The Top 50 unsolved encrypted messages: 40. The Beale cryptograms

Kommentare (13)

1. #1 Marc

   20. März 2017

   This is a Level X Challenge on http://www.mysterytwisterc3.org.
   It seems someone has solved it (Seth Kintigh) ?

2. #2 Klaus Schmeh

   20. März 2017

   @Marc
   Thanks for mentioning this. Here’s the link to the Beale challenge (as you see, I’m the author of it): https://www.mysterytwisterc3.org/images/challenges/mtc3-schmeh-04-beale-en.pdf

   >It seems someone has solved it (Seth Kintigh)
   Seth has has handed in a link to Jim Gillogly’s paper, which gives strong evidence that cryptogram #1 is a hoax. Of course, this is not a solution, but the MTC3 team awarded him a few points.

3. #3 Klaus Schmeh

   20. März 2017

   Bart Wenmeckers via Facebook:

   I have not looked i to these but i know some people are VERY passionate about this subject.

4. #4 Klaus Schmeh

   20. März 2017

   Richard SantaColoma via Facebook:

   I like that you came right out of the box, and call this one like it is. Surprisingly there still are many who still present it as a real possibility… and I was actually going to use it as an example as persistence of hope overcoming simple common sense.

5. #5 Jim

   21. März 2017

   If the Voynich Ms. is someday shown to be a hoax, I think *it* would be a strong contender for the greatest one.

   I agree with Richard that it’s refreshing to see plain talking on this one!

6. #6 Peter

   Winterthur

   21. März 2017

   My private garden mole gave me a hint:
   You should always be aware, that all those
   treasure hunters help to aerate the compacted
   soil, main problem of our suffering breed, he said.
   Must I say more, he asked and twinkled with
   one eye…

7. #7 Nick Pelling

   https://www.ciphermysteries.com/

   22. März 2017

   Klaus: respectfully, I think you’ve called this one wrong. There is a world of difference between asserting (a) that the story in the Beale Papers are fake and (b) asserting that the ciphers in the Beale Papers are fake.

   Though there is reasonably good evidence that a good proportion (though quite how much is a very tricky question) of the story is indeed fake – I prefer to think of it as “optimistically back-filled” after the event by one or more treasure-hunters – I think that the Gillogly strings point very strongly to there being some kind of genuine plaintext, though obviously not using exactly the same encryption scheme as the deciphered part.

   You say “Even if the Beale cryptograms will never lead to a hidden treasure, there is still a chance that they can be broken” – but if you accept that they can be broken, you should also accept that you have no idea of why they were encrypted in the first place.

8. #8 Klaus Schmeh

   23. März 2017

   James Simpson via Facebook:

   No Klaus, “They” won’t find it…..a man of the Union will…..

9. #9 Klaus Schmeh

   23. März 2017

   Bart Wenmeckers via Facebook:

   See :p

10. #10 Lidia

    POLAND- GDYNIA

    5. Oktober 2017

    Szyfry BEALE. Informacja.
    Rok temu złamałam 3 szyfry liczbowe BEALE : “71”, “115”, “317”. Na podstawie 3 szyfrów BEALE narysowałam 3 duże mapy format A-3 na papierze w kratkę. Według moich map skarb konfederatów znajduje się aktualnie w stanie Massachusetts. Oto moje mapy:
    1/ szyfr 71- region Revere Boston
    2/ szyfr 115 – miasto New Bedford Mass
    3/ szyfr 317- mapa stanu Massachusetts. Pozdrawiam serdecznie Leokadia Janiszewska Gdynia, POLAND. Adres e-mail: leokadiaarent@gmail.com. Data : 5.10.2017.

11. #11 Lidia

    5. Oktober 2017

    https://www.facebook.com/leokadia.arentjaniszewska

12. #12 x3Ray

    7. Oktober 2019

    On Youtube you can find a 2015 German dubbed version of an UK documentary called “Mythenjäger: Der Schatz-Code des Thomas Beale” (with Elonka Dunin and Nick Pelling). E.g.: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5yWEfIYsAEs (44 minutes)

    It points out that the story is a fake, based on the “fact” (? I didn’t review it, so just secondary information and therefore put ‘fact’ in quotes) there are connections from the Lynchburg newspaper, the owner and financial problems to the publication of the small book “The Beale papers containing authentic statements regarding the treasure buried …” (1885), where is the decryption of the first text published.

    Just to sum up: Sherman is the owner of the Lynchburg newspaper, the newspaper has financial problems, he publishes the mentioned book and places dozens of ads for that in his newspaper; Shermans cousin Ward gave his name for the book to authenticate the story. So, the Beale code seems to be just fiction to make money.
    It is kind of an inspiration for the Nicolas Cage movie “National treasure” (“Das Vermächtnis der Tempelritter”) too.

    Nevertheless the cryptological aspect is very interesting, you can find an article conerning a word analysis by Louis Kruh from Cryptologia in 1988 and a letter from William Friedman in 1949 at
    https://www.nsa.gov/Portals/70/documents/news-features/declassified-documents/beale-papers/doc656729.pdf

    How likely is it to use three different key books for these three cryptic texts? Wouldn’t you rather use three different methods using the same key book than the same method with three different key books? Or, maybe, are the other two documents just hoax and don’t make any sense (as they never were intended to be decrypted)?

13. #13 Dan Durham

    Olympia, WA

    9. Oktober 2019

    For about 25 years or so there existed the Beale Cipher Association whose members were trying to solve the Beale Ciphers. I discovered the Association while researching ancestors that had lived for some time about 1800 near Lynchburg, VA which is about 25 miles ENE of Bedford, VA.
    I belonged to the Association for about five years until it folded in about 1995 or 1996. I was more of an observer than an active participant. I was interested in reading in the newsletters about decryption attempts rather than working to solve these ciphers myself.
    Each newsletter contained several articles about theories on how the other two notes were enciphered. I remember that one theory was that the two unsolved ciphers had been enciphered using the same document as cipher two but with numeric offsets from the written cipher numbers. This idea was similar to that of a Caesar cipher but applied to a book cipher. My recollection is that nothing useful was produced by using that theory.
    If I still have the newsletters I received from the Association they are packed away somewhere and I have no idea where.