Solution of William Perwich's Transposition Cipher (2/2)

Regarding the unsolved transposition cipher of William Perwich posted at the TNA blog on 4 August and my blog on 19 September, Matthew Brown sent me his solution on 28 September (GMT).

He found the first line can be disregarded as null and only the first 21 letters in each row are significant, corresponding to the scheme for Gascoigne. He observes "... keeping whole columns of text in each row makes the cipher much weaker than Morland's original, as you can simply write out all the ciphertext rows as columns and then permute to make words. Not very secure!"

The deciphered text reads:
"the souldiers grumble much that the king is of late growne cool tewards them and gives them not the encouragment in their addresses as hee used. they complain hee is wholly given up to his mistresses who are no enemies to 97 nor peace & consequently dissuade the 60 96 pursuing the french manufactere what vigour knows that peace can onely advance his designs. I heard a great man say that the 61 sayd to his brother he wisht him not to oppose madams going for 40 becaus her journey was for the interest of his king somewher upon most do boast of a hall"
 

This is substantially the same as the result obtained by another team reported separately, with some difference close to the end. 

 

Solution of William Perwich's Transposition Cipher (1/2)

Regarding the unsolved transposition cipher of William Perwich posted at the TNA blog on 4 August and my blog on 19 September, Norbert Biermann made a breakthrough on 27 September (GMT). While the ciphertext rows have variable length, he suggested that "each line represents a single column of the grid" with a variable number of nulls added at the end. He observed that such use of nulls is consistent with the instructions to Southwell and to Gascoigne.
If the grid thus obtained by removing nulls beyond the 21st position on each row is correct, the remaining problem is likely to be an ordinary columnar transposition cipher.
When George Lasry applied his solver next day, he immediately came up with a promixing preliminary result. While there were still some odd columns (in the deciphered text), Norbert proposed removing the first column and rearranging the remaining odd columns. George found supplying two missing letters in the ciphertext further improves the deciphered text. At this time, about 90-95% was solved. (Occasional transcription errors had to be corrected.) I also joined the discussion and we further discussed code numbers. Now we are fine tuning the final text. (The deciphered text reads: "the souldiers grumble much....")
While we were fine tuning, an email came ing reporting an independent solution.

A Wish to End Hunger from Wartime Experience in a Crypto Unit of the Author of Anpanman

Anpanman is the hero of a popular Japanese picture book series for kids. Its creator, Takashi Yanase (1919-2013), served in a crypto unit in the Japanese Army during WWII. I uploaded a short article in Japanese about his wartime career.
I found this by googling because I recently learned in a TV serial inspired by the lives of Yanase and his wife that what seems to be a childish episode (like giving out anpan, a sweet bun filled with red bean paste) is actually rooted in his deep desire to end hunger in the world.
Yanase's crypto unit did not go through intense combat during the war but suffered greatly by starvation. Yanase once said he wanted to convey the message that "you can end hunger by sharing and you can live together even with people you don't like".
The reversal of values following Japan's defeat in 1945 had a profound impact on Yanase. He said, "The one value that never gets reversed is devotion and love.... If someone is dying of hunger before your eyes, you give them a piece of bread. That is the starting point of Anpanman."

(Photo taken by my son in 2023.)

Correspondence between Emperor Ferdinand III and Governor of the Spanish Netherlands (1634, 1635, 1640)

I updated "Unsolved Historical Ciphers" with information I mentioned in the last few posts and further added entries about Emperor Ferdinand III.

An Undeciphered Transposition Cipher of William Perwich, an English Agent in Paris (1670)

An undeciphered ciphertext in a letter from William Perwich to Lord Arlington, Paris, 9 April 1670 NS (TNA SP78/129, f.180) is presented in a blog post of The National Archives (TNA). (I thank Norbert Biermann for drawing my attention to this last month.) It appears to be a transposition cipher, given the letter frequencies as well as the occurrence of abbreviations such as ye(=the) or yt(=that).

My transcription of the ciphertext is here, which is slightly different from the version given on the TNA blog. I grouped some letters (e.g., "QR" on the first line and the second last line) but I'm not so sure of this. Actually, without such grouping, there are exactly 500 elements (excluding the last "likelyhood"), which is plausible in a transposition cipher, suggesting a transposition matrix of 25x20, 20x25, 10x50, etc.
Assuming columnar transposition (a Dutch example from 1675), I (manually) tried various matrix sizes (not limited to the factors of 500) and looked for matrix dimensions that might allow transposition of columns (or rows) to align Qs and Us, but it was not successful. (I assumed transcription of Q and U was correct.)

