Content?oid=2134216

    It was kinda out of the Blue that they knew I was opening my business and their article was labeled just so……after the “warnings” they like to put out to anyone that talks about their “Thrill of the Chase”. They can’t catch my chariots…..

    The themes of the movie are clear as is the carrying presence of an underlying theme…..a ‘message’ to a certain person that is a theme found in other media as well.

    Except the person that made the message was tied into numerous other affairs of state.

    Well this mystery agent’s identity is BLOWN…..and these are THEIR threats that are being thrown out in the media to make it all the more enticing…..the excitement…..the prestige of completing their mission….

    To kill the King…….

    But of course you wouldn’t know what code was there with all that Black and White background color passing by with a hint of ORANGE

    Makes you wanna ROAR like a tiger……….

    The Orange Theory –

  3. #3 BREAKER
    27. Juni 2017

    Now the cipher itself is a themed one and “credits” are usually the honors that are attributed to the “Names” of these actors at the “End” of the Game……

    Now what Cipher do we know that has Names at the end of it……Names and Addresses it said of the Beale Party?

    Take the words that are containing the yellow and lay them out…….

    Not the letters “After” the highlighted one as the hints show……but the whole word like in the Beale……

    I bet the whole thing looks different……like an actual warning

  4. #4 BREAKER
    27. Juni 2017

    The message using this format is a long one and it seems that it is making up its own plot of some sort…..

    Seeing the recent El Chapo interview that Sean Penn made and then the final arrest, and Sean’s little apologetic recap on his operation he seems to be quite into the Cabal’s connections and has some interest at covering up the trail of Hollywood’s corruption in the drug industry….and their ties to the Corrections Corp of America…the profiteer from Hollywood’s racketeering.

    Here’s the message of his big future gig after Fair Game…..a simple coded message of his intent to play a real life agent….with El Chapo

    PRODUCTION
    SEAN
    CIA ANALYST #1
    CIA ANALYST #1
    GOODWIN
    GOODWIN
    SAM(E)
    POPE
    POPE
    PRODUCTION
    THAN
    FELICITY
    HAIR
    HAIRSTYLIST (tracking device?)
    GREENBERG
    SHOPMAN (manufacturing location of device?)
    RAMSAY
    GAFFER MC TECHNICIANS
    ACCOUNTING
    DELAYNEY (DELAY)
    SAAR (SIGNAL)
    URMSON…..

    It goes on and on of how they planned the operation and set up the tracking device in Sean Penn’s hair…..and were able to track him through the delay in the SAR signal of a wireless device….to the location to catch El Chapo.

    The device was planted in his hair…..

  5. #5 BREAKER
    27. Juni 2017

    ES?OAPCH

    Where is Chapo?

  6. #6 Gerhard F. Strasser
    Hamburg
    27. Juni 2017

    For what it’s worth: Martin Halpin’s comment–of 2014 vintage–does not do justice to the German words in question: “kaprizieren” is common in educated speech/writing (though rare); “Letter” for “Buchstabe” is used in linguistics and, again, quite common; “Marker” is listed in DUDEN as follows:
    * Stift zum Markieren (1a)
    * (Biologie) genetisches Merkmal bei Viren
    (Medizin) biologische Substanz (z. B. Protein, Hormon), deren Vorhandensein im Körper auf einen Krankheitszustand hindeutet
    * (Sprachwissenschaft) Merkmal eines sprachlichen Elements, dessen Vorhandensein mit + und dessen Fehlen mit − gekennzeichnet wird
    * (Sprachwissenschaft) Darstellung der Reihenfolge von grammatischen Regeln, die angeben, wie aus einer gegebenen syntaktischen oder semantischen Struktur andere Strukturen abzuleiten sind.
    ——-
    Once more we have a word taken from linguistics (3rd or 4th meanings)–which would mean that “Martin Halpin” is a native German speaker, and a highly educated one to boot …
    It all means that the assumption that “Hollywood” might be behind this encoded message is hardly plausible; the idea of counting the letters right after the yellow ones is nice but does not seem to get us much further, either.

  7. #7 BREAKER
    28. Juni 2017

    @Gerhard F Strasser

    The whole Word that holds a mark is used to deliver a Perser Code…..

    Used to mask intention in the wandering variables of potential interpretations.

    Why else would there be a Coded Cipher?

    To play a joke on someone who breaks codes?

