2021-10-23 17:07
I thought it would be good to collect my notes on the Tamam Shud slip together in a single post, hopefully this will give a little clarity. 1st December 1948, 6am Man found dead on Somerton… Read More
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Voynich Manuscript-related news, views, research and reviews.Covers historical codes, ciphers, and cryptography in non-fiction, fiction, radio, TV, film, music, art...
2021-10-09 23:22
Here’s a little cipher (semi-)mystery for you. The 20th century poet Edwin Morgan was so taken by the emerging world of computers that in 1949 he started collecting together files / sc… Read More
2021-09-19 21:37
A month ago, I exchanged a series of emails with a nice – though somewhat retiring – correspondent, who suggested that I might consider whether the Somerton Man was in fact Charl… Read More
2021-09-11 14:34
And yes, you have me to blame for it. So here goes… It all starts in Frascati… Today’s story begins in the Voynich Centenary Conference back in 2012, with – as I re… Read More
2021-08-22 22:40
I’ve just found a very intriguing reference to Anthony Petti’s (1977) book “English literary hands from Chaucer to Dryden” (a copy of which which I have of course ord… Read More
2021-08-20 23:32
I recently posted about my search for Edouard Keff, and noted that it was possible that he might have been born in Chateaurouge as a brother of Jean Keff and Pierre Keff whose troubled (bagn… Read More
2021-08-15 02:54
If you recall, a French journalist claimed that the real identity of mysterious wife murderer Henri Debosnys was in fact poetic fantasist Edward (Edouard) Keff: and that the journalist had b… Read More
2021-08-14 09:00
I recently emailed FSSA (Forensic Science South Australia) for an update on their forensic investigation into the Somerton Man. They very kindly replied: SA Police have carriage of the inves… Read More
2021-08-08 18:45
My last post discussed the various copies of Antonio Guayneri’s De Balneis still extant: since then, I have (with the kind help of Stefano Guidoni) managed to get phone scans of MS Tor… Read More
2021-07-28 23:00
Want to know about Antonio Guayneri? As always, Step One is to open Thorndike’s “History of Magic & Experimental Science” Book IV, and go straight to the index. OK: &ld&hell…Read More
2021-07-25 11:24
Even if we can’t (yet) read the Voynich Manuscript’s inscrutable ‘Voynichese’ text, and even if many (if not most) of its bifolios appear to be misordered and misboun… Read More
2021-07-24 17:55
As with just about all historical research, simply wanting to find things out isn’t enough: you really have to have a plan to guide you. And while I can see an awful lot of people who… Read More
2021-06-19 15:32
In her recent (2020) Manuscript Studies paper “How Many Glyphs and How Many Scribes? Digital Paleography and the Voynich Manuscript“, Lisa Fagin Davis builds up to the conclusion… Read More
2021-06-13 15:02
Like a constipated true crime podcaster, I’m currently perched on the edge of my seat waiting for something solid to emerge. Now that SAPOL’s forensic finest (surely) have the So… Read More
2021-06-09 20:55
For the last couple of weeks, I’ve been trying to work out if there was a way I could set up a funding page for a genealogist-driven collaborative effort to identify Henry Debosnys fro… Read More
2021-05-31 17:10
A fascinating email from long-time Cipher Mysteries commenter Paul Relkin has alerted me to a pair of ciphers by mathematician Paul Olum (1918-2001), who knew Feynman at Princeton, and then… Read More
2021-05-25 22:03
A couple of days ago, I listened to a ten-minute online Somerton Man piece on Radio National Breakfast with Fran Kelly, basically because Fran had Gerry Feltus phoning in to give his tuppenc… Read More
2021-05-22 16:34
A copy of Benedek Lang’s nice-looking book “The Rohonc Codex: Tracing a Historical Riddle” landed on my doormat this week, courtesy of The Penn State University Press (its… Read More
2021-05-19 07:32
As mentioned in a fair bit of Australia’s press, the exhumation of the Somerton Man has begun in West Terrace in the last 24 hours, with all the normal shots of PPE, tents, and mini-di… Read More
2021-05-12 13:31
While looking for lists of people “condamne a mort” in the tumult of 1871 France, I stumbled upon a list of 34 convicts who had escaped from France’s Pacific prisons in Nou… Read More
