I’ve spent some time this week working on Alexander d’Agapeyeff’s 1939 challenge cipher, which seems (to me) to be a tricky combination of substitution cipher and transposition cipher. It’s also not clear to me what language the plaintext will turn out to be in: English, Russian (d’Agapeyeff was born in Russia), French, or perhaps even a Saharan language (d’Agapeyeff spent some time working as a cartographer in Lake Chad).

In practice, this meant I needed a metric reflecting how well a given piece of (transposed) text resembles language (but without knowing the language, alphabet or the substitutions): its generic “languageness”, for want of a better term.

I started by using H2 measures of entropy, but quickly became dissatisfied with the results. Rather, what I really wanted was a metric that was much ‘spikier’, i.e. that would sharply spike up the more language-like a given transposition was. But what could I use?

Calculating Suffixity

I devised the idea of using (what I call) “suffixity” as a metric, i.e.:

  • Build a suffix array (an ordered table containing the strings in each position in the text)
  • Sum up the matching length of every adjacent entry in the ordered table
  • Finally, normalise this value against the length of the ciphertext.

So for the (industry-standard) text string BANANA* (where * is the EOF character), start by listing all the strings in the order they appear in the text string:

  • BANANA*
  • ANANA*B
  • NANA*BA
  • ANA*BAN
  • NA*BANA
  • A*BANAN

Then sort these strings alphabetically:

  • A*BANAN
  • ANA*BAN
  • ANANA*B
  • BANANA*
  • NA*BANA
  • NANA*BA

Then sum up the matching lengths of adjacent entries in your ordered array:

  • strmatch(A*BANAN, ANA*BAN) = 1 —> total = 1
  • strmatch(ANA*BAN, ANANA*B) = 3 —> total = 4
  • strmatch(ANANA*B, BANANA*) = 0
  • strmatch(BANANA*, NA*BANA) = 0
  • strmatch(NA*BANA, NANA*BA) = 2 —> total = 6

Finally, normalise this raw total value (6) against the length of the text (6) to get a normalised suffixity of (6/6) = 1.0

The higher the suffixity value, the more language-like the text.

C Implementation of Suffixity

Because suffix arrays are used in the Burrows-Wheeler Transform (as a data compression guy, this is one of my favourite compression algorithms), clever computer scientists have worked out various ways to generate suffix arrays in essentially O(n) time. And so I used Yuta Mori’s sais-lite library, which implements the induced sorting algorithm (there are many others, but I was specifically looking for a simple C implementation).

My C function to calculate the matching length looks like this (no big surprises here):

static inline int strmatch(const uint8_t * a, const uint8_t * b)
{
	const uint8_t * base = &a[1];

	while (*a++ == *b++)
		;

	return (int) (a - base);
}

My C function to calculate suffixity has one extra trick (which you may or may not agree with), in that it tries to avoid rewarding tripled letters (e.g. SEPIA AARDVARK). This is not a final implementation, but I think it’s reasonably close to capturing the core idea:

#include "sais.h"

int calc_suffixity(const uint8_t * pau8Text, int * suffix_array, int len)
{
	sais(pau8Text, suffix_array, len); // Construct a suffix array

	int suffixity = 0;
	for (int i = 0; i < len - 1; i++)
	{
		const uint8_t *a = &pau8Text[suffix_array[i+0]];
		const uint8_t *b = &pau8Text[suffix_array[i+1]];
		int s = strmatch(a, b);
		if ((s >= 3) && (a[0] == a[1]) && (a[0] == a[2]))
		{
			s = 0;	// Don't reward triple letters!
		}
		suffixity += s;
	}

	return suffixity;
}

You then normalise the returned suffixity value by dividing it by the length of the text. (It could be argued that you should divide it by (length – 1), but that’s an issue for another day.)

In summary, I believe that suffixity should be an effective metric to use with hill-climbing algorithms when tackling transpositions of unknown substitutions; but, as always, there may well be many other cryptological applications for suffixity that I haven’t yet thought of. 😉

Is Suffixity Already Known By Another Name?

Of course, it’s entirely possible that suffixity is nothing new. Given that my crypto bookshelves are focused more on cryptography (code-making) than on cryptology (code-breaking), I would be very happy to hear from crypto people who know the literature well.

All the same, O(n) algorithms for building suffix arrays are fairly new, so it would not surprise me if suffix arrays had played no real part in practical code-breaking to date. We shall see!

Future posts will try applying suffixity to various codebreaking challenges. I’m already able to say much more about d’Agapeyeff’s challenge cipher than I was before, so I’m expecting that that will be a post (or two) all on its own.

In a recent post, I briefly mentioned an unidentified hiker known as “Mostly Harmless” who had been found dead in a tent in Florida in the summer of 2018. He had a fat wodge of cash in his pocket, a very distinctive scar, and some kind of connection to an online game called Screeps.

As I posted, it seemed highly likely to me that he had been a programmer (Screeps is that kind of a thing), and I fleetingly wondered if his online identity could be worked out via a digital forensic analysis of posts to the r/screeps Reddit channel. In fact, a fair few other people had had exactly the same idea, and they soon narrowed him down to a user called ‘vaejor‘.

Anyway, Mostly Harmless has now been identified as Vance John Rodriguez (who was indeed a programmer), and the – not very happy – details of his life have been put together by Nicholas Thompson in a Wired article.

As closure goes, I have to say it makes for pretty miserable reading: but perhaps that inevitably goes with the territory. Just so you know! :-/

On board the S.S. Ormonde (at the same time as both Triantafillos Balutis and Stelios Balutis) in February 1923, there was a very special passenger: Her Royal Highness the Grand Duchess, Princess Ivanovich.

Let’s just say I probably won’t ever get the chance to write another blog post with even half as many references to smoking as this. On with the story!

The Duchess in Australia

The Perth Daily News of 8 Feb 1923 launched the story:

A RUSSIAN PRINCESS PASSES THROUGH ON WORLD TOUR.
Her Royal Highness the Grand Duchess, Princess Ivanovich, is aboard the liner Ormonde, which arrived at Fremantle this morning. Her Highness is an Englishwoman by birth, and is proceeding to Sydney, where she will be joined by His Highness the Grand Duke. Afterwards they will go to America on a tour round the world. It is stated that her Highness was formerly married to an Englis[h]man and inherited considerable money. Her present marriage took place, it is stated, only a few months ago.

