Cod. Pal. Germ. 597’s cipher…

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Yet another interesting comment from Rene Zandbergen yesterday (to my flying potions post) sparked off a furious flurry of bloggery here at Cipher Mystery Mansions. While browsing through a large set of online manuscripts digitized (and hosted) by the University of Heidelberg, he found Cod(ex) Pal(atinus) Germ(anicus) 597 – an alchemical manuscript where a large amount of it is written in cipher (which you can download as a 15MB PDF file). Rene writes:-

Now this is a clear example of a MS where cipher has been used to hide secrets. It leaves me with the question:

Why does the Voynich MS not look like this?

My tentative answer: the Voynich MS isn’t actually just a cipher MS. FWIW.

(–Actually, I have my own answer to this, but we’ll get to that in a minute.–)

It seems to me that (unless Augusto Buonafalce happens to know better) the literature on Cod. Pal. Germ. 597 is pretty thin: even the Karl Bartsch catalogue entry for it (marked 287 here) isn’t much use. The Ms also merits the briefest of mentions on p.355 of the 1994 book “Geschichte der deutschen Literatur von den Anfängen bis zur Gegenwart” (it’s in Google Books). None of which, however, addresses its cipher aspect… but I guess that’s my job. 🙂 So, let’s have a look at it…

The Ms commences on folio 2r with some crossed-out ciphertext above some commentary in a different hand. (Some later pages hold only a few lines of ciphertext, so it seems likely that this originally contained just the ciphertext.) And then on folio 4v, the ciphertext (interleaved with Latin and German plaintext) starts in earnest:-

cpg597_f4v

This is a basic-looking system comprising about 23 symbols, that shows every sign of being a simple (i.e. monoalphabetic) cipher consistent with its date (1426).  The cipherbet was designed not for convenience of writing (for there are numerous fiddly characters, including a blocked-in black square), but around an apparently improvised ‘personal shape alphabet’. This points not to a cipher professional (working, say, in a Chancellery) but rather to an amateur cryptographer designing his/her own ‘homebrewed’ system:-

cpg597_main_cipherbet

The letter shapes fall into three rough groups (as per the lines above):-

  • Abstract shapes / known shapes
  • Dots and containers
  • Semi-representative (aide-memoire?) shapes (hammers, spade, rake?)

But then, just as you’re getting the hang of that, a completely different monoalphabetic cipher appears (from folio 6v onwards). This looks to be a refinement of this first system… but this post is getting a bit too long, so I’ll defer discussing that to another day.

Is this a “cipher mystery”? Yes, but only a very temporary sense, for I find it terrifically hard to believe that this wasn’t picked up by one or more of the numerous 19th century German codebreaking historians and cracked in a trice (or perhaps even a millitrice). Tony Gaffney would surely munch such a light confection before breakfast. 🙂

Finally, to respond to Rene Z’s question: why does the Voynich Manuscript not look like this? I’d prefer to start by looking at what this does resemble: Giovanni Fontana’s lightly-enciphered books of secrets, which were also from very same period. This mixing of text and ciphertext also occurs in Buonaccorso Ghiberti’s copy of his famous grandfather’s Zibaldone, which has some sections in a simple cipher, most notably what Prager & Scaglia call the “secret hoist” (on folios 95r and 98r of BR 228, for which see “Brunelleschi: Studies of his Technology and Inventions”, pp.67-70). From the simplicity of that cipher (“use the previous letter in the alphabet”), I’d suggest that Buonaccorso probably copied this from an older document, one probably made in the 1430s or 1440s (Lorenzo Ghiberti died in 1455).

Remember that this was the century when paper began to become affordable, and when ordinary people began to develop their own ciphers: and although it has become fashionable to criticize the development of individualism in the early Renaissance, I think it is fair to say that the desire to keep secrets for personal / familial gain runs in close parallel with this. Ghiberti, Fontana and the author of Cod. Pal. Germ. 597 all seem vastly similar in this respect.

Returning to Rene’s initial question, then, I suspect the correct question to be asking should be: why does the Voynich Manuscript not look like any of those ciphered manuscripts?

My own answer is that it is probably because the VMs will turn out to be from circa 1460 (i.e. 20-30 years after all of the above), and its author seems to have benefitted from contact with the sophisticated code-makers in the Milanese Chancellery, who developed and refined ideas in their own cryptographic bubble. Really, the VMs is from a very specific time and place – far too clever to be early 15th century, but still strongly mindful of what earlier ciphers looked like.

Once again, two more Renaissance ciphers yield to Mr Gaffney…

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By now I’m sure you’re all thoroughly sick of the way I heap superlatives and laurel wreaths onto Tony Gaffney’s hair-bestrewn head every time he cracks yet another of Bellaso’s ciphers… and now he’s broken two more, lifting his tally for the 1564 set of challenge ciphers to 6 out of 7. Though Tony dearly wants to make it 7/7, Bellaso’s remaining 1564 cipher appears to be an awkward one, a real Holmesian three-pipe problem… so let’s keep our fingers crossed Tony can make it a clean sweep. 🙂

Anyway, as compared to #7’s tortuous digrams, #3 turned out to be relatively easy: it involved five rotating reciprocal alphabets (Bellaso’s favourite starting point), with the confounding trick being that the first letter of each group is basically random, and indicates which one of the five rotated alphabets to use (by using the index of the letter within the cipher alphabet). There are asterisks marked at the two places (in lines 1 and 3) where this fails to quite work, but the basic idea seems completely solid.

