Walthamstow’s Second Biggest Mystery

Though not quite as big a mystery as why boy band East 17 was so popular, Walthamstow now has its own cipher mystery: a series of curious graffiti-ed number codes. Reuben Binns started noting these back in 2018:

Looking closely, you can see that these are typically 2-8-7 or 2-7-7 numeric codes, and that they are repeated in blocks, with the coloured pen versions written slightly more compactly, suggesting two writers:

• 01-27203161-041514 (black
• 01-27203161-041514 (purple)
• 01-27203161-041514 (green)
• 00-2720960-3349334 (black)
• 00-2720960-3349334 (purple)
• 00-2720960-3349334 (blue)
• 20-27203561-1332487 (black)
• 20-27203561-1332487 (green)
• 20-27203561-1332487 (green)
• 20-27203561-133487 (black) [may well be a typo for “1332487”]
• 20-27203561-133487 (purple)

You’ll doubtless have noticed that both writers cross their sevens, which is a bit of a European ‘tell’. It’s also hard not to wonder whether the confident, expansive black-pen writer is the alpha male of the pack, while the coloured-pen writer is a younger brother or something.

However, this did not stop in 2018, with the numbers now sometimes accessorised by distinctive images of crescent moons containing hearts and a Star of David:

And there are more from 2021:

However, I think the mystery of what these numbers are has been solved. Mark Steward tweeted (earlier today) that these appear to be Playstation 2 (PS2) serial numbers, and it seems likely to me that he’s correct (image from his Tweet):

But why should this be? Since Sony’s last PS Online official game server got shut down in 2016, fan servers have kept the flickering flame of online PS2 gaming alive. These use things like Xlink Kai to form a peer-to-peer gaming service, where an individual player creates a (typically short-lived) server.

So, right now my best guess is that each numeric code is the PS2 serial number of a device being used as a fan server for playing PS2 games online (say, Call of Duty 3, or maybe GT4?).

If this is right, there’s probably some tricky way of finding where a PS2 with a particular serial number is playing online (Sony certainly can map a PS2’s serial number onto its MAC address): perhaps a player more familiar with how people play PS2 Online games in 2021 will now be so kind as to step forward and tell us how it all works?

And finally, who is playing here? From the six-pointed Star of David, you might well think it’s a group of North London Jewish boys (or possibly girls, who can tell?), who perhaps were raised in Europe rather than in the UK. However, I have to also point out that the (five-pointed) star and crescent is an Islamic motif (e.g. Turkey, Pakistan, etc), so there’s a distinct possibility that that’s what was (imperfectly) intended here instead. Just so you know. 😐

Hopefully the details will start to become clearer…