An Undeciphered Letter of Le Tellier to a General in Flanders (1657)

There is an undeciphered letter from Le Tellier to Marquis de Castelnau, dated 12 May 1657, for which I added an entry in "Unsolved Historical Ciphers". Below is my transcription. For a bit more information as well as Le Tellier's other ciphers, see the section "Le Tellier-Castelnau Cipher" in "Ciphers Early in the Reign of Louis XIV".

This may be a bit too short for cryptanalysis, but if the assignment of numbers is regular as in some of Le Tellier's other ciphers, there may be some chance. If someone succeed in solving this, I'd be eager to know.

Monsieur
Jay eu commandement de vous adresser la despesche du Roy qui sera cy jointe pour vous faire congoistre ses instructions sur la marches que Sa Ma.^te desire que vous fassiez avec les troupes estans au rendezvous de Rheimes et de Laon et de vous faire par^ent ces lignes que le dessein de Sa Ma.^te estant 71 49 q ~4 57 3 ~34 q= "13 ~20 ~34 q ~3 a c 15 "12 ~13 ~9 4 & ~13 ~20 h- ss 16 47 56 13 ~14 14 ~30 l 3 rp 33 ~14 p 51 ap ~28 ~10 8 "34 ~3 4 18 ~30 19 ~18 15 ~23 "48 p ~53 J- x- ~3 "13 18 ~28 ~33 h- y- ~28 12 ~8 20 ~33 "17 51 20 f ~27 ~23 "33 ~28 z- ~4 c 31 "32 ~7 3 l 62 "12 ~35 13 ~38 ~23 "33 49 ~14 c 9 66 5~ 20 ~34 h ~37 t 5 p- ~30 l 14 ff 33 ~22 20 7 m- ~2 42 15 50 61 6 ~12 19 16 35 ~22 8 "25 ~38 J- o 15 ~23 "40 ~17 13 ~2 ~7 14 l 62 ~24 a p ap- 13 f ~28 47 51 h- ~28 ~3 20 14 49 ~13 2 ~7 ~4 h 20 47 m ~27 ap ss f ~28 "24 ~30 l 13 oo 33 "33 q= "14 51 ~34 h 31 m ~30 ap ~28 ~23 ~2 "32 "13 "24 ~4 & ~3 13 69 t t f ~28 ~42 ~53 72

I thank Alexandre Pillon for the information about this. Another unsolved ciphertext he provided before is also awaiting solution (Adam Starhemberg (1758)).

Reconstruction of a Venetian Cipher (1552)

I succeeded in identifying the mapping between cipher symbols and plaintext elements in a letter of a Venetian ambassador (1552) in ASVe, "CX Cifra, chiavi e scontri di cifra constudi successivi", Busta 13 f.36-37 (DECODE R1845), which is now presented in "Venetian Ciphers with Superscripts". When I first posted the article in 2020, I couldn't do this and I simply presented the ciphertext and its decryption separately.

Once the deed is achieved, it doen's seem so difficult to think of identifying the first two symbols "rp5 m3" as "QUEST A", because "rp5" recurs close to the end and "m3" appears in multiple times. This time, I noted the succession of two symbols "p3 p3" and "K2 K2", which seemed to correspond to "ta ta" and "sa sa" in the decryption, respectively. (Later, it turned out that the transcription "sa sa" should be corrected to "ha ha", though the matching was right.) With these clues, symbols occurring more than once were identified one by one.

Sometimes, I had to abandon my identification. For example, at an early stage, I thought "pp0" occurring close to the beginning and the end was "in" ("Do-m-in-o" and "in Italiano"). It was only when the work got close to completion that I found this symbol was actually "no" ("Do-mi-no" and "in Italia-no").

As always, part of my trouble was that I could not read the decrypted plaintext. Repetition of the symbols allowed me to correct some part of my transcription. Below reproduces my initial transcription.