1564 #3

 lasumita  demonti  secnserva  perche  lacque  otneve
CNRDEPSGT XEQRLLGP FDUHLLQMXX AMCABAA HPEEOHU MIDLDHU
 45123451  5123451  123451234  345123  234512 *234512
 chesopra  deesi  spesocadono  insi  contengono  leesalationi
REFQFLQAT NSUAIB GFMCLGTEHQFI TNLLP EBIJFDFNLLQ OPACLTPEFBGGN
 45123451  12345  23451234512  3451  1234512345  234512345123
 etvageri  terestri  asesi  nelaria  oxvirtu  solare  etcosi
FQCXXUQMN RFDLUGFAP SRDUGS BLDRHQSR PMCHOQFP QDIOXAQ LCGBIGS
 12345123  45123451  51234  4512345 *4512345  123451  451234
 latgu  cheper  lepiogie  scorgzoso  demonti  xepiogie  etnevi
CNRANX DXUUMCA MSQLNMTPU AGEQLNZLIQ FSUPMMAO RADIOLBBQ SDAGARB
 45123  512345  51234512  345123451  1234512  45123451  512345
 larepone sopra  detimonti
HPEUDIIICXLGLQX QSUDSNGGDS.
 23451234 51234  123451234
QFEN QUACDFGILM 1
     EHTBSNOPRX
UGHO QUACDFGILM 2
     XEHTBSNOPR
AITP QUACDFGILM 3
     RXEHTBSNOP
CLBR QUACDFGILM 4
     PRXEHTBSNO
DMSX QUACDFGILM 5
     OPRXEHTBSN

The (possibly meaningless?) keyword here is “QUA(C)EHTBS”, yielding a cleartext like this:-

La sumita de monti se conserva perche l’acque ot neve
che sopra de esi speso cadono in si contengono le esalationi
et vageri terestri asesi ne l’aria ox virtu solare et cosi
la tgu che per le piogie scorgzoso de monti xe piogie et nevi
la repone sopra deti monti.

And so we move onto Bellaso’s 1564 challenge cipher #4, which is also a bit of a pussycat (yes, it has five rotating reciprocal alphabets) – the secondary trick here is the autokey, wherein the last plaintext letter of each group indicates which of the five alphabets to start the next group with.

1564 #4

etper ilcontrario simarre conserva lasua profocsita
NCUTA REXEECSUAUB NUEFPAN FAGRTAIX HOUPU QHBADFMRDU
12345 12345123451 5123451 51234512 51234 5123451234
etgrandeza perche fluctrbu viena sotiliare larena etparte
MDLAOGTTZR FLPFRM PEAFBIXA IRLIR NACQGMOIL HOILIR OBFFPGN
23451234-5 234512 23451234 12345 512345123 512345 5123451
teree chein esosono liqualli cosi sotiliati etcon lacqua
CLPON XLNRH OFBRDSA DQSBODEN FAUQ NACQGMOCQ OBTCI DFXPIX
23451 45123 5123451 23451234 5123 123451234 51234 234512
mescolati sono salavirtu solarein aria levati etdali venti
INUODHOCQ FBHD MXEUBUIDA FBEUANRH OIQU ETBOCQ OBLFGM SLIGU
512345123 1234 123451234 12345123 1234 345123 512345 23451
indiverse plrti portati ethnacqua conversi restano
MELQAOHUL QCIDN FCPGOCQ MDMSOTIAR TCIBNIRN ANUDUSA
512345123 51234 2345123 234512345 23451234 5123451
distributi sulimonti etin altrilochi
OMFCSNUICQ FSENIAGDN NCQI XEEAUDCXLU.
4512345123 123451234 1234 2345123451
SDFM  SPABCDEGHI   1
      FXOTLMNQRU
PEXN  SPABCDEGHI   2
      UFXOTLMNQR
AGOQ  SPABCDEGHI   3
      RUFXOTLMNQ
BHTR  SPABCDEGHI   4
      QRUFXOTLMN
CILU  SPABCDEGHI   5
      NQRUFXOTLM

The (once again, somewhat mysterious) keyword here is “SPAFXOT”:-

et per il contrario si marre conserva la sua profocsita (profundita)
et grandeza perche fluctrbu vien a sotiliare la rena et parte
teree che in eso sono li qualli cosi sotiliati et con l’acqua
mescolati sono sala virtu solare in aria levati et da li venti
in diverse plrti (parti) portati et hn acqua conversi restano
distributi su li monti et in altri lochi.

Observant cryptologers will be pleased to note that Tony managed to crack both of these even though neither contained the word proportione. 🙂

Praise aside, all that I can say now is “Go, Tony, Go!” – good luck with the final cipher in the set!

4th Bellaso cipher toppled, Tony Gaffney strikes again!

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That man Tony Gaffney has been at it again, shooting yet another cryptographic tin can down off Giovan Battista Bellaso’s fence: this time, it was Bellaso’s 1564 challenge cipher #7’s turn to fall.

What was particularly sweet about #7 was that it was a completely different type of cipher to the others Tony had previously broken: rather than being some kind of reciprocal rotating cipher (i.e. reciprocal = a cipher that both encodes and decodes, and rotating = a cipher alphabet whose order rotates every letter, every plaintext word, or every ciphertext word), this one was a fairly fiendish digram table (i.e. a table of pairs of letters).

Of course, you’d need a really substantial piece of ciphertext to stand any chance of filling out the contents of any such table: but because Bellaso wasn’t that sadistic, he used the same table he included in his book. The difficulty was therefore not so much of reconstructing the table, but of reconstructing the ksyphrase driving the table (i.e., the phrase permuting the rows and columns).