The story then became more elaborate, as per the Melbourne Herald (17 Feb 1923):

If any one woman more than another is entitled to a place in the pages of a novel, she is the Princess Ivanovitch, who is at present on a tour of Australia. She has visited practically every place worth seeing in the world. She has been engaged to one of the richest men in the world, and she has married royalty. These are few of the things that have been crammed into the life of this remarkable woman. Cutting a unique figure in her quaint dress, shoes and hat — things that would being envy to the heart of a Brittany girl — and puffing smoke from a delicately-rolled cigarette, in true Bohemian style, the Princess, an elderly woman, strolled unaccompanied around Melbourne all day yesterday until late In the evening, admiring, or criticising the outstanding points of interest. Only eighteen months ago the Princess, who is an Englishwoman, having been born in Lancashire, married the Grand Duke Prince Ivanovitch, of Russia, a second cousin to the late Czar. The wedding was celebrated at San Diego. California. They had been intimately acquainted for many years.
Yearning for Travel
According to the story the Princess related to a Herald representative, the only two countries of any which she has not visited are Russia and New Zealand. She admitted that she had an unquenchable yearning for travel, and could hardly bear to remain in the one place for long. Most of her life has been taken up in travelling. The longest spell in one country she had experienced for more than 20 years was her stay in England, during the war period, when the existing regulations compelled women to remain in the country. Before marrying: Prince Ivanovitch, she was Mrs Brewster-Fuller. She has only one child living, a daughter, who is married to the Dutch Ambassador at Pekin. Prior to meeting her late husband, the Duchess was engaged to one of the wealthiest men in the world — Mr Vercker-Vercloyle-Cloy, who was on his way to New York, where the marriage was to be celebrated, when he died from double pneumonia. He contracted the illness after having jumped overboard from a ship on the South American coast in an attempt to rescue a drowning sailor.
Marie Antoinette Pearls
The entire estate of Mr Vercker-Vercloyle-Cloy was willed to the Princess. Included in the personalty left by the deceased millionaire were celebrated pearls — a three string necklace originally the possession of Marie Antoinette. “I’m terrified to wear them,” the Princess admitted. She stated that they are safely deposited in a Paris bank.
Speaking of the opinions she had already formed of Melbourne, the Princess grew enthusiastic regarding the Botanical Gardens and St. Kilda road. She said the gardens were beautiful, one of the best she has seen. While loth to draw comparisons, she couldn’t name another road in the world which excels our highway in beauty. Nevertheless she is, generally speaking. disappointed with Melbourne, particularly with the buildings and shop window- displays. “They are comparatively poor,” she remarked, citing those of Valparaiso and Buenos Ayres and other large cities south of the equator, as being a long way ahead in this respect. Princess Ivanovitch was at Oberammergau when the famous Passion play was enacted. She describes the efforts of Anton Bang and his followers as simply wonderful. Throughout her travels the Princess has kept a minute diary, and contemplates writing the history of her career.

By the time she reached Sydney, her story had expanded yet further (Brisbane Telegraph, 20 Feb 1923):

Mystery surrounds an Englishwoman described as the Grand Duchess the Princess Ivanovitch, who arrived in Sydney yesterday, aboard the Ormonde. When it was objected that that name was not to be found on the rolls of the Russian nobility she admitted that it was an assumed one. She said her husband had never told her his real name, because if it became known the Bolsheviks would confiscate his estates. She thought he was a Romanoff. “Nevertheless,” she said, “he commands what once was the Czar’s special regiment. He wears a uniform of white cloth, covered with gold […] gold helmet, with rare white plume The visitor told an extraordinary story of romance, millions, and marriage. “The Grand Duke,” she said, “is coming to Australia in the most gorgeous yacht in the world, valued at £250,000, to join me, preparatory to our sailing for New Zealand, Samoa, Honolulu, and Japan, where he resides.” Her only daughter, she said, was the wife of the ambassador for Holland. She was a widow until 18 months ago, when, she said, she married the Grand Duke in America. She was in her sixties at the time.

The Warwick Daily News (also 20 Feb 1923) named her late husband as instead “Bereker Perhoyle Clay”, and said that she had inherited twenty two million dollars, but her Russian husband “would not allow her to touch a penny of it”, la-la-la.

Inevitably, the Perth Daily News (20 Feb 1923) was starting to smell a rat:

A SHABBY “ROYALTY” – IS SHE A PRINCESS? – SYDNEY SUSPECTS HER.
SYDNEY, Tuesday.
Mystery surrounds the woman who claims to be the Russian Grand Duchess, Princess Ivanovich. Doubt has been thrown on her story. She appeared in the lounge of a fashionable hotel to-day clad in a huge white fur coat, torn in many places, and covering apparently a dilapidated blue dress. Her hands were swathed in dull jewellery ware, consisting, it seemed, of something like moonstones. She wore two huge bracelets on her arm, looking like replicas of handcuff chains. When she was told that there is no record in Russian royalty of the name of Ivanovich she admitted that this was an assumed name, and that it was used to mislead the Bolsheviks. “My husband is a Duke,” she says. “He will be here soon.” In the meantime Sydney is wondering what will be the next move of the unique visitor.

By the 21 Feb 1923, the Brisbane Daily Standard was rather enjoying the whole show:

Meanwhile Sydney is wondering what she will say next. At any rate, she is having the time of her life, even if she does smoke Capstan cigarettes.

Before she left Australia, she went up to the Jenolan Caves, travelling in the second class smoking compartment. And then, finally, she left Sydney aboard the steamer Manuka, according to the Melbourne Herald (23 Feb 1923):

SHOOK HER FISTS
Russian Duchess Angered
THREATENS TO DUCK REPORTERS
SYDNEY, Friday.

“If my husband the Duke was here he would pitch you into the sea. And if reporters or photographers dare to board my yacht, the Henriette, when she arrives here. I shall recommend that they be thrown overboard.” So sick of Sydney reporters and photographers is the woman who protests that she is the Grand Duchess of Ivanovitch that she shook her fists at pressmen who tried to bid her au revoir on her departure for New Zealand by the steamer Manuka today. The Duchess, although she had only been on board 30 minutes, was extremely popular with fellow travellers. She was found sitting forward on the main saloon deck as usual, puffing away at a cigarette.
A group of young men and several ladies was standing about her, and she was telling them a wonderful story of mansions and yachts. All seemed interested.
“Photograph Me in Bed?”
The duchess refused to be interviewed and continued to speak to her group of listeners. “Since my arrival in Sydney on Monday,” she said, “no fewer than 98 reporters have visited me. When the Ormonde reached Sydney, nine reporters came into my little cabin, and I remonstrated with them for I was not fully dressed.”
The Duchess began to cry. As she wiped her eyes, she continued: “One photographer was extremely persistent. He wanted to photograph me, and I said ‘What! Photograph me in bed? Certainly not!” “I have had a most unpleasant stay in Sydney, and I am sure my husband will protest when he gets here in his yacht. Perhaps he will not come to Sydney now.”
When the Manuka left the wharf the Duchess was leaning over the rails and smiling wistfully.

The Melbourne Herald ran a picture of her in its story the next day:

The Duchess in New Zealand

In Wellington, she stayed in the Midland Hotel, where the New Zealand Herald (3 March 1923) noted:

The titled visitor was an elderly woman and her clothes were hardly in keeping with her name, for she was dressed in a stained skirt and a much-travelled fur coat. Neither did her method of lighting a match upon her shoe suggest the grand ducal manner.

The Newcastle Sun (14 Mar 1923) continued the story:

GUEST OF HIS MAJESTY
RUSSIAN “PRINCESS”
Overstepping the Mark
WELLINGTON (N.Z.), Wednesday.

