Just like every end of year, I am awarding the Golden Alice for outstanding achievements in the field of crypto history.
Like in the years before, my last blog entry of the year is dedicated to the Golden Alice Award. The Golden Alice is awarded for outstanding achievements in the field of historical cryptography. There are eight categories.
Golden Alice 2016 for Best Codebreaking
Like in the years before, the decision in the Best Codebreaking category was pretty hard. Many of my readers have solved cryptograms I introduced on this blog. After long reflection I decided to award the Golden Alice for Best Codebreaking to two persons:
- Norbert Biermann solved an encrypted message described as being written by a safe cracker in the book Codes and Ciphers by Peter Way. When I introduced this cryptogram in 2014, nobody came up with a solution. Two years later, Norbert Biermann not only broke the cryptogram but also discovered that it had got nothing to to with a safe cracker. Instead, the cleartext turned out to be a speech of Lenin. It is well possible that it was only encrypted for practicing. In any case, Norbert did a great job in breaking the code.
- Dr. Christoph Tenzer, an astronomer at the University of Tübingen, even solved three tricky cryptograms in 2016 (both with the support of other readers): the Janes cryptogram, the Wallenstein letter, and the Arche Nebra postcard. Thanks Christoph, great job!
Golden Alice 2016 for Best Book
There are many great crypto history books on the market, some of which I mentioned in my blog posts of 2016. However, none of the books that played a role on Klausis Krypto Kolumne this year, was published in 2016. Nevertheless, a very interesting crypto history book has been published recently: Code Warriors: NSA’s Codebreakers and the Secret Intelligence by Stephen Budiansky. The Golden Alice 2016 in the best book category goes to this one.
I met Stephen Budiansky a few times at crypto history conferences. A few years ago he published Battle of Wits, a great book about WW2 codebreaking. I have to admit that I have only taken a short look at Code Warriors, but what I saw looked very promising. Cold war cryptography is an interesting topic with many important facts still being classified. Congratulations to Stephen Budiansky!
Golden Alice 2016 for Best TV Documentation
There’s no really outstanding TV documentation about crypto history from 2016 I am aware of. However, my friends Alex and Alexa Waschkau from Hoaxilla TV did a great job in interviewing me about the Voynich manuscript. Here’s a teaser:
This interview has certainly deserved the Golden Alice 2016 in the TV category.
Golden Alice 2016 for Best Event
I hope, the best crypto history event in 2017 will be the Historic Ciphers Coloquium in Bratislava, scheduled for next May. A smaller edition of this event has taken place in Kassel, Germany, in May this year. However, the largest and most important crypto history event in 2016 was the Charlotte International Cryptologic Symposium in Charlotte, NC. It was organized by Jim Oram. Thank you very much, Jim, it was a great symposium.
Golden Alice 2016 for Encrypted Book
Encrypted books are one of my favorite topics. In 2016 my Encrypted Book List has grown from 74 to 82 entries. Which one of the newbies is the most interesting one? In my view it’s the encrypted book of Pietro Giannone, broken and brought to my attention by Paolo Bonavoglia from Italy.
Giannone’s book, which consists of one very long encrypted poem, became number 00078 on my Encrypted Book List.
Golden Alice 2016 for Encrypted Postcard
Tobias Schrödel provided me a set of twelve beautiful encrypted postcards – one for each month of the year. In other years, this series would certainly have won the Golden Alice in the postcard category. However, in early 2016, an even more outstanding post card set came to my attention. It’s the greatest encrypted postcard collection I have ever seen: the 44 postcards sent by Josef Fröwis from 1898 to 1900.
I’m very thankful to the Bregenzerwald Archiv for providing me this cryptologic treasure.
Golden Alice 2016 for Newly Discovered Cryptogram
The most notable unsolved cryptogram that has come to my attention in 2016 is a bottle post from Western Russia. I call it Kalinigrad’s Second Mystery (after the famous Amber Room mystery, which is connected to the city of Kaliningrad, too).
So far, nobody has solved this strange cryptogram. Any help by me readers is appreciated.
Golden Alice 2016 for Newly Created Cryptogram
The cryptograms I introduce on Klausis Krypto Kolumne usually have a historic background. I usually don’t publish cryptograms that were created as a puzzle to entertain people. However, there are exceptions. For instance, if a cryptographic puzzle refers to a method of historic interest (e.g., the double columnar transposition or the M-138), I consider writing about it. In addition, I sometimes write about crypto puzzles that are integrated in nice pictures or other art work. The most interesting of this kind I saw in 2016 was provided to me by Tony Gaffney. It’s a message hidden in a photograph showing chess players:
My readers loved this challenge, they wrote many comments about it. Finally, they found the solution. Thanks to Tony for providing me this crypto puzzle and thanks to all the readers who contributed to solving it.
Congratulations to all the winners! I am looking forward to writing many more blog posts in 2017.
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Further reading: My visit at the Cheltenham Listening Stones
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