Despite The Dorabella Cipher‘s brevity, its link to composer Sir Edward Elgar (who wrote it) has brought it a cult following over the years. Like other unbroken ciphers, it has appeared as a mysterious motif in TV plays, novels, and even recently in a children’s book (The Orphan of the Flames).
At first sight, it looks to be merely a straightforward simple substitution cipher of the kind that pen, paper, and an agile mind should crack relatively quickly. But what is mystifying is that even though Elgar apparently used precisely the same pigpen-like (3 sets of 8 orientations each) cipher alphabet elsewhere in his writings and notes, the letter-for-symbol replacements he used there make no sense when applied to his Dorabella Cipher. The key seems to match the lock, but doesn’t open the gate.
Moreover, given that the ciphertext’s statistical distribution sits awkwardly with those of natural languages, code-breakers’ numerous attempts to shoehorn their preferred substitutions into the cipher’s three short lines come across as clunky and false (at best). Worst of all, I’m sorry to say that even prolific cipher-solver Tony Gaffney’s ingenious and elegantly-structured decryption failed to please pretty much anyone apart from him.
However, the upside to all that grim cryptanalysis is the indisputable truth that Elgar messed around with language quite a lot, typically in a playful and mischievous way. In general, he loved subverting the rules of language, speech and music, which arguably culminated in his famous Enigma Variations, which some people like to call ‘musical cryptograms’ because many lightly parody (for example) various close friends’ speech and laughter rhythms.
Yet what has long tipped my own judgment against the Dorabella Cipher’s being a cipher of any sort is that by 14th July 1897 (the date of the note), Elgar (who wrote the note) hadn’t known Dora Penny (to whom or for whom the note was written) very long at all; and they never communicated in any kind of cipher before or after that date. But even so, my opinion was no more than a hunch, based only on various modern references on Elgar’s life I’d read… not very satisfactory, but that’s how these things tend to go.
Anyway, having spent far too long reading and relying on secondary sources on this particular cipher mystery, a few weeks ago I decided to instead go right to the source of the story – Dora Penny’s book “Edward Elgar: Memories of a Variation” (I bought a copy of the 1946 second edition, which has rather more information about the Enigma Variations than the first edition), written under her married name “Mrs Richard Powell”.
What I read there only served to strengthen my historical argument against The Dorabella Cipher’s being a cipher at all. Elgar and Penny first met on 6th December 1895, and the cipher was only the third letter Elgar ever wrote to Dora (if indeed, as she points out, it is a letter at all). (Also, he only started calling her “Dorabella” in 1898, so there’s a case to be made that its name isn’t chronologically accurate… oh well!) From all I could see, it would defy common sense if he had sent her something written in an deliberately intractable cipher: no matter how much of a fascination he personally had with such things, cryptography of any sort was not a discussion subject the two friends seemed to have shared at all.
And yet what we see does so resemble an enciphered cryptogram, a paradox which ultimately gives it its place at the Cipher Mysteries top table: for it really ought to be a simple cipher, but it surely is not one. And I find it hard not to hear Elgar’s voice saying to Dora Penny exactly what he said to her about the Enigma Variations (one of which is ‘hers’) – that surely she “of all people” would be able to unwrap its central mystery, its hidden themes. Wouldn’t his cipher, too, be steganography – hidden in plain sight?
As to the content of the note, I don’t believe that the newly married Elgar would have sent Dora Penny, for all the fun they had together (going out to the races, seeing Wolverhampton Wanderers, reading maps, flying kites, etc) a love letter. So in all probability, I think that what we are looking at here is a three line note or letter from him to her, in broadly the same joking and playful manner that he adopted in his other letters to her (though probably not as Byzantine in lexicographical complexity as later letters would become), regardless of the particular manner in which that effect is achieved.