From her grand palaces at Moscow and Petrograd, and her “lovely little villa at Monte Carlo,” the “Grand Duchess Prince Ivanovich,” or, to use her numerous English names, Harriet Rushford Henrietta Southall Fuller, paid an involuntary visit to Ashburton, and as a first offending inebriate was a guest at His Majesty’s local lock-up. Fuller arrived at Ashburton on Tuesday by the Christchurch-Dunedin [ex]press, in a state of drunkenness, according to the evidence at the court, when a charge in accordance with her condition at the time of her arrival was preferred against her. It was stated that on leaving Christchurch, the ‘princess’ indulged in liquid refreshment, whisky, and so generously did she treat herself that she rapidly became a source of great annoyance to lady travellers. At Rakala, the guard decided that the “princess” had overstepped the mark, and relieved her of the rest of her whisky. Her indignation knew no bounds. Muddled with drink, and seething with temper, she achieved a remarkable state of untidiness. Her clothing was terribly disarranged. Her boots were found in another part of the car, and her stockings flapped about her ankles.
“QUITE NICE”
Fuller became altogether too unladylike in every action for her fellow passengers, and when the train reached Ashburton a constable invited the “princess” to come along. Fortunately she was under the impression that she was to be motored to Timaru, which she thought “quite nice” on the part of her Ashburton friends. The journey, however, ended abruptly at the lock-up. When she sobered up she also woke up the entire community. For a lady of 63 summers her voice possessed remarkable volume. She told the senior sergeant that who would tell Lord Jellicoe of the “frightful insult.” The sergeant, however, told the “Princess” that Lord Jellicoe had instructed him to put her in the cells. This calmed the “Princess”, strange to say. At nine o’clock the sergeant read the Riot Act, for the atmosphere was being rudely disturbed, and the neighbors were afforded little rest. Fuller had the modest sum of £8 in her possession, but she also possesses an elaborate looking passport, and much correspondence which certainly indicated that she was “somebody,” somewhere. The senior sergeant allowed her out on bail, in the sum of £3, and there was no appearance of the “Princess” in court. A constable described the appearance of the accused. “She was a disreputable sight, and in a beastly state of drunkenness,” he said. “It’s a very bad case,” observed the bench, and inflicted a fine of £3.

The NZ Truth (which I didn’t know about before) was quite taken with her, publishing this rather flattering drawing:

From Dunedin (where she had some difficulty find a hotel room), she moved onwards “by the southern express on her way to Queenstown”. She also caused a minor commotion at Timaru station, where she grabbed a refill of whisky and cigarettes in a local hotel, before legging it back yelling loudly just as the train was about to depart.

And then it was time for the journey to end, as per the Otago Daily Times of 29 March 1923:

The “Grand Duchess Princess Ivanovitch,” or Mrs Brewster Fuller, as she is otherwise known, returned to the North Island last week, and, after visiting Rotorua, will leave Auckland on April 15 for Honolulu and China, to pay a visit to her daughter, who, she says, is “Lady” Oudenyk, wife of the Ambassador for the Netherlands at Peking. The lady persists in the statement that she is the wife of the Grand Duke, whom she expects to meet in Auckland next week. They have houses, she asserts, at Rome, Venice, Paris, Monte Carlo, Lake Como (Switzerland), London, Folkestone, and Sicily, besides three homes in Russia, where her husband has lost £150,000 a year through the depreciation of the rouble. She is alleged to have recently received a letter from her agent in England, giving her news of her tenants, and stating that, as things were improving, her income would be in the region of £1200 a year from now on.

Home Again

By 19 October 1923, Mrs Fuller had arrived back in the UK, telling yet another tall tale that the Brisbane Daily Standard picked up on:

The first prize in the Best Lie About Russia competition is awarded to the London newspaper that published the following:
“STARVING RUSSIA.
The Grand Duchess Ivanovitch, cousin to the late Czar, travelling incognito as Mrs. Fuller, arrived at Southampton from Canada recently. She said that the Grand Duke recently sent 35 ship-loads of grain to his peasants, but the Bolsheviks became aware of its arrival and burned all the vessels to the water’s edge.
The starving people, who had gathered in the hope of obtaining some of the grain, rushed into the sea up to their necks, seized the burning corn and extinguishing the flames, swallowed it greedily.”
This is on such a magnificent scale that comment is difficult; but I must say that I especially like the expression, “his peasants.” – From the London “Daily Herald.”

No doubt assiduous researchers will be able to find countless other news articles documenting the Duchess’ haphazard (and smoke-filled) travels through Hawaii, America and Canada: but this is where I’ve drawn the line.

Oh, And One Last Thing…

Before all the above happened, the Manawatu Standard published this tiny news snippet on 8 Feb 1923:

The Grand Duke and Grand Duchess Duorak Ivanovitch have reached Sicily in their yacht, from Venice, en route for New Zealand.

Similarly, the Feilding Star (8 Feb 1923) noted:

The Grand Duke and Grand Duchess Dvorak Ivanovitch, left Sicily in their yacht en route for New Zealand last month.

In fact, the same story appeared in Brisbane’s Daily Standard as far back as 27 Dec 1922, which I suspect was when the original set of cables was sent, warning New Zealand of the approach of Typhoon Brewster-Fuller:

We Breathe Again.
The cable man says that the Grand Duke and Duchess Bvorak [sic] Ivanovitch are yachting to New Zealand. It’s a comfort, anyway, to know that all the grand dukes were not thrown into the bread line when the Soviets took over.

OK, stripping the Somerton Man’s story back, I’m still minded to believe that the Somerton Man was some kind of crim: and that the most credible piece of external evidence we have as to his identity is that in early 1949 two Melbourne baccarat players recalled he had been a nitkeeper at a Lonsdale Street baccarat school for about ten weeks some four years before (so around the start of 1945).

The next piece of relevant information is that Victoria’s state laws against nitkeeping were very strong: a first offence meant a fine of £20, a second offence a fine of £250, while a third offence meant six months in prison. Because the school principal paid the nitkeeper’s fines, what this meant was that a nitkeeper who had been fined once was effectively unemployable: no betting principal would hire a nitkeeper who had previously been fined, the fine for the second offence was just too high.

Hence the “Previously Fined Nitkeeper” Somerton Man hypothesis is simply that the reason the nitkeeper disappeared after about ten weeks was because he had been fined, and had thus become unemployable as a nitkeeper. So all we would have to do is find Victoria archive records of nitkeepers being fined in, say, 1944-1946, and we would have a reasonable shortlist of people who might – if everything aligned just perfectly – be the Somerton Man.

Victoria Police Gazette

Simple, eh? Well… in principle, yes. But as with just about everything, the Devil sits firmly in the details.

The #1 place we would like to look is the Victoria Police Gazette, where all court activity is helpfully summarized. However, for the specific years we are interested in here (1944-1946), there is only a physical copy that can be accessed at the Victoria State Library (the microform version runs only to 1939).