2021-05-08 14:13
Before moving on, I thought I ought to publish my last few notes on Jean Keff and Pierre Keff, in case someone passing happens to be trying to work out their family tree. (I should again str… Read More
2021-05-07 07:55
I was certain the French archives would have good, solid information on historical prisoners, so went looking for them. And that’s how I found the official French archive site filae.co… Read More
2021-05-04 20:00
I wondered whether Retronews.fr (the BnF’s old newspaper site) might have anything to say on the subject of Jean Keff and Pierre Keff. To my surprise and pleasure, it did… Escap… Read More
2021-05-03 00:49
A trawl through newspapers.com’s (paywalled) archive throws up various tidbits to do with fantasy-spinning wife-killer Henry Debosnys. For example, that his defence counsel consisted o… Read More
2021-05-01 09:12
Even if (and I would not disagree that it’s a big ‘if’) we accept that the 14×14 rearrangement of the d’Agapeyeff Challenge Cipher’s Polybius square outpu… Read More
2021-04-30 21:19
Some interesting correspondence in the last few days has brought the case of hanged murderer Henry Debosnys (along with his curious unsolved ciphers and his not-very-credible autobiography)… Read More
2021-04-26 21:22
I’ve been thinking a lot about the off-white tie found in the suitcase the Somerton Man famously left at Adelaide’s railway station. Only an American gangster (or perhaps poor ol… Read More
2021-04-25 10:23
If you are in the UK and have an interest in historical codebreaking, I’d recommend moseying over to PBS America (Freeview channel 84) this coming Wednesday evening (28 April 2021) at… Read More
2021-04-24 08:24
According to a big story in today’s (24 Jan 2021) Adelaide Advertiser (a huge thanks to all the people who passed it my way, very much appreciated!), an application by South Australian… Read More
2021-04-18 10:54
I’ve spent some time this week working on Alexander d’Agapeyeff’s 1939 challenge cipher, which seems (to me) to be a tricky combination of substitution cipher and transposi… Read More
2021-04-17 15:04
Though not quite as big a mystery as why boy band East 17 was so popular, Walthamstow now has its own cipher mystery: a series of curious graffiti-ed number codes. Reuben Binns started notin… Read More
2021-04-11 09:18
“So, how can I help you today,” smiled Dr Wayfit breezily but briefly, “Mr., uh, Smedley?” “I’ve been struggling in lockdown”, the man replied, look… Read More
2021-03-16 18:03
Imagine, if you will, that everything about the Somerton Man is somehow embedded in the name written on the back of the off-white tie found in the suitcase left in Adelaide Station. Can we d… Read More
2021-03-08 00:03
I’ve been raking over Ancestry.com, trying to take the search for the Somerton Man back to archival basics. For example: we have a first initial (T or J) we have a surname (Kean or Kea… Read More
2021-02-28 14:07
James Robert Walker’s life story, smuggled out of Pentridge Jail just before his suicide, was sensationally serialized in the Argus in September 1954 to October 1954. If you want to re… Read More
2021-02-20 14:29
Carrying on with the Somerton Man Melbourne nitkeeper research thread, here’s a timeline I’ve reconstructed for the (in)famous baccarat school that Christos Paizes (AKA “Ha… Read More
2021-02-13 23:17
I was recently reminded that, having got sidetracked by Triantafillos & Stelios Balutis, I hadn’t got round to returning to the Balutz line of inquiry. So here are some notes on Ba… Read More
2021-02-07 13:53
This is, of the course, the single question that bothered me most after writing my most recent post on the Somerton Man. As you’d expect, almost all the Keans/Keanes I found were Scott… Read More
2021-02-06 01:12
Ever the provocateur, Pete Bowes’ latest challenge concerns the fact that if you look at each of the four short uncrossed-out lines of mysterious text indented on the back of the Somer… Read More
2021-01-24 23:33
And yes, he could have been all three, or indeed none of them. But please bear with me, there’s a lot of ground to cover here. Boxing The background here is that I suspect that in the… Read More
2021-01-23 11:07
