Unsolved: The encryption of a quack from the Wild West

In 1889, a shady businessman named William Hale published a coded newspaper advertisement in Colorado. Hale was later accused of fraud, and the coded message remained unsolved.

Deutsche Version

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Quelle/Source: Schmeh

Wild West, cryptography and pornography

Now let’s get to the real topic of the day. I’ve blogged on Cipherbrain quite a few times about encrypted newspaper ads. My source has always been the book “The Agony Column” by Cipherbrain reader Tony Gaffney (under the pseudonym Jean Palmer). This work lists about 1000 ciphered ads from British daily newspapers.

It is clear, of course, that ciphered ads were not unique to the British press. For example, it is reported that the French cryptologist Etienne Bazeries (1846-1931) solved ciphered messages appearing in French newspapers and was amused by the contents. Unfortunately, to the best of my knowledge, no one has ever bothered to go through French newspaper ads of the time and look for cryptograms.

Cipherbrain reader Thomas Bosbach has thankfully brought to my attention that an encrypted newspaper ad from the US was recently posted on Reddit. This should be a first in crypto literature.

The ad in question appeared in the Denver Times on July 23, 1889:

Quelle/Source: Denver Times

As Thomas reports, the address listed under the message refers to a company called Gun Wa, which existed from 1888 to 1894 and sold Chinese medicine. The founder of Gun Wa was an Irish immigrant named William Hale. On one website, for example, Thomas found a medicine offered by Gun Wa for “female weakness.” It states:

GUN WA’S CHINESE REMEDY FOR FEMALE WEAKNESS–WARRANTED ENTIRELY VEGETABLE AND HARMLESS

On the Internet, you can find more reports about Gun Wa and William Hale. The latter got into trouble with the law because of mail fraud (there are probably quite different offenses that fall into this category) and the postal distribution of pornographic material and therefore fled to England. Whether the coded message has anything to do with Hale’s alleged illegal activities is unknown to me. Regardless, Gun Wa’s bottles are coveted collectibles today.

Possible solutions

On Reddit, Cipherbrain reader YefimShiffrin posted the following transcription of the cryptogram:

METXHZJTJGHXNYIDKATJG
WEUAVXLDKXVDUEOTTOQ
PFMQJDLTOQVAOEPAKFKILX
HYMPXTOFWEIFJDV

The coincidence index is 4.1 percent. With a simple substitution or transposition, a higher value (6-7 percent) would be expected. This suggests that the author used a more complex cipher. A Vigenère cipher is conceivable.

With CrypTool 2 or Multi-Dec from Cipherbrain reader Christian Baumann, one can determine the following letter frequencies:

Quelle/Source: Baumann

A transposition cipher in a common language can be ruled out, since the frequencies differ too much from the letter frequencies in English, German or French. However, a Vigenère cipher is still conceivable.

A great story

No question, the story about the Gun-Wa cryptogram has pretty much everything a journalist could wish for: Wild West, pornography, crime, a shady businessman, an unsolved mystery, … Maybe there’s more to be found out about this. Are there any more scrambled ads from Gun Wa? What has become of William Hale? What frauds was he accused of in detail. I will gladly accept any hints.

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Further reading: Wer löst diese verschlüsselte Nachricht aus dem Zweiten Weltkrieg?

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