As regular Cipher Mysteries readers should know by know, classical (i.e. puzzle-based rather than statistics-based) code-breakers such as Tony look for words in the ciphertext with unusual properties, and see if they can use those to lever their way in. Here, the fact that nearly every word has an even number of letters is a strong indication that this is a digram-based cipher: and in Bellaso’s table (where each row of digrams is horizontally offset by one place relative to the row above it) the group CMYLDLELRL in line 4 of the ciphertext would appear to fall mostly along a diagonal.

Assuming that Y was “unlikely to be in the keyword or in the message“, Tony then “compared each of the 10 digrams in its row with those in their diagonals” – this let him hunt for candidate words to fit this basic kind of consonant-vowel-consonant pattern. “cifra” matched the first three pairs; “fantasie” matched the first four pairs; but by far the best 5-digram match for the group was “altramente“.

“This gave me a few rows and columns – the rest was a lot of trial & error & cups of tea & cigarettes!”

Post-caffeine and post-tobacco, here’s the resulting Italian cleartext that Tony ended up with – it appears to be explaining how to aim your cannon so that it hits the target:-

serom pera ilfestcon doi  sopresetireve  c onlavite perpe tova ilcanone
QMOSDAHSOM CULRMENEESFMBT QUXRQBRHORRGIA NTEECFTLRL HSXOIARETT CUNOEGED
postoasegnn ousire delapaia faretirar e ilchanoneil quale sedeveretirar
HDXMPTQMXGES TBQEOE FOCFHUBG LAOERMOMODIACUNSEOEEIOCDMDCMIA QMFOTOOERMOMOD
inproporti onesetutiri inalto stsognache nel retirasecali chonlacoda
EMXRHLOTRM EEQBRHRRORBF EMCMRE MUQUXGNGSB EDCROERMOMQMNOCH NSEECFNEFT
altramente dariaeo to d alsegnosetutirai baso bis na* elacoda retiran do
CMYLDLELRL FTOUPEGURE FRCMQMXGQRRHRRORPU ALQU AEQCECYECENGFBPL OERMOMEB FM
siassen ?da viran doperdrito bisognaseretiripesdritto etintutitreiquesuicasi
QEQHQMESTFT TLOMESFMHSZBOURE AEQUXGQHOARHORHOQBXFRBRE RHEMRURMYLBUMDQBTLNOQE
leretebisognache sesttiri noequal menteperchhe calan dounarotada rialap
CGOERLAEQUXGNGSB QMMURMOU EGMRPOCDDFYHHTOANSSB NOCFESFMEUOBRAFFPLOUCMHR
ladaquellaban da
CFFTMDCECFALESFT

* YE = Il Signor Iddie, “The Lord God” (as per the table below – so almost certainly an error)
? An odd number of letters in this group (so almost certainly a typesetting error).

If you then insert plausible-looking spaces, you end up with text looking like this:-

Se rompera il fest con doi sopre se tireve con la vite perpetoua il canone
posto a segnn ousire della paia fare tirare il chanone il quale se devere tirar
in proportione se tutiri in alto st sogna che nel retira se cali chon la coda
altramente dariaeo to d'al segno se tutirai baso bis na ? el a coda retiran do
si assen ? da virando per drito bisogna se retire pes dritto et intuit tre I que
sui casi le rete bisogna che sesttiri no equalmente perchhe calando una rota dari
alap lada quella banda

As you can see from the final table (below), the keyphrase driving the row and column permutations appears to be “BARTOLOMEUS / PAN FILIUS”.

   B  A  R  T  O  L  M  E  U  S  C  D  F         G         H
P  pb pa pr pt po pl pm pe pu ps pc pd pf        pg        Ph
   aa ea ia oa ua A  aa ae ai ao au A  accio     altra     ancore
A  ah ab aa ar at ao al am ae au as ac ad        af        ag
   ab eb ib ob ub B  ba be bi bo bu B  benche    che       che
N  ng nh nb na nr nt no nl nm ne nu ns nc        nd        nf
   ac ec ic oc uc C  ca ce ci co cu Ch cosa      como      della
F  ff fg fh fb fa fr ft fo fl fm fe fu fs        fc        fd
   ad ed id od ud D  da de di do du D  debba     detto     doppe
I  id if ig ih ib ia ir it io il im ie iu        is        ic
   ae ee ie oe ue E  ea ee ei eo eu E  esso      essendo   essere
L  lc ld lf lg lh lb la lr lt lo ll lm le        lu        ls
   af ef if of uf F  fa fe fi fo fu F  forsi     fusse     finche
U  us uc ud uf ug uh ub ua ur ut uo ul um        ue        uu
   ag eg ig og ug G  ga ge gi go gu G  gratia    grave     grato
S  su ss sc sd sf sg sh sb sa sr st so sl        sm        se
   ah eh ih oh uh H  ha he hi ho hu H  abaiamo   avunto    hanno
B  be bu bs bc bd bf bg bh bb ba br bt bo        bl        bm
   ai ei ii oi ui I  ia ie ii io iu I  imperio   impo      impoche
C  cm ce cu cs cc cd cf cg ch cb ca cr ct        co        cl
   al el il ol ul L  la le li lo lu L  leqli     liquali   lettera
D  DL dm de du ds dc dd df dg dh db da dr        dt        do
   am em im om um M  ma me mi mo mu M  molto     modo      mondo
E  eo EL em ee eu es ec ed ef eg eh eb ea        er        et
   an en in on un N  na ne ni no nu N  non       nostra    nella
G  gt go gl gm ge gu gs gc gd gf gg gh gb        ga        gr
   ao eo io oo uo O  oa oe oi oo ou O  oltra     ogni      ognicosa
H  hr ht ho hl hm he hu hs hc hd hf hg hh        hb        ha
   ap ep ip op up P  pa pe pi po pu P  per       pero      perche
M  ma mr mt mo ml mm me mu ms mc md mf mg        mh        mb
   aq eq iq oq uq Q  st st st st qu Q  quali     quella    questa
O  ob oa or ot oo ol om oe ou os oc od of        og        oh
   ar er ir or ur R  ra re ri ro ru R  quato     quando    qualche
Q  qh qb qa qr qt qo ql qm qe qu qs qc qd        qf        qg
   as es is os us S  sa se si so su S  signor    signoria  scritto
R  rg rh rb ra rr rt ro RL rm re ru rs rc        rd        rf
   at et it ot ut T  ta te ti to tu T  scrisse   tutto     tanto
T  tf tg th tb ta tr tt to tl tm te tu ts        tc        td
   au eu iu ou uu V  ua ue iu uo uu V  vostro    vero      una
X  xd xf xg xh xb xa xr xt xo xl xm xe xu        xs        xc
   br dr gn lt nq X  pr rl rp rt st X  vostra    le vostra lquate piu
                                        Sig       lettere   presto
Y  yc yd yf yg yh yb ya yr yt yo YL ym ye        yu        ys
   ch fr gr mn nt Y  rc rm rs sc tr Y  Il Signor Le cose   Me
                                        Iddio     passano   racemande
Z  zs zc zd zf zg zh zb za zr zt zo zl zm        ze        zu
   cr gl lm nc pn Z  rd rn rt sp tr Z  habiamo   havemo    fatime
                                        recevute  apiacer   raccom.

