Anamorphics are puzzles based on a kind of secret writing. Here are a few examples, some of which are over 100 years old.

Blog reader Karsten Hansky has provided me a scan of an old postcard. In this case, not the message written by the sender but the motive is relevant:

Source: Karsten Hansky

As can be seen, the picture on this card shows two so-called anamorphics. An anamorphic is a kind of writing that uses stretched letters. One can easily read the message by compressing the picture vertically …

Source: Karsten Hansky

… or horizontally.

Source: Karsten Hansky

In this case, the message is: COMPLIMENTS FROM SCOTTON TO PEGGIE WITH LOVE FROM JACK

Scotton is a village in England.

Long-term readers of this blog might remember that I have written about anamorphics before. In 2016, I  presented the following postcard provided by Tobias Schrödel:

Postcard-Anamorph

Source: Tobias Schrödel

Note that the black part of the writing is printed, while the red part was manually added by the sender. Here’s the horizontal compression (turned by 90 degrees):

Postcard-Anamorph-Sol-1

And here’s the vertical compression:

Postcard-Anamorph-Sol-2

Source: Tobias Schrödel

In 2014, I presented an advertisement puzzle from 1904 that represents an anamorphic:

BN-1909-08-12-Daily-Telegraph-Puzzle

Source: Derby Daily Telegraph

Blog reader Horst told me that German comedian Karl Valentin (1882-1948) sometimes signed his name as an anamorphic (source):

karlvalentin-anamorph

Source: Yandex

The following is an encrypted Christmas greeting (source):

Christmas-anamorph

Source: iFunny

Here’s another postcard with an anamorphic (source). Can you read the message?

Mystery-anamorph

Blog reader Tony Gaffney sent me another puzzle of this kind:

Source: Tony Gaffney

If you know more anamorphics please let me know.


Further reading: An encrypted postcard with only 17 letters

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