Moreover, I believe that the Compendium (that indexes this properly) is only available up until 1924, so searching it would be a painstaking process. One that I’d be more than happy to do, mind you, if I didn’t just happen to be on the far side of the planet.

So until someone decides to bite this particular monster-sized bullet, the Victoria Police Gazette avenue seems to be closed to us.

Baccarat in Victoria

As normal, we can look to the indexed wonder that is Trove for assistance in our search: and having already trawled through the Geelong Petty Sessions Register for 1945 (which is another story entirely), the charge we’re most interested in is “acting in conduct of [a] common gaming house”.

Prior to 1944, this charge almost always related to two-up (an Australian form of coin gambling), fan-tan and hazard. But as far as card schools go, the move to make baccarat illegal in Victoria started only in June 1944:

It was announced today that a bill declaring baccarat and certain other games unlawful games would be the first measure introduced when State Parliament reassembled next week. Baccarat and certain other games, said the Chief Secretary (Mr Hyland) had become a public menace and would be prohibited by law. Police reports showed that wagering on these games was stupendous, particularly on baccarat. At present, prosecutions in regard to baccarat could not be obtained as It was necessary to prove that the promoters were receiving a percentage of the wagers and this it was difficult to do.
Under the amended law, baccarat and the other games would be declared unlawful and it would be necessary only for the police to prove that the game was being played for the promoters to be dealt with and the place declared a gaming house.

By July 1944, there was also suggestion that the police were being bribed to take no action against Melbourne’s “palatial baccarat schools“, though of course senior police denied all knowledge (ho ho ho, right):

No complaint implying an accusation of bribery against any member of the gaming branch had come to his knowledge, said the Chief Commissioner of Police (Mr Duncan) today, when asked about the request by the Leader of the Opposition (Mr Cain) in the Legislative Assembly on Tuesday for an inquiry “into allegations that police had been paid large sums not to take action against palatial baccarat schools” in Melbourne. Mr Duncan said he was unaware of any such allegations. Mr Cain also said that advice he had received from an eminent King’s Counsel was that baccarat schools could be closed by the proprietors being charged with keeping a common gaming house. He was assured, Mr Duncan replied. that every possible endeavour had been made, and was still being made, by the gaming branch to detect and prosecute persons who took part in all forms of illicit gambling. In one prosecution recently, a court ruled that the playing of baccarat did not constitute a common gaming house.

The case where this had been tested in court was that of Christos Paizes, of View street, Hawthorn, relating to the card school he had run in Swanston-street in the city. Police had “watched the playing for money of ‘Ricketty Kate’, poker, solo and rummy” back in February 1944, but the case against Paizes had been dismissed. (More here.)

The bill was introduced to the Legislative Assembly on 4th July 1944, with Mr Hyland describing in some detail the opulent and expensive houses where the games of baccarat, dinah-minah and skillball were played. Having said that, there was immediate concern that the new legislation may not have given the police any genuine new powers that they didn’t already have. Even so, the bill passed all stages in the Assembly on 12th July 1944.

The police’s powers were then discussed here, with a very specific discussion of exactly how baccarat and dinah-minah were played in those “sumptuously furnished and luxuriously carpeted throughout” locations in the Gippsland Times of 20 July 1944.

The key article seems to have appeared in The Truth (24th June 1944), because Mr Hyland (and indeed the Crown Solicitor) responded directly to it here, discussing the baccarat schools at 158 Swanston Street (Paizas), and 7-9 Elizabeth Street (Stokes). Unfortunately, I don’t believe that this particular item is yet in Trove. 🙁

Hence: because baccarat schools were legal up to July 1944, the person whom the two baccarat players identified as a nitkeeper could not have been prosecuted (because even though they did have nitkeepers, baccarat schools were still legal). So we can fast forward past the first half of 1944.

Victoria: Baccarat Prosecutions

It immediately became a point of intense public interest as to whether any of the (now illegal) baccarat schools would be closed down.

On 30th July 1944, the police indeed went to premises in Swanston-street, city, and arrested a 26-year-old- Albanian called Fete Murit of Drummond-street, Carlton (plus 23 men and 17 women). They also raided premises in Drummond-street, Carlton, bringing in 14 more men. Murit was subsequently fined £50: somewhat quaintly, the article lists the occupations of the players brought in.

A similar case against Cyril Lloyd of Glenhuntly Road, Caulfield and Henry Clyde Jenkin of Balfour Street, East Brighton of running a baccarat school at the former’s address on 31 July 1944 was dismissed.

14 Sep 1944: one woman was charged with having permitted the premises (in Barkly Street, Elwood) to be used as a common gaming house, plus 13 men and 10 women who were found there. The article also notes that the charges against the 23 people arrested in Drummond-street, Carlton and the 19 found in a house in Munro Avenue, Carnegie were still awaiting hearing. It was believed that police had managed to close down all Melbourne’s big baccarat schools.

15 Sep 1944: Isaac Cooper-Smith, a fruiterer of Drummond-Street, was fined £20 for running a baccarat school at that same address (the raid was on 04 Sep 1944). 22 others were arrested, of which 13 were fined £1, seven £2, one £3, and one £4. However, Cooper-Smith’s conviction was subsequently quashed because he wasn’t actually on the premises when the police arrived.

03 Oct 1944: Stanley Paul Bonser, of Elbeena Grove, Murrumbeena, was fined £30, after a raid on a house in Munro Street, Carnegie on 30 Aug 1944: 17 others were fined £1.

16 Nov 1944: charges against Basil Koutsoukis relating to a baccarat school he was alleged to have been running in Lonsdale Street were dropped.

17 Nov 1944: only two of 19 men caught in a baccarat raid on premises in Park Street, Parkville on 02 Oct 1944 were fined (having admitted to playing baccarat), others saying that they were there “reading the paper”, “came to buy a car and stayed to supper”, or were “just waiting for a friend”.

29 Nov 1944: Mr Hyland said that baccarat schools had moved to private homes. “In the last five weeks a number of private homes had been visited, and 84 persons charged with gaming offences. Of these 75 had been convicted and nine cases held over“.

23 Mar 1945: Frank Gall was charges with permitting a house in Williamstown to be used as a common gaming house on 05 Feb 1945: Raymond A. Barrett and Albert Chandler were charged with aiding and abetting him. In court, all were fined £1, except Stewart Kerison and Joseph Picone who were fined £2 (“because of previous contacts with the police”). This was then appealed and overturned.

09 Apr 1945: three raids, two on Burnley and one Port Melbourne, 29 men held (no women, so probably two-up?).

14 Apr 1945: 48 men were caught in a raid on upstairs rooms in Russell Street, city “in the block next to police headquarters”. 35 men were also caught in another club in Lonsdale Street, “opposite the Old Royal Melbourne Hospital”, not 200 yards away.

