Five cryptologic cold cases

Today I’m going to introduce five encrypted messages that look solvable, but have so far resisted all attempts to decipher them.

Deutsche Version

This Saturday at 6pm (German time) there will be another webinar of the International Conference on Cryptologic History (ICCH). Participation is free of charge, if you want to join, please send me an email. Unlike usual, this time there will be no single speaker with a presentation. Instead, there will be an open discussion in which everyone can participate. Anyone who wants to will have five minutes to bring up a particular topic.

Of course, I want to take advantage of this opportunity. But with what? I’ve decided to use my five minutes to present five unsolved ciphers that I’ve covered at some point in the last few years on my Cipherbrain blog. I will refrain from particularly prominent cases, such as the Voynich manuscript or the Zodiac Killer cryptograms. Instead, I will focus on some lesser-known crypto puzzles that I think have a relatively good chance of being deciphered. If 25 competent pairs of eyes look at a crypto puzzle in the context of an ICCH discussion, I hope, at least new approaches might emerge.

In the following, I will present the five selected cryptograms (I call them “cold cases”) – not only for ICCH participants, of course.

Cigarette case cryptogram

In 2017, a blog reader who wishes to remain anonymous sent me photos of an encrypted dedication on a cigarette case.

Quelle/Source: Owner of the cigaret case, used with permission

I actually thought it was a simple letter substitution, such as those seen on numerous postcards of the time. My readers usually solve such cryptograms within hours.

But this dedication on the cigarette case proved to be a tough nut to crack. Although I have blogged and lectured about it several times in the meantime, no one has been able to help clarify this mystery. One tip I received recently came from a blog reader named Martin. He noticed that the dedication looks a little less exotic when you turn it upside down:

Quelle/Source: Owner of the cigaret case, used with permission

Maybe this will help. I continue to hope that this puzzle will be solved at some point.

The Fair Game cryptogram

In the credits of the Hollywood movie “Fair Game” (with Naomi Watts and Sean Penn), a total of 68 letters are marked in yellow. The following excerpt shows two examples:

Quelle/Source: Rossignol

Together, the message is this:

CES?OAPCHFHTEOPISFMNADAMECAOREDATN
RAYUURNQWKNUFRCOJRWRMDGSEHUWTOAKRA

Eleven years after the film was released, it is still not clear what this message is supposed to mean. But I assume that it is decipherable. So it’s about time …

Guy de Contet’s Pigpen Encryption

The French artist Guy de Contet (1934-1983) created a book called “A Captain from Portugal”. In it are numerous illustrations that could be encrypted texts. This is particularly noticeable in the following illustration:

Quelle/Source: Otis College

This looks very much like a Pigpen encryption. If this is true, this cryptogram should be solvable. So far, however, I am not aware of any successful decryption.

Lambros Callimahos’ steganographic message

I first presented the following crypto history puzzle on Cipherbrain two weeks ago. It is an example of steganography that NSA cryptologist Lambros Callimahos claims caught the eye of a postal censor during World War II. Unfortunately, details are not known. A message is said to be hidden in the following image, presumably encoded with the Morse alphabet or the Bacon cipher:

Quelle/Source: NSA

So far, I do not know the solution to this riddle.

George Furlong’s postcard

I have presented many encrypted postcards on Cipherbrain. Usually my readers manage to crack them quite quickly. However, there is one exception: a card written by soccer official George Furlong to his sister Lizzie in 1873.

Quelle/Source: Furlong

The front of the card looks like this:

Quelle/Source: Furlong

Unfortunately, I cannot make any sense at all of the script in which the map text is written. It is at least recognizable that the author wrote quite fluently and was obviously skilled in this script. I could not find out more so far. Also my readers had to pass so far.

Pertinent hints

I am curious to see if there are any new findings in today’s ICCH discussion or afterwards. Independently of that, I am of course glad about relevant hints from my readers, which could help to solve these cryptological riddles.

If you want to add a comment, you need to add it to the German version here.
Follow @KlausSchmeh

Further reading: The Top 50 unsolved encrypted messages: 44. A WW2 encryption hidden in a bullet

Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/groups/13501820
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/groups/763282653806483/