The only other clue I have to offer is that in July 1897, the Elgars were living in a house called “Forli” (named after the talented Renaissance painter Melozzo da Forli, who incidentally gets mentioned a few times in Elizabeth Lev’s rather good The Tigress of Forli) in Malvern in Worcestershire. And so I wondered whether “Forli” and/or “Malvern” might be effective as cribs into the cryptogram, for Elgar would typically head even very short notes with his current address (several of which are charmingly reproduced as inserts in Dora Penny’s book). OK, it’s not quite “HEILH ITLER” at the start of Enigma messages, but you gotta work with what you’ve got, right? 🙂
And so with all these fragmentary clues in mind, I stared and stared and stared at the Dorabella Cipher, trying to see what Elgar (mistakenly) thought Dora Penny would see straight away. And then I stared somemore. After a (fairly long) while, here’s what I noticed:-
Essentially, I suspect that Elgar was so certain that Dora Penny would know what he would be saying in a short note that all he felt he needed to do was to write the general form of the words (even presented in the form of a ciphertext-like medium) and she would still be able to ‘read’ them. [Unfortunately, this proved not to be true!] So, I believe that what we are looking at could well be more like Elgar’s improvised steganographic attempt at a mind-reading trick than a traditional ciphertext per se. Such a process would (probably) produce something like what we see: a non-mathematical stegotext that fails to have the kind of rigorous statistical profile that “proper” ciphers would.
I’m the first to admit that it’s far more of a wobbly observation and a loose speculation than a rigorous proof: but what I’m proposing is that the Dorabella Cipher could turn out to be a quite different class of object from that which code-breakers have been trying (unsuccessfully) to crack. It’s not the end of the road here, but it might possibly be the very start of one… hopefully we shall see! 🙂
“Worst of all, I’m sorry to say that even prolific cipher-solver Tony Gaffney’s ingenious and elegantly-structured decryption failed to please pretty much anyone apart from him.”
The fact that my solution failed to be appreciated does not make it wrong!
rather it shows up the inadequacies of those just dabbling in old ciphers.
Tony
Actually, I do appreciate the ingenuity and elegant cipher structure of your decryption. It’s just that I don’t honestly believe in mixing anagramming with cryptography!
Tony
I appreciate it. Not that I know anything about decryption. But it sounded like a cleaner version of an egg-throwing fight, or a weird version of a pillow fight – so it’s good by me. 🙂
Nick
What anagramming?
It is ‘backslang’, a simple transposition cipher – common to the time (see 2 contemporary examples below)
DAAER oter Ditheer ndaer Elenher. Ewer iveler taer Utneyper. Idneyser sier taer Radfleldber Ollegecer. Erceyper taer heter Ospitalher. Evening Standard, Thu 1st Aug 1889
MA petite Marie, nod efto raur hsuf nke swoton gnihb tae. 8. 10. 9. 1. 21. 15. 7. seutno yadta 9.8. 7. – 22 – 13 niaw tidal orsei amo dneb ius eriw onll tliaf. – J’en suis. Evening Standard, Mon 11th Nov 1872
it was by considering how difficult the second of these would be to solve if the word divisions were removed and the whole encipherd using Elgar’s symbols, that led to the solution.
It is this ‘backslang’ combined with his simple substitution alphabet and his love of word play that made it so difficult to solve.
There is no ingenuity in my solution, it is just a matter of plodding along and amassing all the relevant facts, and sorting it all out.
It is erroneous of you to misrepresent it as an anagrammed solution.
Cheers Tony
Tony: well…
B-ltac-ei-a-rw-unis-nf-nnellhs-yw-ydou
inieyarqatn-nte-dminuneho-m-syrr-yuo
toeh-o-tsh-gdo-tneh-m-so-la-doe-ad-ya
–>
B-lcat-ie-a-wr-usin-fn-nshllen-wy-youd
intaqraycin-net-dminuenho-m-srry-you
theo-o-ths-god-then-m-so-la-deo-da-ay
–>
B hellcat i.e. a war using effin’ henshells(en)? why your
antiquarian net diminuendo?? am sorry you
theo o’ tis god then me so la deo da aye
While I can see a part of this as backslang-like, my judgment is that most of it has wandered over the line into the world of anagrams. “intaqraycin-net-dminuenho” doesn’t work for me, sorry!
Nick
Well it works for me …. but then I’ve been to the Elgar museum, read his letters to Dora and others, been through his musical scores at the B.L. etc. etc. done the research – it’s not my fault if garbles what he’s doing!