The TNA blog points out a possibility that this employs Samnuel Morland's scheme (see my article quoted therein) used by some English diplomats at the time. Indeed, Sir William Temple wrote in 1669 "Mr. Perwick wrote from France for a Tryal between us" about "Sir Samuel Mroland's Cypher".
Actually, the transposition scheme proposed by Samuel Morland is not limited to rectangular matrices, but can employ a triangle, a pentagon, a hexagon, or even more irregular patterns. But considering that "ruled papers" were supplied, I think use of non-rectangular matrices is not likely.
We may consider various patterns for inserting nulls by studying known examples.

The letter is calendared on p.82 of M. Beryl Curran (ed.) (1903), The Despatches of William Perwich, English Agent in Paris, 1669-1677 (Wikimedia Commons), which silently omits the paragraph in cipher. (The first paragraph of the letter belongs to another letter in the calendar from the same date addressed to Sir Joseph Williamson, with some difference in wording. Probably, the calendar omits such repetition to different recipients.)

Variable-length Numerical Code in Austrian Archives

Given a ciphertext in digits continuously written without a break, its deciphering requires breaking the stream of digits into individual code groups. Although various schemes to allow it have been known for Italian ciphers, I noticed more elaborate schemes are documented in the Austrian archives, which are described in my new article, "Variable-Length Numerical Code in Austrian Archives". Some undeciphered ciphertexts (probably of a more basic type) are also presented.

A French TV Documentary on the Codebreaking of Mary Stuart's Letters Premiered in Paris

The 2023 discovery of more than fifty ciphered letters by Mary Stuart (which I reported here) received worldwide media coverage. The story of Mary Stuart, with a particular focus on our codebreaking, has now been made into a French TV documentary, Marie Stuart, l'énigme des lettres codées. The program not only portrays the tragic queen's later life through high-quality reenactments and interviews with historians, but also highlights how her coded letters were deciphered, featuring interviews with the three of us, the authors of the original paper. (Yes, I appear in it!)

The program is scheduled to air on ARTE in France on 27 September (program guide). Ahead of the broadcast, the world premiere took place on 16 September at the BnF -- the French National Library where Mary's coded letters had been preserved for centuries without being recognized as such).

The trailer is available on YouTube.

Cipher of Imperial Ambassador Juan Perez (1527)

The cipher used in a letter from Juan Perez to Emperor Charles V turned out to be the same as the one used by his predecessor, Juan Manuel, of which I uploaded my reconstruction yesterday. Although I listed the letter in "Unsolved Historical Ciphers", it seems to be calendared in CSP Spain. (I will update relevant articles when my PC comes back from repair.) 

 

Correspondence of Imperial Ambassador Juan Manuel (1522)

I updated the article uploaded the other day to cover a cipher between Juan Manuel and Charles V under a new title "Correspondence in Cipher of Imperial Ambassadors Alonso Sanchez and Juan Manuel (1522)".
Although the 28 letters from Juan Manuel to the Emperor are labelled "Non-decrypted" in DECODE, I noticed the first page of decipherment is visible in all but two of these records. Decryption may be found in the archives for the remaining two (R9501 and R9515, of which at least the former is calendared in CSP).

Correspondence of Imperial Ambassador Alonzo Sanchez (1522)

I reconstructed a cipher used between Alonso Sanchez and Emperor Charles V and uploaded it in a new article "Correspondence in Cipher of Imperial Ambassador Alonso Sanchez (1522)". It is similar to known ciphers for other ambassadors at the time, in the tradition of the Spanish ciphers from the time of Ferdinand and Isabella.
This will allow reading many undeciphered letters, including the two in the DECODE database that I reported in May in "Unsolved Historical Ciphers". (For some of the letters marked "Non-decrypted" in DECODE, plaintext is avaiable. So it is advised to check before working.) For example, the beginning of one of the two I reported in May, R9509 (which is recorded more fully in R9596) can be read as:
- - - - - A [xix] de es-t-e escrevi a vuestra magestad a-z-i-en-do-l-e s-a-b-e-r lo que lo-s de esta r-e-publica me r-e-s-p-o-n-di-e-r-o-n a c-a-b-o z-e [s/t...?].