Cipher Mysteries readers in the US may well have watched Brad Meltzer’s recent “Decoded” episode on the Declaration of Independence. Though you might well think that the description listed below doesn’t sound particularly promising…
The Declaration of Independence is the founding document of American Democracy. Could it contain hidden messages from our nation’s forefathers intended to be discovered years later? Buddy, Mac and Scott travel across America to try and uncover the mysteries behind our nation’s most prized document.
…it turns out that this episode was in fact largely about the Beale Papers, which (in my opinion, at least) is a proper cipher mystery. I’ve blogged about these a fair few times, such as here: summing up, I conclude that the statistical improbability of the Gillogly strings strongly implies that these are real ciphers (not hoaxes); that they were enciphered using a two-stage combo of codebook and monoalphabetic substitution; and that the Gillogly strings are in fact no more than the keyphrase somehow falling through the system as a set of ABCDE…-style indices.
And just for all those armchair treasure hunters out there eager to crack B1 and B3 for themselves, my predictions are (a) that the B1 key string will turn out to be painfully close to “THOMASJEFFERSONBEALE”, and (b) that though B1 (and probably B3) also used the Declaration of Independence, it had its own slightly different set of counting mistakes as compared to B2. As normal, 15% of the bounty should cover my fee, thanks. 🙂
All of which means that when the Beale Papers finally do get cracked, Jim Gillogly will probably kick himself into the next state for missing what, to a supersmart codebreaker such as him, should be utterly obvious. Unless it’s him that ultimately gets to crack it? We shall see!
Anyway, the nice thing about Brad Meltzer’s show is that it has hugely stimulated interest in the Beale Papers, even creating its own mini-traffic-spike in Google Trends. I’m guessing the linking that’s going on is happening in treasure hunter mailing lists, but to be honest there’s not a lot out there worth reading on the subject. People are finally realising that stories linking the Beale Papers to (for example) famous pirate / privateer Jean Lafitte [Jean Laffite] are probably outright fakes. As with the Voynich Manuscript, all the properly good evidence is embedded right in the text itself: it’s everything else surrounding it that is the hoax!
Nick,
Saw the piece in the NYT.
Take a look at my co-authored book, Rebel Gold, re. the cipher of the Knights of the Golden Circle in the United States. Ties to Europe etc. Backdrop to National Treasure movie series.
You have a very interesting website!
Best,
Warren Getler
Washington, D.C.
[email protected]
Warren: it’s been on my list of books to have a look at for the last few weeks, I’m looking forward to reading it! 🙂 But can you tell me, does the “Shadow of the Sentinel” hardback edition contain exactly the same text as the “Rebel Gold” paperback edition, or did you update it between editions? Thanks very much! ….Nick….
IVE FOUND THE LETTER WHICH WAS NEVER SENT TO MR MORRISAND IT PROVES MY DECODES ARE CORRECT STAN CLAYTON
How to solve Cipher #3 is far more complicated than one might imagine. Think about it this way- of the three ciphers; one which documents details of the treasure, one which documents the location of the treasure, and one which gives the names and residences of the intended beneficiaries…..which would be the least important to a treasure hunter? To a man, all would say the third…which is precisely why it should be considered the most important of the three- and I’ve solved it.
the not for and form herein for
Page #1 has been done . Working on page #3 at this time. Mid June 2015 all will be done. FaceBook Beale Cipher Decoded .
Google the 5″ sequel episode to Decoded’s episode Declaration of Independence:
“Seeling Beale’s Treasure – YouTube”
Nationally televised on History Channel.
I like this site: http://www.thebealekey.com
Soon…