22 Jun 1945: Christos Paizes suffered sudden back pains just before coming to court in relation to proceedings against his alleged baccarat school at 158-160 Swanston Street, City, had been instituted on 18 May 1945. Adjourned until 16 July. When this came to court on 19 July 1945, the affidavit submitted that Paizes was running a baccarat club at the old Canton Café in Swanston Street. The persons having control and management (none of whom were known by police to have a lawful occupation) of the club were:

  • Christos Paizes (alias Harry Carillo)
  • William John Elkins
  • Gerald Francis Regan (of High-street, St Kilda)
  • Richard Thomas (alias Abishara)
  • “and a man known as Balutz”

The club was declared to be a common gaming-house as from 01 Aug 1945, even though Christos Paizes (of Mathoura-road, Toorak) denied it.

06 Sep 1946: police claimed the Melbourne baccarat boom was busted:

Not more than half a dozen small baccarat schools were now operating in Melbourne so far as they knew, gaming police said today.
They were commenting on the Sydney report that the New South Wales Police Department was concerned about the growth of large scale baccarat activities in Sydney.
Baccarat flourished in Melbourne until amendment of the law declared It an unlawful game two years ago. That smashed it here as an organised gambling racket. Then the death of Melbourne’s “baccarat baron,” Harry Stokes, brought to an end schools that were still trying to carry on.
Most recent blow at city gambling centres was a Supreme Court declaration at the request of the police which “quarantined” a social club in Swanston Street as a common gaming house. This meant that any persons entering the premises was liable to arrest.
To escape the punitive effect of this order, the owner sold the premises to a buyer approved by the Crown Law authorities.
POLICE FIND OUT
Places where baccarat was played now, the gaming police said today, were private homes and one or two suburban halls, and they were not able to carry on for long undiscovered. Clients were picked up in cars, chiefly at foreign clubs and solo and bridge schools to evade detection, but the police soon found out.
Whenever the playing of baccarat was discovered, the occupier of the premises was arrested for conducting a gaming house, and everyone there was charged with being found in a gaming house.
Constant police action had put an end to baccarat In Melbourne as a reliable business venture.

07 Oct 1946: “twelve fashionably dressed women and 25 men” were brought in by police after a raid on an alleged baccarat school in Lavender Bay. They were playing a game called “chuck-a-chuck”, similar to baccarat but more profitable for the house.

20 Dec 1946: Dennis Greelish of 578 Melbourne Road, Spotswood was fined £10 for what was clearly baccarat, even though the bench accepted it was probably a game “between friends”.

After The Golden Age

I think it is a reasonably safe bet that the period the two baccarat players were referring to was after July 1944 (when the legislation making baccarat illegal was introduced into Victoria), but before September 1946 (when baccarat was clearly at the end of its life there). The Golden Age – of swank socialites playing baccarat in luxuriously carpeted surroundings – had come to an end with the legislation: in July 1944, it was not a question of whether baccarat would fall, it was simply one of when – or rather, how long bribery could keep the baccarat balls hanging impossibly in the air.

Even though gambling at Christos Paizes’ Lonsdale Street baccarat school had attracted intense (and sustained) attention from the police in early 1944, they had been unable to find any way to shut its (still legal) activities down. Moreover, even once the new legislation had been passed, Paizes continued his baccarat activities through the rest of 1944 and into 1945. Finally, his club was closed down in August 1945: the golden age may already have passed, but that (along with the death of Harry Stokes) was the end of the Melbourne baccarat era.

As far as William John Elkins, Richard Thomas (alias Abishara), and the man known as “Balutz” go:

  • William John Elkins had been arrested for running a Melbourne gaming house in January 1938, and attempts to extradite him to Adelaide in August 1941 on a separate charge had failed. But he seems to have still been alive (and living in Wilgah street, East St Kilda) in October 1950.
  • Deeb John Abishara (who was living at 9 Robe street, St Kilda in June 1941, when he applied for naturalization) was also known as Richard Thomas. Dick Thomas was still “one of the biggest baccarat barons in Melbourne” in September 1953 (and, from the article, would seem to have clearly been deeply feared).
  • Might Balutz be the Somerton Man?Of “Balutz”, there is no sign at all.

Balutz the Romanian?

Might Balutz be the Somerton Man? He was certainly closely associated with Christos Paizes’ Lonsdale Street baccarat school (though without being an obvious principal), at almost exactly the right time flagged by the two anonymous baccarat players. He was certainly mysterious enough: anyone searching for his name will find precious little to work with. Even though I could find nothing about him being a fined nitkeeper, I think he was closely associated with the Lonsdale Street baccarat school in the right kind of way.

Balutz is a Romanian surname: trawling through various databases, I can find evidence of Balutz family members emigrating to the US, but can find nothing in Australia or New Zealand. (Nothing in NAA, billiongraves etc.) No Balutz family trees jumped out at me, but perhaps you’ll have more luck.

I previously blogged about the Melbourne baccarat schools that briefly flourished in 1947-1948: there, I mentioned the 1944-1949 photo supplement to the Police Gazette, plus the similar one for 1939-1948 held in North Melbourne. Might there be a picture of Balutz in there?

Or… if he was the Somerton Man, might his surname be in the employee list at Broken Hill? I’ve previously asked the Broken Hill Historical Society to look for Keanes for me, but it would be a surprise if anyone had asked them to search for Balutz. Who knows what they might find?

If anyone can find anything at all about Mr Balutz, please say!

I am referring, of course, to the opinion (put forward by the highly respected herbal historian Sergio Toresella) that the Voynich Manuscript was in some way connected with the family of “alchemical herbal” manuscripts. Might Sergio have been basically right about this, but not in the way he expected?

If you weren’t actually taking notes during the Alchemical Herbal 1.0.1 lecture, here’s a quick recap to bring you up to speed:

  • there are about seventy known examples of alchemical herbals
  • most were made in the 15th century (a few 14th, some 16th)
  • all bar two were made in the Veneto area in Northern Italy
  • the plants are mostly real, but accompanied by nutty visual puns
  • the plant names are, essentially, evocative nonsense
  • some copies have recipes attached to some/most of the plants
  • such recipes are often magical spells or incantations
  • nobody knows why the alchemical herbals were made at all

Given that Toresella thinks the Voynich Manuscript was written in a North Italian humanistic hand typical of the second half of the fifteenth century, it’s hard not to notice the long list of similarities between it and the alchemical herbals. However – and here’s the tricky bit – the question I’m posing here is whether Toresella might have been right about this connection, but not at all in the way he expected.

The Layout Is The Message

Over the years, I’ve discussed a good number of places in the Voynich Manuscript where it seems to have been copied. My argument for this (running right back to The Curse of the Voynich) is based on places where I believe voids in the predecessor document have been copied through to the Voynich Manuscript itself.

For example, I would argue that the man-made hole (the same one that Toresella concluded [quite wrongly, I think] had been rubbed through the vellum in a sexual frenzy) was in fact a copy of a hole that had had been elaborated around in the predecessor document. Similarly, I think a large space running down the page edge in Q20 was highly likely to be a copy of a (probably stitched) vertical tear in the predecessor document. (Which is also why I think we can tell that the predecessor document was also written on vellum, because you can’t stitch paper.)

