In 1909, an unmarried woman in Santa Monica received a postcard encrypted in an unusual cipher. Can a reader break this encryption?

Blog reader Karsten Hansky has provided me an interesting encrypted postcard. Unlike most other cards I have published on this blog, this one doesn’t show a certain place, but a plant – a Yucca Palm.

According to Wikipedia, Yuccas can be found in many parts of the USA, including California. If we look at the address side of the postcard, we see that California is the place where it is from. It was published by a company in Los Angeles. To Karsten’s and my surprise, it was produced in Germany.

The message on the card is dated 9-5-1909. Provided that the sender used the US way of writing a date, this means September 5th, 1909. The receiver of the card was a Vera Schmidt, who lived or worked in the Santa Monica Bay Hospital in Santa Monica, California. Apparently, this institution does not exist any more. Santa Monica is a suburb of Los Angeles.

Vera Schmidt is a German name. The title “Miss” indicates that she was not married. Most encrypted postcards I know were sent by young men to their loved ones. I wouldn’t be surprised if this was the case here, too.

Let’s look at the encrypted message:

Apparently, the sender used an alphabet consisting only of the four characters “1”, “2”, “+”, and “-“. This is quite unusual. My guess is that the “-” separates letters, while the “+” separates words. If this assumption is correct, the ones and twos represent a binary code, perhaps a Morse code. However taking the ones as dots and the twos as dashes (or the other way round) doesn’t lead to a meaningful text.

Can a reader find a better approach for solving this message? If so, please let Karsten and me know.


Further reading: An encrypted postcard from the Isle of Wight

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Kommentare (8)

  1. #1 Torbjörn Andersson
    Kalmar, Sweden
    17. April 2019

    It’s in the American ‘Wig-wag code’:
    “Dear Kidy(?) allways think(?) of u. I [k]no[w] a new song, will sing it for u. Kiss Sete.”

  2. #2 Thomas
    17. April 2019

    Provided there are deciphering/spelling errors, something like that:

    “Dear Midy all ways think of —- a new song will sing it for Miss -ete”

  3. #3 Thomas
    17. April 2019

    I agree:

    The beginning:”Dear Kidy”, the end: “Kiss Pete”

  4. #4 Klaus Schmeh
    17. April 2019

    Thank you very much! Another mystery solved.

  5. #5 Hias
    17. April 2019

    Die Postkarte hat keine Marke und ist nicht gestempelt. Wahrscheinlich wurde sie nicht mit der Post verschickt, sondern persönlich an der Zieladresse abgegeben.

  6. #6 David A Wilson
    Asheville
    17. April 2019

    The wig-wag code is straight from the encyclopedia, no variation.:

    https://www.ency123.com/2015/04/wig-wag-signals-and-wigwagging.html

    Nice solving, Torbjörn Andersson.

  7. #7 Michael Schroeder
    17. April 2019

    This is the US Army General Service Code for Wig Wag telegraphy.

    https://signal.army.mil/old/history/00_wig_wag.html

  8. #8 Tony
    18. April 2019

    It would appear this postcard was never sent through the postal system, since the “Place Postage Here” does not contain a postage stamp.