Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP Posting-Version: version B 2.10.1 6/24/83; site oakhill.UUCP Path: utzoo!watmath!clyde!burl!ulysses!mhuxl!ihnp4!houxm!houxz!vax135!cornell!uw-beaver!tektronix!hplabs!hao!seismo!ut-sally!cyb-eng!oakhill!ed From: ed@oakhill.UUCP (Ed Rupp) Newsgroups: net.crypt Subject: Beale Cypher rebuttal (long) Message-ID: <152@oakhill.UUCP> Date: Thu, 12-Jul-84 21:23:58 EDT Article-I.D.: oakhill.152 Posted: Thu Jul 12 21:23:58 1984 Date-Received: Wed, 18-Jul-84 02:16:16 EDT Organization: Motorola Inc. Austin, Tx Lines: 126 For those of you who didn't see it, my second posting contained the cyphers, the DOI, my notes and the pamphlet. <149@oakhill>. For the record, I don't know if the cyphers are real or not, and haven't been convinced one way or the other. I do know that I'm hooked on the subject as a puzzle and take the stance that there is a solution. Here are my comments on the subjects raised by Marc Kenig and Jim Gillogly: Legalities. I'll worry about legalities when I crack the cyphers. :-) Why is B2 the easiest to crack? Because it doesn't contain information that is sensitive. Why is B2 so verbose? As mentioned by another author, "Telegraphese wasn't invented until the telegraph!" Besides this, the time involved gave Beale plenty of opportunity to encode the messages. He had (at least) from January 1822 to the spring (March?) to work on the cyphers while staying at Morriss' inn. Transporting gold/silver from Santa Fe. What about river boats? Once you get to the Mississippi it should have been easy to get to Virginia. Also note what B2 says about exchanging some of the cargo for jewels "to save transportation". Might this imply that they were paying someone to move it for them? Why use DOI for B2, then less obvious keys for B1/3? See my notes about possibly using the DOI for generating a one-time pad. It's clear to me that B1 is related to the DOI because of the strings. Even if it's a hoax, the Gillogly strings imply the originator used the DOI somehow. No Spanish records of the expedition? Why would there be records? While you're at it why not wish for articles in the Virginia newspapers like: "Beale expedition finds gold/silver, buries it in local cemetery". The Gillogly strings. (1) If B1 and B3 were just part of a hoax, why put the strings in at all? Wouldn't it be better to make them really random to keep people searching for the right key document? (2) The only reasonable conclusion I can draw is that the key to B1 is related to the DOI also. This does not rule out that another document might also be used, but I think I can count on the DOI as being part of the key. (3) I concur that Hammer's "pun" suggestion is not the solution for the reasons you mentioned. What about my suggestion of a table with the alphabet along the axes and filled with numbers from the DOI? (4) The strings as a "signal" to the decoder: Probably not a signal from Beale to Morriss because Morriss was supposed to have the key anyway. The strings are definitely a signal to the codebreaker. (5) "doodle" hypothesis: Why repeat the same letter? Or why not put perfect strings in more places? Why does B2 reference B1 & B3? This is the best argument I've heard from the hoax side of the fence. I can't think of anything plausible but note that the numbering of the cyphers is in question. The BCA literature contains speculation that the ciphers were on 8 sheets of paper, but I think this related to Clayton Hart. Errors in B2. Mostly the result of misnumbering the DOI at a few line breaks. Correcting for this, there are only two or three places where the cyphers are in error. In these cases the same number is used for different letters. The originals were subject to copying errors when the pamphlet version was being written. Also, errors do not imply pain. Errors imply sloppy work. B3 too short. The expedition was made up of close friends: If only a few families were represented in the party then B3 could be much shorter than one would expect. The Originals are missing. This is, to put it mildly, "unfortunate". Extremely frustrating is more like it. The Hart version of B2 has obviously been adjusted to match the DOI, creating decades of confusion until the pamphlet was found. Ward's version of the DOI has corrections applied to it too, but not the same ones as I use. I may be too close to my own work, but I think my explanation of how the errors in B2 came about are more plausible than the Ward pamphlet corrections. If true, this leaves only Morriss or "Beale" as originators of the hoax. Or maybe you believe that Hart created the cyphers, wrote the pamphlet and his booklet "The Beale Ciphers", with the pamphlet version having subtle errors and the alphabetical strings in B1, then grossly changed B2 in his document? ---------- end of comments, begin new questions --------- What about all of the "fives" floating about in all 3 cyphers? (1) B2 prefers numbers divisible by 5 (and 10), B3 avoids them. Each cipher prefers one remainder: B1%5==1, B2%5==0, B3%5==1 and avoids another: B1%5==2, B2%5==4, B3%5==0. See my notes for details. (2) An unexpected number of the elements beyond ~900 in B1 are divisible by 5. (this is kinda weak) (3) 1005=X in B2 which is hard to explain since no word near that in the DOI even contains an X. (4) A shift of 5 for elements above 600 in B1 extends the longest string, and changes one string from AABAD to AABCD. The author of "The Beale Papers" What progress has there been in identifying the author of the pamphlet? In the June '82 BCA newsletter Aaron mentions that he has a small list of candidates and remarks that interest will either increase greatly or subside to a few diehards if he has correctly identified the author. The hoax hypothesis. To my knowledge, there is no evidence one way or the other for the hoax theory. So far, all details of the story that can be checked out (by somewhat fanatical researchers) have proven true: Mrs. Morriss' obituary verifies that she died in Ward's house. Ward's application to the Library of Congress for the copyright of The Beale Papers has been retrieved. Is there any evidence that *any* statement in the Ward pamphlet is false? I would really like to see some so I could put this damn thing down. Finding a rough draft of "The Beale Papers" among Edgar Allen Poe's effects would qualify. :-) Ed Rupp {ihnp4,seismo,gatech,ctvax}!ut-sally!oakhill!ed