All in all, I think this was another excellent result for Tony G., cracking an altogether harder challenge cipher than the previous ones – classy stuff, very well done! 🙂

Two more Renaissance challenge ciphers cracked!

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Once upon a time (twenty years ago, back when I still had hair), I used to play for Hackney Chess Club in the London League: after most matches, the team would decamp to Brick Lane for a late night curry and a swift-ish couple of pints. Happy (if somewhat calorifically excessive) days. 🙂

And so it has recently been a thoroughly pleasant surprise to encounter another Hackney player from that same era (Tony Gaffney) engaged in his own historical cipher odyssey – applying his devious problem-solving instincts to crack long-unbroken ciphers, such as the 1564 Bellaso challenge cipher #6 (described in detail here a couple of weeks ago).

Incidentally, I asked Tony if he had a reasonably current photo of himself I could put on my blog – sorry but no, came the reply. And so I sent him a quick sketch of how I remembered him from all those years ago, to see if much had changed:-

tony-gaffney-sketch

“That’s like looking in a mirror – only the hair’s too short“, came the reply. So, here’s my best guess as to what (the fairly reclusive) Tony Gaffney looks like circa 2009:-

tony-gaffney-sketch-v2

Hmmm… it does make me wonder whether there is some kind of karmic balancing law at play in the universe, a zero sum game by which every inch of hair I lose has to reappear on someone else’s head (Tony’s, specifically). But I digress!

As expected, having cracked 1564 #6, the indomitable Mr Gaffney rapidly moved onto Giovan Battista Bellaso’s other challenge ciphers. Could he beat the inevitable crypto pack & make the next crack?

The answer was an emphatic yes: Bellaso’s 1564 challenge cipher #2 was next to fall. Tony’s starting clue was the third word (SDARGBFSTRS), an eleven-letter word with the same first letter and last letter. Having tried out ‘equinotiale‘, a series of crossword-like puzzles then offered themselves up for solving, leading eventually to the following plaintext (and once again, note that Tony cannot read Italian):-

dal circolo equinotiale versoil nostropolo artbt
RSX OSIUBPD SDARGBFSTRS BXDADRR HCIALBLDSA ODFMA
451 5123451 45123451234 2345123 4512345123 34512
sescopra asaipiu terrache acqua etdaldeno circolo verso
ERIMAIEU XAURHPG BSEHTUNR UMIFS SFOTRRRCE OSIUBPD GTIDB
45123451 4512345 34512345 12345 451234512 5123451 51234
ilpolo btarti sescopra asaipiu acqua chetera dicoche verso
RRICXE XETLCN ERIMAIEU TDXNFRC XOGBO TMTAXDS ORUBORO CSEIE
234512 512345 45123451 2345123 45123 4512345 1234512 34512
ilnosnrro poloartico sono nelemontagne etsoto lemontagne
SSGBACILB FERBSHAQTC ECCE HRXOFBIETNHR RELACC QRBEGCSQFX
123451234 1234512345 4512 451234512345 512345 4512345123
grande cavernosita nenedi acqua etventi etverso elpolo
MEUFSS OUBXDIDLQCS ITFXRN TULGU SFAOGCN XCGTIDB SPFERB
451234 51234512345 512345 23451 4512345 3451234 451234
antartico none cosi
XIETLCNNE GBIT NEDP.
451234512 3451 1234

With help from Renaissance cipher historian Augusto Buonafalce, this yields Bellaso’s thoughts on why there is more land towards the North Pole than towards the South Pole:-

dal circolo equinotiale verso il nostro polo artico se scopre assai piu terra che acqua et dal deno circolo verso ilpolo antartico se scopre assai piu acqua che terra dico che verso il nosnrro polo artico sono (ne) le montagne et soto le montagne grande cavernosita nenedi(piene) acqua et venti et verso el polo antartico non e cosi