... rp⁵ m³ g⁶ e² d³ m³
r³ pp⁵ c⁴ mp⁵ lp¹ l² mp⁰ m² p³ p³★ pp¹ ep¹ n² pp⁰ fp⁰ g⁶ n⁶ c⁸ g⁷ e³
n⁴ xp¹ r⁶ np⁵ v² c² q³ cp⁵ e⁸ ap⁰ f⁶ c³ cp⁵ c⁸ c⁶ cp⁵
rp⁰ p⁴ k⁸ K² K²★ h⁵ c⁶ r³ dp¹ c² e⁸ n⁹ f⁶ p³ m³ np¹ c³ h² lp⁵
cp⁵ p⁴ r⁶ ap⁰ h⁴ mp⁵ b² N⁷ n⁸ d² a² a⁸ lp¹ x² d⁴ A⁶ p⁷ p³ l⁸
fp¹ ep¹ m⁴ n⁴ np¹ ♀⁷ h⁰ p⁰ a⁷ m⁴ m³ c² l⁴ pp⁵ t² m³ ap⁵ z⁷ cp⁵ rp⁰
l⁴ c⁷ d³ n⁴ a⁷ rp⁰ g⁴ n⁴ cp⁰ ♀⁰ m³ cp⁵ d² t² e⁸ ap¹ f⁶ tp¹ n⁶
K² np¹ c³ v⁹ c⁶ c² c⁹ np⁵ ep¹ a⁸ mp¹ ap⁰ c⁷ e⁴ b⁸
A¹ p⁴ g⁶ n⁸ m³ rp⁰ ap⁰ n³ c⁶ a⁸ v⁵ ap⁵ R¹ d⁴ m⁶ lp⁵ c²
l³ ap⁰ N⁷ g⁶ d⁶ k⁹ pp⁰ t² e² c⁷ m² rp⁵ lp¹ ep⁰ mp⁰ f⁴ c⁶

[decryption]
Questa cosa gia molti mesi e solicitata da Domino Nicolo Villario ilquale &ts mosta di esser fidel serviton della scr^ta v^a sa sanuto molta difficulta a consegnirt &ts de qui si suspicana, et egli teattasse tate negocio con intelligentia di lei icr i fauoz delle raggion del R-mo Patiarcha et finalmente lo sa consiguito di quel modo et uedera li scr^ta v^a della copia del decuto es so fatto teadus di Todisio in Italiano, er sara i queste alliguo Gry

The recontruction confirms that the same cipher was used in 1552, 1554 and 1556 (DECODE R1845, R1846, R1847).

"Deciphering Mary Stuart's lost letters from 1578-1584" is available as Open Access

I received a full-text request from someone for my coauthored paper, "Deciphering Mary Stuart's lost letters from 1578-1584" on ResearchGate. To my dismay, ResearchGate does not allow me to send it but does not provide means to communicate it to the requesting person. I hope he will notice this post.

The requested paper is open access and can be freely downloaded at
https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/01611194.2022.2160677

The pdf is 14.8 MB but the maximum file size allowed on ResearchGate is 3.7 MB. I looked for means to just sending an email with a link to the requesting person but there seems to be no such way. I have to say I'm not accustomed in navigating on this platform and it may be that I miss something.

I hope he will notice this post, or at least think of googling the paper title to reach the right website.

Telegraph Operator Leaked Union Commander's Name in US Civil War?

Ciphers in newspapers clippings in the papers of mathematican Charles Babbage are presented in my new article "Charles Babbage's Clippings of Newspaper Ciphers". Only one among the twelve remains unsolved, in which only the name of a brigade commander appears to be in cipher:

THE COMING MAN. - The New York Tribune states that a telegram was recently despatched to the Federal army directing to whom the command of a brigade was to be intrusted, and that the operator at the telegraph station declared the person selected to be Amjyrdkowasejow Deabxpeop. [annotated "Times Tuesday 13 Jan 1863"]

Did the telegraph operator leak the name? Could it be so important information to be carried in a newspaper in London?

