A short numerical ciphertext called Cyphral Distich in an edition of Logopandecteision by Sir Thomas Urquhart was solved by AI (Claude Fable 5.1), as announced by Geby Jaff (Vals AI) on 31 August 2026.
It is remarkable that Fable 5.1 was simply told to solve an unsolved cryptogram (one that is deterministic and not ultra-hard) and autonomously picked up this and solved it without any human intervention. What looks like an ordinary numerical cipher turned out to be a book cipher.
Right after the announcement, sceptics pointed out that the ciphertext is not present in the 1653 edition available online and the decryption could not be reproduced.
Actually, the ciphertext is found at least in an 1834 edition and using its text (different from that of the 1653 edition) reproduces the decryption. This was pointed out at least by Jozef Krajčovič（facebook, 5 September 2026), kjfriedo (comments on Bruce Schneier's blog, 9 September 2026), AI時短ラボ (17 September 2026). But because sceptic views continued to be professed, I prepared my own verification here, and uploaded a new article in Japanese, "AIが人間の介在なしに17世紀の暗号Cyphral Distichを解読したのは本物だった".
Urquhart also left a second ciphertext called Cyphral Octastich and solved it in a similar way. Daniel Bourdeau, who also used Fable 5.1 to solve many ciphers including those on my list, verified the solution. He independently applied the rule found by Vals AI to reproduce the announced reading, though some numbers were "one word off".
kjfriedo (comments on Bruce Schneier's blog, 10 September 2026) had also partially verified the solution.
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