From the equinoctial circle towards the Arctic pole there is exposed much more earth than water and from said circle towards the Antarctic pole there is exposed more water than earth because towards our Arctic pole there are the mountains and underneath the mountains large caves full of water and winds and towards the Antarctic pole it is not so.
(Translation & enciphering/typesetter error corrections courtesy of Augusto Buonafalce)

Not content with having solved two of Bellaso’s challenge ciphers, Tony then turned his attention to the 1564 cipher #1: once again, an unusual short sequence was enough of a clue to get him started. In this instance, he noticed the palindrome DABAD in the ciphertext, and wondered whether that might be his old friend PROPORTIONE (which you may recall helped him solve 1564 #6). The cipher system turned out to employ ten alphabets changing not with every letter but with every word.

diptdexloxarsoxdicoxchexlepetoxesemprexconformexa
PSDLPQNSDMXLNEAUPHFBXDUCOHUHCLDXCXPMBXERMGXMCOTFO
1      2  3    4    5   6      7       8        9
lasuaxcausaxdbxlarmaxlungaxdastaxinesaxsonoxpiunumerax
HOENOIPGMFGLPGNSHIXHMRCSDXAUTMATBOQUASCBLPLDMUIOIPXBUE
      10    1  2     3     4     5     6    7
departexunitexchenonxsonoxnelacortaxetuicrtusxunitaxpote
STAPCETFNUXFSIPNRHBHLICXCNTPSHGDINHMOMCQULMCNADRPATBLIBU
8       9     10     1    2         3         4     5
ntirestxdelepalexdiferoxetdilegoxprocedexperchexaierxno
QBOMUABCXHOHNROHDTUHXBNETESHUTNMFBDAQSRSICREPNRLUSQFNTD
        6        7      8        9       10     1    2
nresistibxdelcircoloxdicoxfinitixadinfinitumxnulamxese
TIPLRLNRUMGORUQLUEREAUPHFBGOQOBOCRXGPUGPGCFQDOIGQPETDT
          3          4    5      6           7     8
xproportionemxlafiguraxsfericaxnonaxprqncipiioxdxeldia
FBDABADFXAUSGIXGSTAMEGLIRQFSOUNTDTHMFLISUQFQQEAUBUPHOS
 9            10       1       2    3          4
metroxaprincipioxetfinex.
RUBMICRNAGPTGNGLDXDHUOXE.
      5          6

With a few typesetter corrections and words reconstructed (because many doubled letters in the plaintext were converted to single letters, introducing a certain amount of ambiguity that you have to read Bellaso’s clues to resolve), this almost certainly originally read something closer to:-

Di ptde lo arco dico che le petto?(l’efeto) e sempre conforme a la sua causa db l’arma lunga d’asta in esa sono piu numera de parti unite che non sono nela corta et uicrtus unita potentirest delle palle di ferro et di lengo procede perche aier non resistib del circolo dico finite ad infinitum nullam esse proportionem la figura sferica non a principio del diametro a principio et fine.

Interestingly, inside this Italian plaintext is embedded a phrase in Latin (which I have highlighted above) that Google notes as appearing in a 1957 article by Bruno Busulini called “Introduzione a una storia e filosofia del calcolo infinitesimale” (Introduction to a history and philosophy of infinitesimal calculus): and so seems highly likely to me to be Bellaso quoting approvingly from someone else’s Latin book on calculus. Next time I’m at the British Library, I’ll try to get a copy and see where the quotation originally came from…

Once again, my hearty congratulations go out to Tony Gaffney for solving these cipher mysteries!

450-year-old challenge cipher cracked!

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In the 1564 printed edition of his cryptography manual, Giovan Battista Bellaso included seven challenge ciphers for his readers to break, along with a set of clues: these all remained unbroken and in obscurity until Augusto Buonafalce wrote about them in 1997, 1999, and 2006 in the journal Cryptologia.

But that’s all changed now!

Tony Gaffney – who Cipher Mysteries regulars should remember from his book “The Agony Column Codes & Ciphers” (under the nom-de-plume ‘Jean Palmer’), his reading of the Dorabella cipher, and his corrections to the Bellaso cipher transcriptions – has managed to crack Bellaso Challenge Cipher #6, despite the handicap of not actually being able to read Italian. 🙂

Here’s the ciphertext in question (with Tony’s starting point highlighted), followed by a description (based closely on the document he posted to the Ancient Cryptography forum) of how he used that to begin solving the entire cryptogram. (Incidentally, if this all comes across a bit like a kind of linguistic Sudoku, it’s because that’s essentially how most non-machine code-breaking is done)…

DP QBGTA ITP LBIEE DFIIHO LI AQILIFF SO NILEECHL OMGTTIE=
CZXRC CGEDFLLIILBGGP PLBBIUNO UL QURNXSRRNB OR ACFEDFLL=
ILBFI PLACFODACU AP UHEEOI PLSGGAOLRIBLNGIBLNPE SO ROCDBCG
BU PCLICB MR RBERPUGSTSLB PLACFOEXBUBLB BPSPDXG QU BDUU
DCCAGE FCFXSFP HP MBHI LH EOMGU FSDDHEIJMG FPDHQMPDD.