Cheers Tony
Tony: ah, then you’ll know well that Elgar didn’t call Dora “Dorabella” until 1898, so the first word “B” in the 1897 text can’t be short for “Bella”.
Hi, I fiddled with Cryptocrack and when trying a Vigenère “Interrupted key” decoding, an interesting sequence appeared. The key found by Cryptocrack itself was “AMBURY“, I think it’s the old name of Hanbury, a city in Worcestershire. The resulting sequence is:
BLTOBEWARWINISBETWELLVREFADININWEMAREATNNHERMININSHOAREARYINTOSHOTSHUCUTBEHANSOLDCEARYA.
It could be divided this way:
BL/TO/BE/WAR/WIN/IS/BET/WE/LL/REFADIN/IN/WE/M/ARE/AT/NN/HER/MININ/SHO/ARE/ARY/INTO/SHOT/SH/U/CUT/BE/HAN/SOLD/CE/AR/YA
Here’s my ‘bad’ interpretation (sorry, I’m Italian):
BL… TO BE WAR. WINNING IS BETTER. WE’LL RE-FADING IN. WE M… ARE AT NOON. HERE MINING SHOT. ARE ARY… INTO SHOT SH.. . U CUT BE HAN… SOLDIERS. CE AR YA
So I think it’s a message related to some war… is it possible?
M.E.: it’s possible… but fairly unlikely. Vigenere ciphertexts normally have quite different statistics from what we see here.
I’m hoping you will be directing your child’s attention to the aforementioned book. Sounds like something I would have thoroughly enjoyed while reading Nancy Drew. So, you now have an idea of just how “ancient” I am!
heh!
http://unsolvedproblems.org/S12paper.pdf
Steve: I covered Tim Roberts’ claimed decryption back in 2009:-
http://ciphermysteries.com/2009/09/18/dorabella-latest-news
Apologies in advance for the language, but I really just have to point this out.
Tony, your decryption has the phrase “effin’ henshells“. What is “Effin'”? Is it slang for “F’ing” which is short for “f*cking”? Do you really think Sir Edward Elgar would use that phrase?
Here is some research on the word ‘f*ck’.
It existed in some form early on, but it didn’t become a popular cuss word until after WWII. Of particular note, it says “The abbreviation F (or eff) probably began as euphemistic, but by 1943 it was being used as a cuss word, too.”
Therefore it’s highly doubtful that anyone in 1897 would use the word “effin” (or even ‘f*ck’) and most definitely not Sir Edward Elgar in a letter to Miss Dora Penny.
Hi all. I have decoded the dorabella cypher. It’s brilliant, and not a love letter. I posted it on my facebook, and wanted to post it here. I can’t figure out how to load the photos here…could someone provide me some info on that? (While I’m good at codes, I’m a bit lacking in a few computer areas.)
My decrypt is (my punct.):
Forli, Malvern.
Bon ? (16th char is unresolved),
A and Dai (=Alice and I) opin’ (=opine)
met St Swithin eighty six.; wed at Brompton Oratory but owed takc …….. (final 8 chars dodgy due to ambiguous cipher chars)
Pingback: El código Dorabella y otros enigmas de Elgar | Matemoción | Cuaderno de Cultura Científica
The first two words fail as you have R twice using two different symbols.
The index of coincidence is 0.05854 which is close enough to 0.0667 for “normal” English text for a mono-alphabetic substitution cipher.
This is the real solution.
ciphertext:
AIBJQCUJTDKEWXENEECIIEXSDSVKLUEUCUJTHJBEEBCVWUEK
ECFLWXSTTSKLBLCFLBXFMVLBECFWLXJIVLCJXSJ
Key:
PSTYEHKWBARIGMXJFVOLDUNCZQ
Plaintext:
PBS AFT DALYRENCE MEET B BECO YOUR IDEDTD ALWASE E STUNDER
E THINC OLL OR IS IT HIS CH GUISE THNIC ABU IT ACOA
Converted to normal words:
Problems after dalliance meet is because your identity always a stutter I think all or is it his charming guise? Think about it (acoa).
