UK cryptographers fail to crack World War II code found on dead pigeon

http://thenextweb.com/insider/2012/11/23/after-weeks-of-trying-uk-cryptographers-fail-to-crack-world-war-ii-code-found-on-dead-pigeon/

by talleyrand • 14 years ago

5 3 14 years ago

thenextweb.com

talleyrand• 14 years ago

For brevity's sake, the code is:

AOAKN HVPKD FNFJW YIDDC

RQXSR DJHFP GOVFN MIAPX

PABUZ WYYNP CMPNW HJRZH

NLXKG MEMKK ONOIB AKEEQ

WAOTA RBQRH DJOFM TPZEH

LKXGH RGGHT JRZCQ FNKTQ

KLDTS FQIRW AOAKN 27 1525/6

n-gauge• 14 years ago

Some things I noticed when looking at the orginal scanned image: (http://cdn.thenextweb.com/wp-content/blogs.dir/1/files/2012/...)

The NURP text part contains numbers - why is number 76 on bottom one aligned under the 194 as if this is a sum (or subtraction)? suggesting the person who wrote this knew that this was important.

Why is The Time of origin box underlined? is this to show that this number (1522) is to be used? Also note the style of the number 2 varies as if done by different people.

Back to the code itself, a comment has been made that there are 27 blocks with what looks like a time at the end. Was this inserted here as a kind of checksum to stop any additions to the coded message?

As a side note, if you subtract the NURP numbers: 40-37 = 3 and 194-76 = 118, grouped together (using the 2 in the Number of copies sent box):

31 18, swap to make the date 1831, and use the 6 as day in a month.... I'll let you google that!

andrewcooke• 14 years ago

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4821517

UK cryptographers fail to crack World War II code found on dead pigeon

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