Having a repeated block of four letters five letters apart implied that the cipher system involves cycling through five different cipher alphabets: and so Tony trawled through Bellaso’s clues looking “for any word that had a period 5 repetition in it ie. lontano; riteovata; lequale; etc.” When he hit the very promising-looking word consequentemente, he lined that up with the ciphertext letters with the cycle numbers beneath:-

??consequentemente??
PLSGGAOLRIBLNGIBLNPE
12345123451234512345

There’s a problem here, in that in alphabet #4 ‘G’ appears to encipher both ‘o’ and ‘m’: yet because most printed ciphers suffer from typesetter errors, Tony ignored this and marched bravely onwards. 🙂

His next two steps forward were to notice (a) that the second letter in the group shown must be ‘t’ (it occurs in cycle #2 in the same word) and (b) the final letter must be ‘i’ (because ‘e’ is its reciprocal in cycle #5 – Bellaso was fond of reciprocal ciphers, i.e. ones that perform both the ciphering and the deciphering) – so, guessing that the first letter is ‘e’, the above section of ciphertext resolves to ‘et consequentement ?i‘

Observing that plaintext ‘e’ appears to get enciphered as P in #1; O in #2; N in #3; and I in #5, Tony’s next angle was to rely on the five cycling alphabets’ probably having some kind of symmetry – in particular, because P O N are all a single alphabetical step away from each other, he thought it likely that the bottom half of the alphabet was shifting along by one place in each cycle. This guess let him start to fill out the 5 cycles in more detail:-

????b?e?g??? 1
????nop?????
????b?e?g??? 2
?????nop????
????b?e?g??? 3
??????nop???
????b?e?g??? 4
???????nop??
????b?e?g??? 5
????????nop?

Where next? Well, Tony now turned his gaze on a second repeated feature in the cryptogram, which appeared to be two words formed from the same linguistic root, but with a different prefix and suffix each. Did he now have enough letters to solve this? He decided to give it a go regardless:-

ACFEDFLLILBFI &
 CGEDFLLIILBGGP
??o???????????   ???o???t?????
CGEDFLLIILBGGP & ACFEDFLLILBFI
51234512345123   5123451234512
??o???t???n???   s?????tq??n??
CGEDFLLIILBGGP & ACFEDFLLILBFI
12345123451234   1234512345123
?????tq?????o?   ?s????q??????
CGEDFLLIILBGGP & ACFEDFLLILBFI
23451234512345   2345123451234
so???q???t?one   ???p?????t???
CGEDFLLIILBGGP & ACFEDFLLILBFI
34512345123451   3451234512345
?np??????q????   ???o?????q???
CGEDFLLIILBGGP & ACFEDFLLILBFI
45123451234512   4512345123451

Looking at the fourth set, he wondered if ‘t?one‘ might well be ‘tione‘, and so tried them both “as if they were the same word”. Removing the extra I from the first word yields:-

?np?????tione   ???p?????ti??
CGEDFLLILBGGP & ACFEDFLLILBFI
4512345123451   3451234512345

His original table for #3 maps ‘e?g‘ to ‘nop‘ so it seemed entirely possible that ‘F’ might encipher ‘o’: and so guessed that this word was something along the lines of the word ‘proportion‘:-

?n proportione   ??? proporti??
CG EDFLLILBGGP & ACF EDFLLILBFI
45 12345123451   345 1234512345

Working with the code-breakers’ two secret weapons (controlled mistakenness, allied with bloodyminded persistence), Tony moved forwards, safe in the knowledge that if his guesses were significantly wrong his errors would soon present themselves. How much of the five alphabets did he now have?

??r?b?efgl?? #1
??i?nopqt???
??r?b?efgl?? #2
??di?nopqt??
??r?b?efgl?? #3
????i?nopqt?
??r?b?efgl?? #4
??u??i?nopqt
??r?b?efgl?? #5
??t???i?nopq

He now moved on to the next weakest link in the ciphertext, a long group of letters (‘RBERPUGSTSLB‘) that he thought might well now be solvable with the letters he had:-

i?nu??qc????  di??e?p??ati  ??iif?o?g?q?  u?pdgrnalcp?  ?no?l?t???on
RBERPUGSTSLB  RBERPUGSTSLB  RBERPUGSTSLB  RBERPUGSTSLB  RBERPUGSTSLB
123451234512  234512345123  345123451234  451234512345  512345123451

Pleasingly, ‘distemperati‘ seemed to fit the second version (‘di??e?p??ati’): and so he proceeded with all the remaining words in the challenge cipher.

Tony’s final plaintext (parallel with the ciphertext, and the matching cycle numbers) looks like:-

della giors cre ticip rocede qualche ilcorpo nostro ecoposto
DP    QBGTA ITP LBIEE DFIIHO LI      AQILIFF SO     NILEECHL
      23451 451 23451 234512         2345123        34512345
etorganizato inpropor tione musicabe poi maicretici sono
OMGTTIECZXRC CGEDFLLIILBGGP PLBBIUNO UL  QURNXSRRNB OR
23451234-451 45123451*23451 51234512     4512345123
disproportine etdiscrdia nella musica etconsequenteoenteli nostro
ACFEDFLLILBFI PLACFODACU AP    UHEEOI PLSGGAOLRIBLNGIBLNPE SO
3451234512345 1234512345       234512 12345123451234512345
uloriin quella giorni sono distemperati etdiscordanti ilferro inogni
ROCDBCG BU     PCLICB MR   RBERPUGSTSLB PLACFOEXBUBLB BPSPDXG QU
4512345        345123      234512345123 1234512345123 3451234
sara condoi soprese della vite per petoa saratirato serumpera
BDUU DCCAGE FCFXSFP HP    MBHI LH  EOMGU FSDDHEIJMG FPDHQMPDD.
2345 512345 5123451       2345     12345 5123451234 512345123

Bellaso appears (as per his book) to be using two letter groups to stand in for common words:

  • DP — della
  • LI — mille/qualche
  • SO — no macati e sequir/quanto/ve habiamo/scritto/nostro
  • UL — vostra/poi
  • OR — perilche/sono
  • AP — della/nella
  • BU — ditto/quella
  • MR — il vostro/sono
  • QU — quella/inogni
  • HP — della/imperoche
  • LH — intutto/per

Finally, Tony notes – “I am greatly indebted to Augusto Buonafalce for his help in translating some of the words and supplying me with copies of his English translations of the books.”