(Edit: After first uploading this, I added one unsolved ciphertext from Evening Standard, 12 February 1870, seemingly in a simple substitution cipher.)

Emperor Charles VI

I mentioned Emperor Charles VI's letter partly in cipher in "Habsburg Codes and Ciphers", based on materials presented by Jakub Mírka. Now machine translation allows me to more or less read his paper, Jakub Mírka (2012), "The early modern cipher correspondence in the noble family archives deposited in the State Regional Archives in Pilsen" (ResearchGate) (in Czech according to Google Translate).

The letters are from Emperor Charles VI to Leopold Viktorin von Windischagrätz in the Windischgrätz Family Archive in the State Regional Archives (SOA) in Pilsen (in the Czech Republic).

One was sent when Leopold Viktorin stayted in The Hague as an envoy.
3 February 1720 (DECODE R5020; original R5019; key R5017)

Interestingly, the Emperor informs the recipient that the new cipher would be supplied in this or the next despatch to be used exclusively with him, while the old one would be used with the court office.

Other letters belong to the period when Leopold Viktor served at the congress in Cambrai (VUB).
13 April 1720 (DECODE R5022; original R5021; key R5018)
24 July 1720 (DECODE R5023; key R5018)
11 April 1722 (DECODE R5024; key R5018)

Another undeciphered letter interesting to me mentioned by Mírka is one from Johann Wenzel, Count of Gallas (Wikipedia), imperial ambassador in London, to Prince Eugen of Savoy in 1711 during the War of the Spanish succession. He says this is supposedly important.

Emperor Maximilian II's Cipher Letters

I already described the work by Kopal and Waldispühl on cipher letters of Emperor Maximilian II (1575) in "Habsburg Codes and Ciphers". The letters concerned are summarised in Table 1 of their paper in HistoCrypt 2021, to which the following shows record numbers in the DECODE database. (I present this as my personal note because it takes time for me to type the DECODE database name.)

R1472: Johan Kochtitzky to Maximilian II, 15 November 1574 "Letter D"
R1473: Johan Kochtitzky to Maximilian II, 22 February 1575 "Letter E"
(and in a different cipher)
R1407: Maximilian II to ambassadors in Poland and Lithuania, 23 December 1575 "Letter C"
R1412: Maximilian II to ambassadors in Poland and Lithuania, 24 December 1575 "Letter B"
R1471: Maximilian II to Johan Kochtitzky, 5 July 1575 "Letter A"

My Profile

I updated my profile at Academia.edu by adding a note that my current job title is a patent engineer (Wikipedia), not astrophysicist. I never call myself an astrophysicist but I'm aware I'm often called as such in media.

A Substitution Cipher in Chinese for Kids

I got a Chinese translation of a children's book that I mentioned when I reported a Korean version in March. I have been interested to know how the substitution table for Japanese syllabary is rendered in Chinese.

The Chinese language is written with thousands of Chinese characters, so unlike European languages with twenty or so letters or Japanese with some fifty kana, a substitution cipher is not feasible.

The book is Yutaka Hara, Kaiketsu Zorori, vol.11 ("Kaiketsu Zorori and the Mysterious Aliens") (Japanese: かいけつゾロリのなぞのうちゅうじん, traditional Chinese: 怪傑佐羅力 神秘的外星人). As expected, the substitution cipher is not based on Chinese characters but relies on the pinyin transcription of the characters. For example, the character 怪 is transcribed as g-u-ai in pinyin and (graphic) symbols for "g", "u", and "ai" are used to encrypt this character.

 

Coded Letters of Admiral D'Estaing (1779) and Marshal Berthier (1812) Transcribed

I uploaded my transcription of the coded letter of Admiral D'Estaing (1779) in "Unsolved Historical Ciphers". The ciphertext may be a bit too short, but the code is not very large, with the highest number 597.
I also uploaded my transcription of the available page of a letter of Marshal Berthier to Napoleon (1812). The code size appears to be 1200 and it would be difficult to solve analytically with this specimen.