Unsolved: A coded postcard from Ohio

A Florida blogger is searching for the solution to a 1910 encrypted postcard. Can a reader help her?

Deutsche Version

Thanks to Google, I once again came across an interesting encrypted postcard in the depths of the Internet. And lo and behold, it comes once again from the US state of Ohio. There the conditions for encrypting seem to be particularly favorable – among other things I could already report on the encrypted message of a robber, an encrypted gravestone, an encrypted message from a prison and several encrypted postcards from Ohio in the last years. I’ll have to take a trip to Ohio sometime. You can probably find the cryptograms there even in the ditch.

Before I go any further, I’d like to do a little advertising on my own behalf. I am currently working with Elonka Dunin on the US edition of our joint book “Codebreaking: A Practival Guide”. This has only been published by a British publisher so far. The US edition will differ in a few ways. We will correct some errors and update a few places. In particular, we will include the solution of the second Zodiac killer cryptogram by Jarl Van Eycke, Dave Oranchak and Sam Blake. Those who wish can pre-order the book now at a discount from Barnes & Noble.

The postcard from 1910

Back to the postcard in question. This one is described on the blog of U.S. library expert Alea Henle of Miami. According to the last name, this lady has ancestors from Swabia, which is undoubtedly a mark of quality. The article in question is titled “A Musical Mystery? Crack an old Postcard Code” and was published in late 2020. So far, no commentary has been published on it, which probably means that no one has found the solution yet.

There are a couple of notes on the picture page:

Quelle/Source: Henle

I could not find a song with the lyrics “Thy voice is near me in my dreams” in an internet search. The same applies to the heading “Though shadows fall or sunlight beams”. The melody in D minor means nothing to me. Also, there is something wrong with the meter. Assuming that the last note is dotted and that there is a bar line missing after the second note, the song could be in three-four time. Perhaps a reader can say more about this.

The cryptogram

Let’s look at the lyrics page. The recipient was – as almost always with a coded postcard – an unmarried woman (Miss). Her name was Flossie Husted and she lived on Harris Station Road in an unnamed town. It was probably Waverly, a small town in Ohio, where the card was postmarked on April 12, 1910. The sender may have been a man named Frank, whose name can be seen uncoded at lower left.

Quelle/Source: Henle

The encoded text should be a letter substitution. I have already tried the scheme A=1, B=2, C=3, but without success. So a somewhat less obvious table must have been used.

Does any reader manage to decipher the chart? Alea Henle would certainly be pleased.

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

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