Compete to crack secrets lost to history—for fun, clout, and (no) profit
The black-ink message and the purple upper-margin line share two main sizes of stroke. Tall vertical strokes function as Morse dashes; short bent or slanting strokes function as dots. Freestanding round ink dots separate words. Recognizing this distinction matters because treating every dot as the same kind of mark would destroy the grouping.[1]
No custom substitution table is needed. The first three groups, .- .-. ., give ARE; -.-- --- ..- gives YOU. The same International Morse alphabet reads every visible, uncanceled group in both colors. A terminal six-mark group --..-- has the standard comma value. The catalog’s broad substitution label did not establish the actual system.[2]
| Physical line | Recorded mark groups | Reads |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | .- .-. . | -.-- --- ..- | | ARE YOU |
| 2 | --. --- .. -. --. | - --- | | GOING TO |
| 3 | -.-. .- .-. -.. .. ..-. ..-. | | CARDIFF |
| 4 | -. . -..- - | -- --- -. - [one source-cancelled group] .... | | NEXT MONT[cancelled group]H |
| 5 | - --- | .... . .- .-. | - .... .. ... | | TO HEAR THIS |
| 6 | --. . .-. - | --..-- | GERT , |
| Purple margin | .-.. --- ...- . | -- --- .-.. .-.. .. . | LOVE MOLLIE |
LOVE MOLLIE ARE YOU GOING TO CARDIFF NEXT MONT[one canceled cipher group]H TO HEAR THIS GERT, (no reply now.) Picture-side handwriting: Kind Regards Sallie.
One possible punctuated reading is “Are you going to Cardiff next month to hear this? Gert. Love, Mollie.” The question mark and reordered sign-off in that version are editorial. The black text actually ends THIS | GERT | --..--. Its separate round stop before the encoded comma is physically present, however odd that looks in a modern transcript.
All uncanceled groups encode back to the recorded long and short strokes. In MONTH, the writer blacked out a group between T and H. The cancellation is retained, rather than counted as an unknown letter that the solver has guessed. Native source inspection also corrects two portal names: the sign-off is Sallie, not Sollir, and the address is Miss Peggy Lewis, not Peggir Sewis. The rest of the address is not secure enough to publish. The cancel is consistent with 11 September 1904, but its locality is obscured.
Purple and black ink establish a color change, not two identified writers. The source does not settle the relationship among Sallie, Mollie, and Gert or the exact intended punctuation. The printed portrait of Mr. George Alexander does not identify the correspondent. This is a complete reading of the extant uncanceled cipher, with a deliberate deletion left visible.
HCP marked the object “Not solved” and supplied no key or plaintext. Bounded identifier, name, phrase, local-corpus, and historical-cryptography-index checks found no prior exact-item reading or demonstrated sibling. Simple Morse could have been read privately before; the negative search is not a universal priority claim. The scans remain private-collection sources and are not reproduced here.[3]