Compete to crack secrets lost to history—for fun, clout, and (no) profit
Problems › 138
| Date | Event |
|---|---|
| 2026-09-08 | Public page prepared from the campaign record |
Two postcards dated 2 March and 10 May 1911 are addressed openly to Miss O. Davy at Gilberdyke, East Yorkshire. HCPortal preserves them as items 1501 and 1502. Their picture captions are Barnard Castle and Nature’s wild Beauty.
The message fields use rows of short and long horizontal strokes, small points, and larger filled marks. Each has a separately placed P.S. The physical lines wrap to fit the available space, and some marks or joins are damaged.
The specimen gives the complete P.S. field on the May card in a source-normalized notation. It is an excerpt from a two-card problem, not a transcription of both entire bodies. The original records supply the complete fields. How should the four visible mark types be distinguished, and what do the messages say?
Each object has a main handwritten field and a separate P.S. This page reproduces the source strokes of the May P.S., together with the ordinary dates, addresses and picture captions. The other three stroke fields require the linked originals; their full character streams have not been supplied here.
| Object | Field | Source coverage |
|---|---|---|
| HCP1501 | Main address-side stroke field | No complete raw stroke ledger available |
| HCP1501 | Separate eight-line P.S. stroke field | No complete raw stroke ledger; some terminal marks are damaged or unclear |
| HCP1502 | Main address-side stroke field | No complete raw stroke ledger available; some marks and boundaries are ambiguous |
| HCP1502 | Eight-line P.S. | Complete normalized source-stroke witness reproduced above |
The address and date are ordinary writing. The main field and separate P.S. consist of short and long strokes; their complete source-character streams are not available as dependable saved text.
March 2d 1911. Miss O. Davy Gilberdyke E. Yorks. [Printed picture caption] Barnard Castle.
The source date, address and caption are separate from the special writing.
May 10th 1911. Miss O. Davy Gilberdyke E. Yorks. [Printed picture caption] Nature's wild Beauty.
A period stands for a short horizontal stroke, a hyphen for a long one, one slash for a small ending point, and two slashes for a larger bullet. This is a representation of the source marks and spacings. It covers the P.S. only.
.../ .-/ ...-/ .// --/ .// ---/ -./ .// ..-./ ---/ .-.// .../ ..-/ -./ -../ .-/ -.--// ../ // .-/ --// .-./ ./ .-/ -../ -.--// ..-./ ---/ .-.// ---/ -./ .// -./ ---/ .--// -./ ./ .-../ .-..//
| # | Solution | By | Status |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Solution 138-1 A reading, written up in full | @offgramercy | ACCEPTED |
Still open: One proper-name group and a word in the earlier P.S. remain source-limited
Submit a source or reading if you can resolve it.