BlueCricket
Greenie
Basic Premise: It seems this is no treasure to be revealed by what I think is a second part to Cipher II -- only North/South Troop movements as observed by a "Unit 42" during the US Civil war.
Background:
A man named George Love printed out the problems with the long-ago "completely solved" Cipher 2, but the way he did it (with letter-by-letter highlights on the hideous counting mistakes, which is kept on the web) made me think twice. For reference go to:
The Beale Ciphers by George Love )
I wondered if the counting errors might be intentional, put there as place markers for a secondary code. Thinking that, I tried a basic pass with anagramming the first and last letter of each sentence fragment up to where a "mistake" was -- or mark of punctuation line end -- and got the following to chew on (PS: stuff in the parenthesis is mine) My main goal was looking for flow and consistency from one line of the 24 + 1 "sub messages" to the next:
What I got:
Background:
A man named George Love printed out the problems with the long-ago "completely solved" Cipher 2, but the way he did it (with letter-by-letter highlights on the hideous counting mistakes, which is kept on the web) made me think twice. For reference go to:
The Beale Ciphers by George Love )
I wondered if the counting errors might be intentional, put there as place markers for a secondary code. Thinking that, I tried a basic pass with anagramming the first and last letter of each sentence fragment up to where a "mistake" was -- or mark of punctuation line end -- and got the following to chew on (PS: stuff in the parenthesis is mine) My main goal was looking for flow and consistency from one line of the 24 + 1 "sub messages" to the next:
What I got:
- Data to hidden office by.
- Miss B Farm Nine.
- S Victor N.
- if we best T.
- Get note by TJ. Find the front page. Has egg news.
- TTTT CFed. (TTTT=4T or '40'--just count the T's)
- NNNN V E (Same here 4N 5 E)
- Decode mess twenty and and SC hands off op. (Decode message 22 and SC hands off operator.)
- Yfe hid. Go dead rest day. ('Yfe' is telegraph operators' term for 'wife'.)
- J stood in.
- S line.
- C end at O set. ('O'-set = sunset)
- V and TT.
- DD hs. (1000 hours)
- Is I Ys step. (Is I Wise step)
- PS C HR WV inn ("PS see our West Virginia inn"sound this one out, and it makes sense)
- Rs. ("ours")
- VT rt yields.
- IO hs. ("10 hours")
- PS R HR noted.
- E
- L of Y at (L of interception at
- VA et. (Virginia and)
- fellow ghost by NH TTTT II do end.
Also, the letters in the brackets seemed to have something to say themselves as a title for the group:
- Wee XXXX uunit EE (Wee 42 unit Easter Egg)
Closing remarks:
So, as far as I can figure out, Cipher 2 (which I originally thought was communication about treasure . . . (SIGH! hides communications about North/South troop movements, send by the Officers of New Hampshire Unit 42. (Which still doesn't say if the whole thing is another level of post civil-war fraud . . . and still doesn't say what's in Cipher 1 or 3! But it does explain why 1 and 3 are so different in style from 2 and the rest of the document.)
As you can see, I plainly still have a lot to do (to stay ahead of the pack even if I may never get out to do any prospecting) but just wanted to let you know how George Love inspired my thinking. Drop me a line to let me know what you think if you have the time.