The plaintext refers to Bellaso’s clue #8, and discusses the well being of the body at different times, which could well refer to the theories of the Renaissance astrologer Andrea Argoli.

All I can really say is that I think this is a splendid achievement, and I wish Tony the very best of luck with the other challenge ciphers! Excellent, well done! 🙂

Bellaso’s ciphers, updated…

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A huge thanks to the indefatigable Tony Gaffney who very kindly took the time recently to double-check my transcriptions (some of them derived from Augusto Buonafalce’s transcriptions) of Bellaso’s various challenge ciphers against the copies held in the British Library.

Of the twelve corrections he suggested, roughly half were typos on my part, while the remainder were places where I had transcribed punctuation-like marks (but which were instead simply marks added incidentally as part of the printing).

I’m reasonably sure that the (corrected) Bellaso cipher page here now holds a pretty close, multiply-eyeballed set of transcriptions: so what are you waiting for, go and crack them! 🙂

Enciphered diaries…

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Here’s a nice little blog entry on Rick Smith’s Cryptosmith blog, talking about encrypted documents (rather than just encrypted messages), specifically the enciphered diaries of Charles Wesley (who co-founded the Methodist Church) and of Beatrix Potter.

The 2008 BBC article Rick links to also discusses a war diary made by RAF prisoner of war Donald Hill, and an as-yet-not-fully-decrypted shorthand diary kept by Lord Hailsham. If you want some juicy modern stuff to decipher, the Margaret Thatcher Foundation is looking for cryptological volunteers to decipher more of Lord Hailsham’s notes – there’s even an Excel spreadsheet there with words they’ve cracked so far. Hmmm… sounds like a job for the tireless Tony Gaffney. 😉

For the Beatrix Potter movie website Rick Smith linked to (discussing her diaries), the Second Law of Web Thermodynamics has unfortunately kicked in (“the fancier the website, the sooner it dies“). However, here’s what the Wayback Machine has recorded for it:-

Beatrix Potter’s diary is a true insight into her life. Written in code with the belief that it would never be read, the only surviving entries date from 1881 to 1897. At times she corresponds with a girl called Esther – an imaginary person in Beatrix’s life which perhaps points towards the inevitable moments of loneliness she must have felt, particularly whilst Bertram, her brother, was away at school.

Her diary takes us into her world and she writes not only of her day to day life – family visits, trips to art galleries and exhibitions, but also the turbulent side of the wider world – riots, mobs, murders and political and social upheaval.

It was not until 20 years after Beatrix’s death that the diary code was cracked by the tireless work of Leslie Linder. On Easter Monday 1958, through recognition of a date mentioned and a little more research the first word was deciphered – ‘execution’. This word marked the beginning of the enlightenment and Leslie eventually worked out the code, deciphering the symbols bit by bit.

Review of “The Agony Column Codes & Ciphers”…

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A few days ago, chess-playing crypto guy Tony Gaffney emailed Cipher Mysteries about “The Subtelty Of Witches” in the British Library: I also blogged about his attempted solution to the Dorabella Cipher and the (not-very-)Ancient Cryptography forum where he often posts on historical ciphers. Since then, the copy of his 2005 book “The Agony Column Codes & Ciphers” (which he wrote under the byline “Jean Palmer”) I ordered has arrived… but is it any good?

(Incidentally, “agony columns”  in Victorian newspapers were originally for readers to post personal announcements and messages about/for missing friends and relatives: while “advice columns” (which became popular in the 1950s) were actually a continuation of an eighteenth century newspaper feature known as “letters to the lovelorn“, as well as the advice column in popular magazine “The Lady’s Monthly Museum”. All of which means that the phrase “agony aunt” is a kind of uneasy linguistic marriage between two quite different types of newspaper column.)

People liked the ability to leave messages in agony columns: but some,  wishing to remain anonymous, submitted their messages in code, in cipher, or in some other cryptic manner. Tony’s book collects together 1000 of these (simultaneously public and private) messages.

On the one hand, I can well appreciate the compositional agony of transcribing so many ciphertexts (which themselves may well have been scrambled by harried typesetters) and then trying to decipher them (which may not always be possible). I can also appreciate that a collection of these could well offer a nice commuter alternative to the sheer maddening pointlessness of Sudoku (oh look, all the numbers add up… and here’s my station).

On the other hand, who (apart from cipher history junkies such as me) would really connect with the content of such a project? Stripped of background, context, and outcome, the results are – if you go through your own agony of deciphering them – typically no more than fleeting half-scenes from lost Victorian soap operas, full of thwarted & hopeful love and clandestine meetings.

Structurally, the book comprises a series of dated cipher fragments sorted into chapters according to the newspaper in which they appeared (The Times, The Morning Chronicle/Observer, etc) and sorted by date, with a cipher key listed at the end for most (but not all) of the enciphered ones. All very logical and sequential as a reference work: but does it really work as a piece of cipher solving entertainment?

