Vatican ciphers are difficult to solve even with computer algorithms that can solve homophonic ciphers in an instant. This is because they used variable-length symbols written continusouly without a break, as I reported in "Variable-Length Symbols in Italian Numerical Ciphers" in 2017. I succeeded in solving three such ciphertexts found in the French archives, as I reported in "Identifying Italian ciphers from continuous-figure ciphertexts (1593)" (Cryptologia).
"Deciphering papal ciphers from the 16th to the 18th Century" by George Lasry, Beáta Megyesi, & Nils Kopal, now included in Volume 45 of Cryptologia, studied many ciphertexts in the Vatican archives systematically and identified no less than 16 keys. I should have mentioned this when the paper was published online in June 2020. Until now, I mentioned it in "Unsolved Historical Ciphers" only as a footnote to "New Vatican Challenges." Now, I mentioned it in a separate entry "Papal Ciphers from the 16th to the 18th Century."
No comments:
Post a Comment