Links:
https://github.com/ShadowWolf387/DorabellaCipher
https://github.com/ShadowWolf387/CryptoHillClimber/tree/master/release
See my work of 02MAR14 on ” DORABELLA : ONE STEP FORWARD , TWO STEPS BACK … “. Here is the deciphered message. ” BE IT CLEAR NOW YOU FINALLY KNOW WHY WEDNESDAY IN OUR QUAINT IN HOME SERMONS YOU DON’T SHOOT THE GOOSE THAT LAYS A GOLDEN EGG “.
You did well staring at this cipher 😉 Looking forward to seeing what reaction you have to my solution
James M, what is your solution to Elgar’s ” DORABELLA CIPHER ” ?
I’m currently waiting to hear back from Nick.
James Mulliss: ah, yes, sorry ’bout that, I’ll get onto it…
Rick, do you have an email address I can contact you on?
Never mind, I have now uploaded my cipher solution, you can find it here:
https://jamesmulliss.wordpress.com/the-dorabella-cipher-solution/
James, Very interesting decipher of the Dorabella Code. I tried to post on your site , but I was unable to do so. It makes sense. What do you think of my work on it ? Thanks.
Thanks Rick. I think that Elgar was the type of person that used every opportunity to really communicate a message whether it be by cipher or music. Think about all the effort he put into the Enigma Variations, many people were able to build a strong connection between his music and the people that he was trying to musically “draw a picture of”. And if he put a lot of effort into even a note to his friend then he would’ve made sure it meant something. And we can’t both be right about what Elgar was trying to communicate with Dora Penny about if you know what I mean. 🙂
The real clincher would be to find out what Alice Elgar’s letter to Dora’s stepmother was about.. If it were possible to find out what was in the letter that Elgar slipped his enciphered note into. Because I imagine Elgar may have read his wife’s letter or she would have mentioned to him what it was about. If for example the letter was about selling the Forli property and if my decryption of the note being about Elgar asking Dora how much she would bid for the house is correct then that would settle the matter once and for all I would hope.
I just spent a while rewriting much of my page so that it has a much clearer logical progression of thought and also added some more diagrams. I will have a look into why comments aren’t working as well!
I found I had made a mistake with one letter reading column/row instead of row/column and also found a couple of wider gaps I had missed. This means that some of the letters have had to change, but the message is essentially the same. It now renders “Am askn max bid” instead of “answe max bid” which seems more of a likely way to write. Page has been updated.
There is also one more detail, steganographic perhaps, that I haven’t pointed out yet but I will get to that tomorrow.
As I promised yesterday, there was one more thing I wished to point out. There’s one spot in particular where I found it difficult to determine where the critical space(s) might be. There’s one spot with a group of 8 symbols with even spacing in between and no double lines and since a checker-board cipher based on a 5 by 5 table can’t function with groups greater than 5 we might be in trouble:
https://jamesmulliss.files.wordpress.com/2019/11/dora_blank.png
But Elgar provides a clue by shaping the symbols to create an invisible arc, thus joining 5 of the symbols together:
https://jamesmulliss.files.wordpress.com/2019/11/dora_arc.png
Now we have a group of 5 followed by a group of 3 and this combination, when referring to the table, creates the letter X.
See my 06JUN16 posting on this site. I believe that I have successfully deciphered the Dorabella Code.
Hi, I haven’t posted in a while but I think you’ll find the last four symbols spell the word End just like the first letters say Forli Malvern
Regards,
James
Or possibly encl, abbreviation for enclosed as is common with letters
James
One possible idea I had was that after the Malvern it switches to Morse code, the first two symbols if they are dots spaced apart would represent E and E. Elgar often referred to himself EE in letters. The rest of it is a bit of a dead end in this regard though
Regards,
James
ShadowWolf
on June 5, 2019 at 6:21 am said:
The first two words fail as you have R twice using two different symbols
I totally disagree
Hi Nick,
I’m curious. In all your reading on Elgar is there any evidence that EE ever called his wife Alice a nickname like Al?
James
I HAVE TO UPDATE MY PAGE.
Lol
James Mulliss: I don’t recall Elgar referring to Alice as Al, no. 🙁
I understand that was probably the case. As you will see from my latest update though, the situation may have warranted it 🙂 Sorry for filling up your page with my comments. Please check your email you should have an email from me shortly…