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.
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