Codicologically, the overall conclusion I draw is quite subtle: from all this, I believe one of the key design criteria driving the way the Voynich Manuscript was constructed was to allow the writer to retain the predecessor document‘s layout. In short: Layout Is King.

But this has a rather odd logical implication. Similarly to Marshall McLuhan’s famous dictum “The Medium Is The Message”, might it be the case here that, in fact, The Layout Is The Message? By which I mean: might it be that Voynich researchers have spent such a long time looking for matches with the plants, when in fact the important detail was actually the shape of the void on the page that had been filled in by the plants?

What I’m suggesting here is not only that the plants chosen to fill in the voids on the Voynich Manuscript’s pages might largely be meaningless filler (literally), but also that I suspect we might possibly also be able – with a bit of herbal help from Sergio Toresella and others – to use the shapes of these voids to reconstruct the plants that had originally filled them.

And if we can identify any page’s original plant, we would have a gigantic source crib that would suggest a block paradigm match with any recipe associated with that plant, particularly from any of the (relatively small) number of herbals that have recipe text attached to that plant. So you should be able to see where I’d like to go forward with this. 🙂

The 98 Secret Herbs And Spices

All the same, I suspect more than a few Cipher Mysteries readers are now thinking something along the lines of “well, even if that kind of approach is theoretically possible, it must surely be impossible in practice“.

And without any additional information to work with, I’d basically agree. However, I also think we have a large number of additional angles we can pursue in combination with this that might offer up the kind of additional information we would need to narrow down our overall search space.

The first one is the list of 98 named plants that Vera Segre Rutz lists as being present in the bulk of alchemical herbal manuscripts. Philip Neal helpfully offers up a list of these 98 plants:

  • Herba Antolla minor
  • Herba Bortines
  • Herba Torogas
  • Herba Nigras
  • Herba Stellaria
  • […]

…all the way through to Herba Consolida mayor and Herba Consolida minor. On the face of it, these might appear to be of no use to us at all. However, I have long argued that the way that Herbal A pages are mixed up with Herbal B pages tends to confuse many issues: and it is a little-known fact that there the Herbal A pages contain 95 drawings of plants (and that there is also a Herbal A folio missing, bringing the total up to 97 or so drawings).

And so I strongly wonder whether the 97 or so Herbal A drawings (or rather their underlying voids) correspond to Segre Rutz’s 98 plants in the mainstream of the alchemical herbal tradition. Otherwise it’s a coincidence, for sure, and nobody likes coincidences much.

Again, you may object that this is not specific enough to be helpful. However, I’d point out that the alchemical herbal plants were very often included in specific orders: and that even if all the Voynich Manuscript’s bifolios have ended up in the wrong order, every pair of images on consecutive pages is guaranteed to be in the right order (i.e. the recto side then verso side of the same folio).

It might well be that an inspired guess plus a bit of cunning detective work will be enough to build the crucial missing linkage here. After all, we don’t need much.

Punning Clans

Puns (specifically visual puns) are another key way we might able to find a way in here. Toresella, in his “Gli erbari degli alchimisti”, lists examples where alchemical herbal drawings reflect the name of the plant, e.g. Herba Brancha Lupina can have its root stylized to look like a wolf. Here’s a wolf-root from Vermont MS 2 (as discussed by Marco Ponzi):

Note I’m not suggesting here that we should literally look for exact parallels in the Voynich Manuscript. However, my guess is that the intellectual temptation offered to the author by the chance to include / adapt / appropriate visual puns when creating filler plant drawings would be almost impossible to turn down.

And so I’m wondering whether there might turn out to be entire families (nay, clans) of Voynich herbal drawings that contain curious punny echoes of the original (though now invisible) herbal drawings.

One visually striking example of the kind of thing I have in mind is the pairs of red-outlined eyes in the roots of Voynich Manuscript f17r. I’m specifically wondering here whether these eyes might be a punny reference to Herba Bososilles (one of the alchemical herbal set of 98), which is – according to the paragraph of text in BNF Latin 17844 – good for the eyes. Here’s a picture with the coloured drawing from Canon Misc 408 with the text from BNF Latin 17844 cut’n’pasted below it:

Reminding vs Remembering

Ultimately, though, I have to say that I don’t believe that the plants we see on the pages of the Voynich Manuscript are likely to directly help us in the way that Voynich researchers over the last century (and more) have hoped. Calling them “phantasmagorical” (as I think Karen Reeds once did) may be technically accurate, but it is certainly practically unhelpful: we do not have long lists of phantasmagorical 15th century mss to compare it with.

The primary function of these plant drawings, I therefore suggest, may well lie not in their literality (i.e. in their ability to encode external information, to remember information for the author), but in their evocativity (i.e. their ability to stimulate recollection, to remind the author of that-which-was-there-before).

If this is right, we must find ways of resisting the temptation to try to literally read what we see in these plant pages, and instead attempt to start looking at them far more indirectly. Who know what we will see out of the sides of our eyes?

Where will the first proper Voynich research breakthrough come from? To my mind, there is a good chance that this will be made by someone taking a fresh look at the mystery of the Voynichese ‘languages’.

For even though the notion that Voynichese is a simple, regular language seems to be the default decryption starting point for just about every YouTube codebreaker on the planet (e.g. “it’s obviously proto-Breton with Urdu loanwords“, etc etc), it simply isn’t.

Rather, when you put Voynichese under the linguistic microscope, you see a series of different (but closely related) languages / writing systems. And whatever you think Voynichese is, having to account for multiple variants of that thing is bemusing, if not downright perplexing.

The most fundamental challenge, then, that these variants present us is this: can we work out how these variants relate to each other? Furthermore, can work out how a letter / word / sentence written in one variant would be written in another? In short, can we somehow normalize all the Voynich Manuscript’s languages relative to each other, to step towards a single, regular system underlying them all?

For me, reaching even part of the way towards doing this would be perhaps the most significant Voynich research achievement yet.

The ‘Language’ Landscape…

It was top American cryptologist Captain Prescott Currier back in the 1970s who first inferred the presence of multiple Voynichese ‘languages’. He famously categorised Voynichese pages as having been written in either an ‘A’ language variant (now known as “Currier A”) or a ‘B’ language variant (A.K.A. “Currier B”). This was motivated by various statistical features of the text that he observed clustering together in A pages and B pages respectively. What is more, Currier’s A/B clustering largely holds true not only for both the pages on any given folio (i.e. recto and verso), but also for all the folios / panels on a single bifolio (or trifolio, etc).

Though Currier’s A/B division is a very useful categorisation tool, it remains somewhat problematic as an absolute measure, for (as Rene Zandbergen likes to point out) a few intermediate pages have both Currier A and Currier B features simultaneously. Rene points especially to the foldout folios for this: he says that Currier’s initial assessment was drawn from the herbal pages (which I think is very probably true), and that these super-wide pages behave a little differently.

