Wednesday 26 October 2011

cryptid

The Daily Mail's science section (which is generally engaging and delightful) reports on an enigmatic breakthrough in code- breaking, won not by brute computing, which the cipher resisted, but by more creative and computer-aided approaches and determination, including those strange word-verification, anti-Turing authenticators that apparently prove one's sentience. Computer scientists have re-visited a mysterious and inscrutable 18th century volume (the Copiale Manuscript, housed at the Berlin archives of the Akademie der Kรผnste) from an unknown secret society and have managed to decode the first few pages, using the techniques described in the article, of the 105 page text. This preface apparently described a ritual hazing of an initiate into the mysteries of this Freemason-like order. It is not clear whether the order was occult or alchemic or something else. I am not sure either about what goes into the process of decoding, but it is interesting to speculate on the linguistic mysteries that might be revealed or secrets disclosed by building on this technique, and I do wonder why the rest of the text did not just unfold with the decoding of the initial pages. It turns out that some old ciphers are believed to be red-herrings, that the message is not in the surface text but in microprinting in the marginalia or coded deeper in every third or fourth letter or only revealed through coloured-lenses.  Maybe the tract will prove not so willing to divulge all its secrets.