Compete to crack secrets lost to history—for fun, clout, and (no) profit
The long diagonal slashes separate letters; wider gaps divide words. What look like cipher groups are ordinary International Morse written on the card. A fixed standard alphabet reads every closed group, so there is no additional secret substitution key to find.
The key test is local and repeatable: decode each group, then encode the resulting letter again. Every group on both cards returns exactly to its recorded dots and dashes. The words also join the surrounding English without repairs. [2]
| Card | Recorded marks | Reading |
|---|---|---|
| HCP1433 | .../..../.-/.-../.-.. ..././. -.--/---/..- -/---/--/---/.-./.-./---/.-- ..../---/.--./. -.--/---/..- --./---/- ..../---/-././.../- .-../---/...-/./.-. | SHALL SEE YOU TOMORROW HOPE YOU GOT HONEST LOVER |
| HCP1432 | -.-/../-./-../-././.../... ---/-. .../.-/-/..-/.-./-../.-/-.-- ...-/./.-./-.-- -/../.-././-.. .-././.-/-.-./...././-.. ..../---/--/. -..././.../- | KINDNESS ON SATURDAY VERY TIRED REACHED HOME BEST |
The block breaks represent the source edition’s semantic groupings; they do not pretend to reproduce every physical wrap across the scan.
My D. G. Thank you for your letter of this a.m. also for the pretty P.C. [SHALL SEE YOU TOMORROW. HOPE YOU GOT] home safely. I [wish?] all [one or two crossed words] to see [the/that?] [crossed word]; [he?] is a fair [HONEST LOVER]. L. M.-
Square-bracketed capitals are exactly decoded marks; lower-case brackets identify uncertain open handwriting. The greeting, next-day meeting, and safe-arrival question are secure. The crossed prose around “honest lover” is not secure enough to identify whom that phrase describes. Neither the printed inland-postage notice nor the watermark may be mistaken for missing handwriting.
My D. B. Thank you dear for all your [KINDNESS ON SATURDAY], assuming I am A.1., but am I? I trust you were not [VERY TIRED] when you [REACHED HOME]. I am so awfully lazy. Hope you are well. Yours [BEST] friend, Louie.
A.1. is the source wording. “But am I?” is the most likely reading of a crowded open sequence, and the final letters of Louie are pale. Punctuation is editorial.
Both cards address Mr. G. Groves at 90 Westbourne Road, Barnsbury, N. The ornate address hand, numerals, blue-black ink, upside-down message orientation, and mixed script layout agree. Tottenham postmarks place them ten days apart. These source features support a common sender more strongly than a shared catalogue name alone. The signatures Louie and L. M. are compatible, but do not prove a surname or civil identity.
Every marked group is read; a short piece of ordinary cursive on the earlier card is still uncertain. The phrase “honest lover” is deliberately concealed, but its role in the damaged surrounding sentence is not resolved. This is intimate private traffic, not proof of a particular relationship between named people.
Both portal records already carried a Morse tag, though their broad category was “Substitution.” The method is prior public knowledge. The 28 August 2026 item, address, phrase, and local-corpus checks found no earlier exact-item plaintext. The new work is the source-joined edition and exact block verification, with private and unindexed priority still open. [3]