Moreover, the variations of the languages used in different sections (e.g. “Herbal A”) present yet further dialect-like differences to be accounted for. Inferring from this that these differences ‘must therefore’ relate to the pages’ semantic content would be a convenient way of explaining them away: but there is as yet no evidence to support that conclusion. For now, these section clusters need to be handled with statistical white gloves too.

We additionally have codicological evidence that suggests that some sections of the manuscript were originally formed of pairs of gatherings (e.g. Q13 was Q13A + Q13B, Q20 was Q20A + Q20B), but nobody (as far as I know) has as yet gone looking for Voynichese text statistics that might support or refute these proposed divisions.

And on top of that, there is what has come to be called as ‘labelese’, i.e. the disjointed one-word-at-a-time text found on pages with ‘labels’ attached to parts of diagrams (e.g. the Astrological / Zodiac section). Here again, some people like to infer that it ‘must somehow be’ the semantic content of these labels that affects the way Voynichese works: but there is no evidence to support that conclusion, beyond wanting it to be true for an easy life. 😉

In summary, what we observe in Voynichese is a lot of language-like variation going on at a number of levels. In my opinion, we should stop trying to explain away these variations in terms of speculative concepts (e.g. ‘semantic differences’ or ‘labels’), and start instead to look at the basic statistical patterns that each text cluster presents, and use those results as our starting point moving forward.

Unsurprisingly, this is what the next section does. 🙂

A/B Observations…

It’s worth reprising Currier’s observations (which we will turn into actual statistical evidence shortly). He wrote (transcribed on Rene’s site):

(a) Final ‘dy’ is very high in Language ‘B’; almost non-existent in Language ‘A.’

(b) The symbol groups ‘chol’ and ‘chor’ are very high in ‘A’ and often occur repeated; low in ‘B’.

(c) The symbol groups ‘chain’ and ‘chaiin’ rarely occur in ‘B’; medium frequency in ‘A.’

(d) Initial ‘chot’ high in ‘A’; rare in ‘B.’

(e) Initial ‘cTh’ very high in ‘A’; very low in ‘B.’

(f) ‘Unattached’ finals scattered throughout Language ‘B’ texts in considerable profusion; generally much less noticeable in Language ‘A.’

Rene Zandbergen adds the following observations:

The very frequent character combination ‘ed’ is almost entirely non-existent in all A-language pages.

The very common character combination ‘qo’ is almost completely absent in the zodiac pages and the rosettes page, but appears everywhere else.

The common character combination ‘cho’ does not appear in the biological pages (and the rosettes page), but it does in other B-language pages.

Marco Ponzi further added:

The ‘cluster’ aiin has more or less the same frequency in A and B, but as a stand-alone word it is about three times as frequent in B than in A.

Prescott Currier also noted a number of striking language oddities in the ‘Biological B’ section:

This ‘word-final effect’ first became evident in a study of the Biol. B index wherein it was noted that the final symbol of ‘words’ preceding ‘words’ with an initial ‘qo’ was restricted pretty largely to ‘y’; and that initial ‘ch, Sh’ was preceded much more frequently than expected by finals of the ‘iin’ series and the ‘l’ series. Additionally, ‘words’ with initial ‘ch, Sh’ occur in line-initial position far less frequently than expected, which perhaps might be construed as being preceded by an ‘initial nil.’

This phenomenon occurs in other sections of the Manuscript, especially in those ‘written’ in Language B, but in no case with quite the same definity as in Biological B. Language A texts are fairly close to expected in this respect.

My own contribution to this line of inquiry has been to point out that word-initial ‘l-‘ is a very strong feature of B pages (particularly Q13). Emma May Smith similarly posted on the various “l + gallows” digraphs:

It should also be noted that <lk> is mostly a feature of the Currier B language. It is roughly twenty times less common on A pages than B pages.

The presence of digraphs composed of <l> and other gallows characters is less secure. The string <lt> occurs 107 times, <lp> occurs 40 times, and <lf> occurs 39 times. Although <lf> is the least of the three its rate is actually rather great, being nearly 8% of all <f> occurrences, approaching the 10% for <lk> of all <k>. Even so, these number are still small and could easily be overlooked if not for <lk>.

Like <lk>, <lt, lp, lf> all appear at the beginning of words, and mostly occur in Currier B. They seem to work in the same way, even if less common.

All in all, it seems to me that there are probably more than twenty Voynichese features that display a statistically significant difference between Currier A pages and Currier B pages. It also seems that many of these features have different relative frequencies between different clusters (e.g. Herbal A) and/or sections (e.g. Q13).

There is therefore plenty of work to be done here!

List of Distinctive Behaviours

Even though we have excellent transcriptions (EVA and otherwise), I think we’re collectively missing a foundational piece of Post-Currier empirical analysis here: a list of distinctive behaviours present and absent in sections of the Voynich Manuscript. This would extend Prescott Currier’s list to include many more features (such as the use of the EVA ‘x’ glyph, etc) that have been flagged up as distinctive in some way by researchers over the years, though with less of a pure A/B focus. Here is a preliminary list (based largely on the above), which I’m more than happy to extend with additional ones put forward in comments here or elsewhere:

-dyB
[chol]A
[chor]A
[chol.chol]A
[chor.chor]A
[chain]A
[chain]A
chot-A
cth-A
edB
[ar]B
qo-Absent in rosette
and zodiac pages
choAbsent in rosette
and Bio pages
cho*Rare in Q13
[aiin]Common in B as
standalone word
l-B
r-B, particularly
Q13 and Q20
lkB
lt-B
lp-B
lf-B
alyf58
xQ20
-m not at line-endBifolios f3-f6
& f17-f24

My core beliefs here are (a) that Voynichese will turn out to be fundamentally rational (if perhaps a bit strange); (b) that behaviours in one section will somehow rationally map to behaviours in many (if not all) different sections; and (c) that Voynichese will turn out to have an underlying story / evolution / growth path that we can reconstruct.

A nice message from “Milite Ignoto” (‘Unknown Soldier’, if your Italian is a little rusty) at a French email address points us all to an interesting postcard cipher sent from Palermo that is currently on display at the Vittoriano Museum in Rome.

The twist here is that, rather than the normal enciphered-note-to-a-lover so typical of the turn of the 20th century, this one was sent by an Italian soldier, and where the (as-yet-undecrypted) cipher itself was further concealed beneath the stamp. Yes, it is indeed a proper cipher mystery. 🙂

Our Unknown Soldier informant kindly sent us through two images, one of a larger section of postcard showing where the cipher sits beneath the (removed) stamp, and the other a slightly blurred image of the cipher:

Palermo Cipher

When I put this page up earlier today, commenter Peter Moesli immediately pointed out that it looked to be the wrong way up (straight right edge, ragged left edge, etc). Which meant my initial transcription was completely back to front. *sigh*

Rotating the image around by 180 degrees gives a more sensible-looking block of ciphertext, where the first set of shapes appears to be “10:01”, whatever that means (the date on the postcard is quite different):

The start of this now looks as though it reads “10:01”, so I have transcribed that on a separate line. Hence my (revised) transcription is as follows:

10:01\

T.-.-

GTIT+G.VVI

/WIGXGP.AJJ.