  8. #8 Stephen Hughes
    Method of Attack
    24. März 2019

    Hi Guys,
    I am passionate about cryptography, and I recently came across this mystery. I feel thrilled and electrified. I have looked at the background of this code, and I have decided to proceed as follows. I would be grateful for your opinions on my approach.
    I have decided to heavily follow Martin Halpin’s clue. I am using coding methods where the yellow letters (YL) describe the location of the plaintext letters. For example, one idea I had was that the nth position of the yellow letters in the word they appear would describe the plaintext letter location – so if the YL was in the 2nd position of the word, then the plaintext letter would be given by the 2nd word following the word containing the YL and it would be in the 2nd position of this word.
    Thanks
    Stephen

  9. #9 captain
    27. März 2019

    It’s obvious! DON’T EAT YELLOW SNOW
    😉

  10. #10 Racingdevil48
    The code
    19. April 2019

    I have good news and bad news. First, the good. I used the tweet and found out that the code is this: TAT?DAMOTAEAYEPMLEFCICEASEARTIRINSEORANAEOUIUGLEAOSADOAUEAYRUSSVWBERR
    Now looking through this, couple of words are found like Ease and Art are right next to each other. The bad news, Idk what this means.

  11. #11 Michael Victor
    Mbombela
    30. Mai 2019

    Here is my attempt: using the code TAT?

    Space every second letter
    ——————————————————————————-

    DAMOTAEAYEPMLEFCICEASEARTIRINSEORANAEOUIUGLEAOSADOAUEAYRUSSVWBERR

    DA MO TA EA YE PM LE FC IC EA SE AR TI RI NS EO RA NA EO UI UG LE AO SA DO AU
    EA YR US SV WB ERR

    ——————————————————————————
    Split every second combination, create two sentences an then combine them.
    ——————————————————————————

    DATA YELEIC SETINS RAEO UGAO DO EAUS WB

    MOEAPM FCEAAR RIE ONAUILESA AUYR SVERR

    to

    DATA YELEIC SETINS RAEO UGAO DO EAUS WB MOEAPM FCEAAR RIE ONAUILESA AUYR SVERR

    Data yellow sentence read, go to us web weapon fear re-annilize your server

    ——————————————————————————

    from here on out, it’s about prenounciation and correction:

    bring every unused or replaced letter in new line
    ——————————————————————————

    leicnise ouad eae wn cai enaue saaoe

    licence out ex un cia Enaue Saoe

    ——————————————————————————
    again, bring every unused or replaced letter in new line
    ——————————————————————————

    esia daewaa

    – Asia Diva

    ——————————————————————————

    Data yellow sentence reads: go to us web weapon fear, re-annilize your server

    licence out ex un cia, Enaue Saoe.

    – Asia Diva

    or

    Data yellow sentence reads: go to us web weapon fear, re-annilize your server

    licence out ex un cia, Ensue

    – So said awal

    lol this was fun, not sure if it means anything, but this is the most i could make of it.
    ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

  12. #12 CrazyT
    5. Januar 2020

    Here is my attempt, but I could be wrong.
    Lets say the position of the yellow letters only matter (right or left column … left=1,right=0):

    10110 O
    10100 S
    11011 [SPACE]
    00101 D
    10001 H
    00000 A
    10101 X
    10010 K
    10001 J
    01010 I
    00101 D
    01001 H
    00110 E
    10101 T

    That could then be cesar encrypted.(or anything different?)
    Closest i could get was “IM XBUREDCXBYN” … sadly makes no sense, maybe i have a mistake in it?

  13. #13 CrazyT
    5. Januar 2020

    I made some small mistakes, but does not matter, guess i was on the wrong track.

    Another thing i notice is the following …

    (once again, 1 = left, 0=right)

    1011010100110110010110001000010101
    CES?OAPCHFHTEOPISFMNADAMECAOREDATN
    RAYUURNQWKNUFRCOJRWRMDGSEHUWTOAKRA
    1001010001010100010101001011010101

    The bytes properly aligned is:

    101101010011
    011001011000
    100001010110
    010100010101
    000101010010
    11010101

    Sadly its hard to see this way.
    I copied it to notepad and replaced 1 with a black-block-character.
    With some imagination(some pixels seem to be out of place-maybe because of some other mistakes, atleast the H-shape is clearly visible ) you will see the white letters GHQ.
    This stands for “general headquarters”, and is probably only one part of the riddle and probably no coincidence.

  14. #14 Cyarutchiii
    29. Februar 2020

    Mithilfe der Zeichen Rechts daneben bekommt man diesen String, hast du bereits selbst versucht diesen zu entschlüsseln @Klaus Schmeh?
    TAT?DMOAEAYEMALEFcICEASEARTIRINSEORANAEOUIUGLEASCADOAUEAyRUsVWBERR

  15. #15 SegNerd
    3. November 2020

    I just learned something a little bit odd. Some guy named Forrest Fenn claims that be buried a treasure somewhere in the woods and offered a cryptic poem as a clue. Lots of people have searched for it and a few have even died trying to find it. Recently, Fenn claimed that the riddle was finally solved and the treasure found, but refused to provide any further info.

    The reason this matters is because Forrest Fenn is known to be associated with Valerie Plame, who is the subject of the Fair Game movie and author of the book it’s based on.

    This could be an intersection between two strange mysteries… although I don’t know for sure.