With my historical cryptography hat on, I’d say yes: the reader is presented with a cleaned up set of cipher transcriptions, with exactly as much information as a curious newspaper reader of the day would have had. It’s straightforward and clear, a nice little slice of cipher history.

But with my publisher hat on, I’d say no: as an editor, I would have discarded the merely cryptic, and rearranged the same material as a series of enciphered threads graded by difficulty, so that a commuter could engage with it as if it were a cipher puzzle-book. I’d also have opted for a larger page size, and included pre-printed solving grids and a sorted frequency count for all monoalphabetic ciphers.

(A fine example of this kind of cipher puzzle book is Elonka Dunin’s (2006) “The Mammoth Book of Secret Codes and Cryptograms”, which also briefly describes the Voynich Manuscript on pp. 489-493, as well as the Beale Papers, the Dorabella Cipher, the Zodiac Ciphers, and the Phaistos Disk).

I would also have moved all the (currently) unsolved ciphers to an end chapter, together with brief failed solving notes.

On balance, then, I’d say that the cipher historian side of me enjoyed the book, but the cipher puzzler side of me felt frustrated by its structure. However, because I would guess that cipher puzzlers outnumber cipher historians 100:1, perhaps it might be an idea for Tony to revisit this project, to Elonka-ify it?

“Ancient Cryptography” forum…

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Tony Gaffney, a chess player / tournament organizer I knew back in the early 1980s when playing for Hackney Chess Club, made some fascinating comments to my recent blog post on The Subtelty of Witches and Eric Sams’ attempted solution to the Dorabella Cipher.

Firstly: having spent a looong time in the British Library looking at ciphers (you’ll see why shortly), Tony was happy to tell me that it in fact has three encrypted books, all using simple monoalphabetic ciphers:
(1) MS Add. 10035 “The Subtelty of Witches” (Latin plaintext),
(2) Shelfmark 4783.a.30. “Ebpob es byo Utlub, Umgjoml Nýflobjof, etc. (Order of the Altar, Ancient Mysteries to which females were alone admissible: being part the first of the Secrets preserved in the Association of Maiden Unity and Attachment.)” London, 1835. (English plaintext)
(3) Shelfmark 944.c.19. “Nyflobjof es Woflu” (Mysteries of Vesta), pp.61, London 1850 (?). (English plaintext).

Secondly: without realising it, I had already seen an early version of Tony’s own proposed Dorabella decipherment in the comments to the Elgar article on the BBC Proms website, attributed to one “Jean Palmer”. You see, back in 2006, this was the pseudonum Tony used to write (and POD publish through authorsonline) a book containing a thousand (!) furtively ciphered messages that were placed in (mainly Victorian) newspapers’ personal columns: I shall (of course) post a review of this “Agony Column Codes & Ciphers” here once my freshly-printed copy arrives.

It turns out that Tony is also a frequent poster (under the name “Tony Baloney”) to an online code/cipher cracking forum called Ancient Cryptography I was previously unaware of (probably because its definition of “ancient” seems to extend only as far back as 1450, Bible Codes [pah!] excepted). The forum has specific threads devoted to the d’Agapeyeff Cipher, the Beale Papers, Zodiac Killer Ciphers, and the Kryptos Sculpture (for example), as well as some delightful oddities such as a link to recordings of shortwave Numbers Station broadcasts (coded intelligence messaging). If you want a friendly online forum for discussing attempts to break these historical ciphers, this seems like a sensible place to go.

But back to Tony Gaffney: given that he deciphered a thousand (admittedly mainly monoalphabetic substitution) messages, it should be clear that he is no slouch on the decrypting front. Which is why it is interesting to lookat the latest version of his proposed solution to the Dorabella Cipher. As far as I can tell, this involves simply using exactly the same cipher crib as appears in Elgar’s notebook (?), but interpreting the text that comes out as having been written in a kind of phonetic-style backslang. Here are the two stages (note that the hyphens are inserted as part of the interpretation, not part of the transcription):-

Deciphered:  B-ltac-ei-a-rw-unis-nf-nnellhs-yw-ydou
Anagrammed:  B-lcat-ie-a-wr-usin-fn-nshllen-wy-youd
Plaintext:   B hellcat i.e. a war using effin' henshells(en)? why your
 
Deciphered:  inieyarqatn-nte-dminuneho-m-syrr-yuo
Anagrammed:  intaqraycin-net-dminuenho-m-srry-you
Plaintext:   antiquarian net diminuendo?? am sorry you
 
Deciphered:  toeh-o-tsh-gdo-tneh-m-so-la-doe-ad-ya
Anagrammed:  theo-o-ths-god-then-m-so-la-deo-da-ay
Plaintext:   theo o' tis god then me so la deo da aye

On the one hand, I’d say it is more plausible than Eric Sams’ proposed solution: but on the (inevitably negative) other hand, it doesn’t quite manage to summon the kind of aha-ness (AKA “smoking-gunitude“) you’d generally hope for – as Tony’s book no doubt amply demonstrates, the point of a secret love note (which is surely what Elgar seems to have sent Dora Penny?) is to be both secret and to convey something which could not openly be said. But is this really it?

Some people like to say that the real point of tackling apparently unbreakable ciphers is to be found in the travelling rather than in the arriving – that the real prize is what we learn about ourselves from butting our horns against that which is impossible. To which I say: gvdl zpv, bttipmf.