The following developed out of a discussion lead elsewhere with regards to a possible breaking of the Dorabella cipher. (I wonder if anybody ever followed the original point of the post, namely the link to Sarah Goslee’s site?)
I challenged the codebreaker’s method (applying a simple subsitution cipher and then “processing” the resulting intermediate text), and asked him to give me a random string of characters, and I would transform it — just for the kick, and to show the arbitrariness of it all — into a message from Churchill to Hitler using the same processing techniques he applied, namely the reversal of letter sequences, and the heavy use of slang (“Backslang” — Not being a native speaker, I replaced it with mock German).
Thereby I wanted to show that those techniques would always render something readable, no matter whether the previous substitution had been correct or not.
The message I had been given was a string of 87 characters which looked like this:
kinljtvlaqoefmeueetiiemrqrsod
vevtrlalneentsfveoetwdfmraarod
ndtwd’nmwxsdnetwfdmlisdtlsrl
First, I noticed that letters b, c, g, h, p, and z were missing, which altogether comprise about 14% of volume in english texts. The lack of “h” was most dearly felt, because it wouldn’t allow me to write “the”, “this”, or “thespian”, so I decided that “v” was actually “h”. (Since it is derived from a simple substitution, some guesswork is surely allowed?) I couldn’t really do a lot about the fact that the whole 28 characters of the last line contained only two vowels.
I then decided that Churchill would have written a mocking message to Hitler, and to do so he would use phonetical spelling and faux-German words. I also assumed that the “l” would have to stand in as an exclamation mark at times. Furthermore, character strings of the text may have been reversed, as in Dorabella.
Having done that, I arrived at the following (bottom lines in all caps):
kinljthlaqoefmeueetiiemrqrsod
KINJ!THLAQOFEMEUEETMEIIRQRSDO
hehtrlalneentsfheoetwdfmraarod
HTHERLALTNEENSFEHOTEWDFARMARDO
ndtwd’nmwxsdnetwfdmlisdtlsrl
NTDWD’NMWXSDENT….LISTDLSR!
This parses as follows:
- “KINJ!” — A mock address of Hitler as “King!” (deliberately misspelled, to put him in contrast with Churchill’s ‘real’ king)
- “TH” — “The”
- “LAQ” — Faux spelling of “lack”
- “OF”
- “E” — “your”
- “MEUEET” — Mock spelling of the German word “Mut” (“courage”)
- “MEII” — Faux “may”
- “RQRS” — A contraction of “requires” (with mock faulty grammar)
- “DOH” — “do”, with a pun on “duh”
- “THER” — “their”
- “LALTNEENS” — “latreens”
- “FE” — “Stalin” (The chemical sign for iron is “Fe”, and it is well known that Stalin translates as “man of steel”)
- “HOT”
- “EWD” — A contraction of “ewe’d” (“ewe” as in “female sheep”)
- “FARMAR” — mock spelling of “farmer”
- “DONT”
- “DWD” — “Dude”, a mock spelling together with the fact that “w” originated as “double-u”, ie DWD=”duud”. Perhaps “dud”.
- “NMWXS” — “Nijmegen’s”, in German “Nimwegens”. Speaking the consonants as a single string renders something like the german pronounciation
- “DENT”
- “WFDM” — I couldn’t transcribe. A very similar string (“wdfm”) appeared in the previous line, though in a different context.
- “LISTD” — “listed”, as in “recognized, being listed in a directory”
- “LSR!” — “loser!” Again, speaking the consonants as a string, renders the (english) pronunciation.
Which leads us to —
“‘King!’ The lack of your “mut” (courage) may requires: Do (duh!) their latreens! Stalin a hot-ewe’d farmer? Don’t, dude! Nimegen’s dent … Listed loser!”
Churchill seems to warn Hitler not to underestimate Stalin as a farmer with “ewes in heat” (a vulnerable farmer?). “Nimegen’s dent” probably refers to the failed operaton Market Garden, where the Allies lost large amounts of paratroopers in the area around Nimegen; “wfdm” might be an abbreviated vow of revenge. “Listed Loser” requires no further explanation.
Compare this to the supposed Dorabella solution —
B Hellcat ie a war using effin henshells! Why your antiquarian net diminuendo? Am sorry you theo o’ tis god then me so la deo da — aye
This took me about 90 minutes, plus time to write it up.
If that post title won’t attract readers, I don’t know what will.