Welcome to Nick Pelling's Cipher Mysteries, a blog devoted to unsolved historical code/cipher mysteries. It also looks sideways to other (perhaps less obvious) places where these appear - books, films, TV, radio, music, opera, sculpture, design, metalworking, eBay scams, etc.
For centuries, novelists have used unbroken ciphertexts as conspiratorial plot devices: yet the actual theories surrounding such cipher mysteries are, bizarrely, frequently more fantastical than any fiction.
Arguably the biggest cipher mystery ever is The Voynich Manuscript - here's a link to probably the best online introduction to it. Or alternatively (if, say, you're a bit short of time), here's how to become a world-class Voynich Manuscript Expert in a mere five minutes.
Another well-known (if somewhat smaller) cipher mystery is The Dorabella Cipher: here's a very straightforward introduction to that.
If you landed here by accident, perhaps some entertaining general blog posts might be what you'd like: the Adrenalini Brothers cipher, a sexy enciphered Jewish limerick, Hans Carvel retold as a txt msg.
Finally, if you're just interested in historical cipher mysteries in general, this is the site for you! Probably the best way to get the full benefit is to subscribe by email (yes, it's completely free)- just enter your email address in the box at the top right and click on the "Subscribe" button below it. Simple! Posts are also carefully categorised, so feel free to mooch around using the Post Categories widget-thing on the top left.
PS: for more about this site, click here.
Posted by nickpelling on Feb 4th, 2010 - 15 comments.
The APOD third-time-lucky Voynich page has (just as you'd expect) been reblogged and retweeted near-endlessly, even on the What Does The Prayer Really Say blog, which describes itself as "Slavishly accurate liturgical translations & frank commentary on Catholic issues - by Fr. John Zuhlsdorf", and has a Catholic priest smiley in the header: o{]:¬) Quality-wise, I have to admit that this tramples ...
Posted by nickpelling on Feb 1st, 2010 - 3 comments.
The APOD (Astronomy Picture of the Day) for 31st January 2010 was the Voynich Manuscript's page f67r1... yet again. By which I mean it was first featured there in 2002, and then again in 2005, and now here it is for the third time round. Before very long, the 2010 discussion page had accumulated a ...
Posted by nickpelling on Jan 30th, 2010 - 2 comments.
Excitement surged loudly through Imperial College's Great Hall as the announcer belatedly bellowed those four terrifying words, signifying what for one side would be the beginning of the end: "Sssseconds out, Rrrrround One!"
Danny grabbed Charles Hope's arm: "Am I going to be able to do this?", he asked. "Do you really think I've learnt enough to last five rounds... against him?"
"Relax", said the ...
Posted by nickpelling on Jan 23rd, 2010 - 2 comments.
It's a real-life Jurassic Park scenario: for decades, all most people have heard of Erich von Däniken is the occasional fossilized soundbite (such as "Chariots of the Gods"). But now, like a ferocious Tyrannosaurus Rex cloned from dinosaur DNA, von Däniken is back with a new (2009) book called "History Is Wrong" - it lives, it liiiives!
...OK, that's a bit of ...
Posted by nickpelling on Jan 21st, 2010 - 35 comments.
Since the recent Austrian Voynich Manuscript documentary (where the age of the VMs' vellum was tested using radiocarbon dating), there has been debate about how vellum was created, stocked, sold, stored and used in and around the 15th century. The #1 issue is that if uncut pieces of vellum were routinely held for long periods (years? decades? centuries?), Voynich theories that require a later use dating ...
Posted by nickpelling on Jan 19th, 2010.
Stephen Chrisomalis, "anthropologist, linguist, historian, and all-around numbers guy" (oh, and author of the soon-to-be-released "Numerical Notation: A Comparative History"), recently blogged about being interviewed as a talking head for a Canadian TV documentary on the Voynich Manuscript, a show that will apparently be hosted by none other than (as he delicately puts it) "WILLIAM FREAKIN' SHATNER".
Chrisomalis seems pretty ...
Posted by nickpelling on Jan 18th, 2010 - 3 comments.
The ever-reliable BibliOdyssey blogger has posted up some more manuscript images, this time of Giovanni Fontana's "Bellicorum Instrumentorum Liber", who you may remember mentioned on Cipher Mysteries and in The Curse (p.129 & p.141). Sadly, my favourite Fontana drawing (the rocket-powered rabbit on a skateboard, folio 37r) is missing from the set, but plenty of other splendid ones ...
Posted by nickpelling on Jan 17th, 2010 - 2 comments.
Just in case you thought my recent list of upcoming talks was too UK-centric, here's a nice one from the US...
A while back on Cipher Mysteries, I mentioned the 200-year old challenge ciphertext sent to Thomas Jefferson by UPenn maths professor Robert Patterson. But in a PhysOrg.com article (linked from the Daily Grail), there's news of a lecture ...
Posted by nickpelling on Jan 16th, 2010 - 7 comments.
Web-journal SCRIPT (est. 2009) aims to publish articles / videos / pictures / (OK, pretty much anything, really) on "abject textual forms including: code arrays, asemic writing, graffiti, tattoos, and any other marginal(ized) scripted utterance". Unsurprisingly, for its next issue the editors have put out a call for roughly-5000-word up-to-the-minute belletristic commentaries on the Voynich Manuscript and ...
Posted by nickpelling on Jan 15th, 2010.
Here are some upcoming events that Cipher Mysteries readers might well enjoy:-
A nice little bit of codicology to start with: Dr Kathryn M. Rudy, "Dirty Books: Quantifying Patterns of Use in Medieval Manuscripts Using a Densitometer" - 5.30pm, 20th January 2010, The Courtauld Institute of Art, Research Forum South Room. Free.
"Medieval manuscripts carry signs of use and wear. The ...