/A+..A//LTA

MIPI/GJL+.

GTQPGTT.GL

VG-I.X.JGJA

SARGRA//.MA-

XA+A.


I (of course) tried putting this into CryptoCrack:
unsurprisingly, it yielded an Italian plaintext. Tweaked slightly (CryptoCrack swapped L and V, and I’ve added spaces to make it clearer):
10:01\ sono n
esiste oggi
chiedero avvo
cato accusa
mi ricevuto
espresso eu
genio doveva
farer accom
andatao

It turns out that the reason for concealment and secrecy was almost certainly legal (“avvocato” means lawyer). Can any Cipher Mysteries reader with good Italian (or, at least, better Italian than me) fix this up and translate it properly?

Incidentally, Joe Nickell (famous for his writing on the Beale Ciphers) once wrote about finding a series of postcards with tiny (though unenciphered) writing concealed in much the same way. Yet…

The hidden-under-the-stamp messages were simply miniscule love notes. One consisted of rows of little X’s (a popular shorthand for kisses), while another asked, “Do you you still love this bad boy?” The cards, postmarked between 1911 and 1913 were addressed to a young lady at a Virginia girls’ school (Nickell 1990, 177). Charming!

I’ve also read that Agatha Christie wrote a story where a cipher key was microwritten beneath a postage stamp (though I don’t know which one that was). The set of six postage stamps released in 2016 to commemorate Christie include numerous steganographic tricks, which is a lot of fun.

Having said that, there is also a long history of false stories (helpfully debunked here by snopes.com) dating back at least to the American Civil War where tales of atrocities carried out on prisoners of war are supposedly carried home in microwriting under stamps. So anyone looking for historical messages hidden beneath stamps should be more than wary of what they read and believe. 😮

Postscript:

Here’s a (small) picture of the postcard on display in the museum:

The text below says:

Nel quadratino dove era incollato il francobollo è ancora chiaramente leggibile un messaggio criptato scritto con lettere piccolissime, a matita. La cartolina è indirizzata al Maggiore Polizzi della 2a Divisione Ragioneria al Ministero della Guerra – Roma Spedita il 25-3-1918

In the square where the stamp was stuck (and still clearly readable) is an encrypted message written in tiny letters in pencil. The postcard is addressed to Major Polizzi c/o the 2th Accounting Division at the Ministry of War in Rome, and was sent on 25-3-1918.”

I’ve been pleasantly surprised by how many good films I’ve seen in the last year that have been based on true stories. (And yes, I am quite aware that “true” and “Hollywood” are uneasy bedfellows at the best of times.) So I thought I’d list them here (along with where I saw them), though in no particular order.

#1 Untouchable (in the UK, “Intouchables” in French) – Google Play

IMDB link This is basically a buddy film between a French quadriplegic and a Senegalese crim, that manages not only to tell an essentially true (though slightly altered) story, but also be challenging and entertaining from start to finish. Definitely the most surprising film of my year.

As an aside, it seems that this is now being remade by Hollywood as “The Upside”. But given that the performances in the (subtitled) French original are all fantastic, I’m not entirely sure what this remake will achieve. Put that little cucumber away!

#2 Torvill and Dean – ITV

IMDB link This was a lot of fun, and built up to their Ravel’s-Bolero-powered 1984 Olympic ice skating triumph. I followed this by immediately watching the BBC2 documentary on the twinkle-toed pair (this may still be on BBC iPlayer), which showed (I think) that the film-makers had basically done a pretty good job of telling the story.

OK, it’s not “I, Tonya”, criticisms of schmaltz aren’t entirely unjustified, and it’s definitely a TV-movie rather than a movie-movie: but I actually enjoyed it from start to finish. So ner. I just wish I had a YouTube trailer I could embed here. :-/

#3 Mark Felt – The Man Who Brought Down The White House (Netflix)

IMDB link Liam Neeson (sans stunts) is cast oddly well as “The G-Man’s G-Man”, who was also the famous “Deep Throat” whistleblower who pulled the walls down around President Nixon.

Everyone (surely) knows a little bit about this slice of relatively recent history, but the film (based on the books by Felt himself) gives a much broader (and dare I even say timely?) feel of the kind of interference with the FBI that the White House tried to carry out. Ultimately that failed, but only because of a single man – Mark Felt.

#4 Bohemian Rhapsody – (Odeon Cinema)

IMDB link I must admit that I wasn’t looking forward to watching this: the movie trailer made it seem a lot like “Queen – The Panto”, and that it was going to whitewash Freddie Mercury out of the picture.

But I was delighted (and, yes, pleasantly surprised) that the film-makers didn’t hold back on any of Mercury’s complicated sides. Much like the Torvill and Dean film, this built up to Queen’s 1985 Live Aid set: again, even though everyone knows a little about this story, seeing the broader picture was a proper blast. And it was cool eating pizza in a slouchy chair at the Odeon in Kingston. 🙂

UPDATED – TALK NOW CANCELLED (BY GOOGLE CAMPUS LONDON), VERY SORRY! 🙁

(This is a little off-topic, but what the hey.)

When I’m not trying to crack unbroken historical ciphers, my day job is as a software developer: and over the last few years, I’ve got more and more frustrated with the abysmally low productivity of the whole industry.

And so I’ve been putting a lot of thought into how to make things better. And by “better” I don’t mean a mere 10% better, but instead something closer to 10x better – for example, how to write a hundred lines of new code that does the work of a thousand lines of old code. But note that this really isn’t about Computer Scientists devising the ‘perfect’ programming language, it’s about looking at the different activities software developers do and seeing how we can turbo-charge them all, almost beyond recognition.

Back in 2015, I called this “The Ten Times Manifesto” to try to give it some shape and direction, and discussed it with a whole load of people.

Now in 2018, it’s time for me to take The Ten Times Manifesto out on the road, to open up lots of new conversations with lots of new people and see where the whole constellation of ideas leads. I genuinely think this is the time that software development has to make a step change, to turn itself from something creaky and barely adequate into something radical and new; and I think London is a great place to begin.

Hence my first Ten Times Manifesto gig is now cancelled provisionally booked for 6pm, 10th August 2018 at the well-known Google Campus London, 4-5 Bonhill Street, London EC2A 4BX, which has space for 135 people.

The description runs:

After a lifetime writing software (including classic retro 1980s games such as Frak! and Zalaga), Nick Pelling created the Ten Times Manifesto to try to answer the question: how can we software developers do all the things we do but 10x better and/or 10x faster?

Expect a lot of good ideas, a lot of interaction, a lot of gratuitous movie references, and to go home afterwards with a lot to think about.

Core audience: anyone who develops software and wants to do what they do 10x better. 😉

When tickets become available (very shortly), they’ll be free – so anyone who wants to come along should move fast. 😉 I hope to see 135 of you there!