In a recent post, I briefly mentioned an unidentified hiker known as “Mostly Harmless” who had been found dead in a tent in Florida in the summer of 2018. He had a fat wodge of c… Read More
2021-01-17 16:49
Mauritius has long had a surfeit of treasure hunters, though also a shortage of actual treasures. In fact, in Alix d’Unienville’s (1954) “Les Mascareignes: Vielle France en… Read More
2021-01-03 19:40
Researching cipher mysteries is almost always ponderous and frustrating: it will doubtless take all of 2021 for the work I put in to the WW2 pigeon cipher and the Bernardin Nageon de l&rsquo&hell…Read More
2020-12-30 17:04
In the wake of Dave Oranchak’s epic crack of the Zodiac Killer’s Z340 cipher, which other unsolved ciphers might get cracked in 2021? For me, the way the Z340 was solved highligh… Read More
2020-12-26 23:03
Putting to one side the bombshell news that the Zodiac Killer’s Z340 cipher has been cracked, the other big cipher-related event in December 2020 was that Clarkson / Hammond / May&rsqu&hell…Read More
2020-12-11 18:02
Dave Oranchak posted today about how he (along with Jarlve and Sam Blake) cracked the Zodiac Killer’s infamous Z340 cipher. Here’s his video: Unsurprisingly (to me), it turned ou… Read More
2020-11-17 00:33
The Somerton Man, found dead by the sea wall on Somerton Beach in the early morning of 1st December 1948, has had innumerable speculative theories pinned to his unnamed corpse over the years… Read More
2020-11-08 12:41
Here’s an official document (from 1760, according to my notes) from the Mauritian Archives that my French is just not good enough to read completely. Can a French Cipher Mysteries read… Read More
2020-11-03 18:30
In my last Cipher Mysteries post, I floated the idea that when Bernardin Nageon de l’Estang famously wrote that… j’ai naufragé dans une crique près des Vaquo… Read More
2020-11-01 01:34
This “Carte générale” is a really great 18th century map of Mauritius held at the BNF, one that Cipher Mysteries commenter Anthony Lallaizon alerted me to. The BNF… Read More
2020-10-24 15:55
You might be interested to know that an interview with (relatively new) Voynich researcher Domingo Delgado was posted to YouTube a few days ago. In this, Delgado describes how he thinks the… Read More
2020-10-11 11:34
Everyone knows Macbeth’s witch’s ingredient list: Fillet of a fenny snake, / In the cauldron boil and bake; Eye of newt, and toe of frog, / Wool of bat, and tongue of… Read More
2020-10-10 11:30
Previous posts here have established (I believe) that the WW2 Pigeon Cipher was almost certainly encrypted using the British Typex cipher machine. So I think it would be a good idea to look… Read More
2020-10-02 22:10
This website may have been quiet-ish of late, but the lights here at Cipher Mysteries Mansion have been burning into the night. Yes: once again, I find myself hot on the trail of one of the… Read More
2020-09-28 23:20
I mentioned in a comment on Koen G’s recent post that I thought that Voynichese benched gallows (i.e. gallows that have a ch glyph struck through them) may well be nothing more complex… Read More
2020-09-20 17:10
I recently mentioned in a comment that my working hypothesis was word-initial EVA l- was a different token to EVA l elsewhere: and Emma May Smith asked me what evidence I had for that statem… Read More
2020-09-13 00:27
Here are some nice period photos for you, and a little challenge. 🙂 While looking on Trove for white ties (as per the one which was famously in the Somerton Man’s suitcase), I… Read More
2020-09-05 14:17
Since posting about Voynichese’s strange single leg gallows behaviours a few days ago, I have continued to think about this topic. On the one hand, it’s clear to me how little of… Read More
2020-08-31 17:01
I missed Virtual Typex‘s launch back in March 2020, but a Cipher Mysteries review is better late than never, eh? The short version: Virtual Typex is a gloriously techy bit of onscreen… Read More
2020-08-29 16:49
Anyone who proposes that Voynichese works in a ‘flat’ (i.e. straightforward) way has a number of extremely basic problems to overcome. For a start, there are the Voynichese&rsquo&hell…Read More
2020-08-22 00:01
Pretty much everyone who has had a look at the Somerton Man mystery at some stage ends up raking through Gerry Feltus’ book “The Unknown Man” for research leads to follow… Read More
2020-06-10 23:29
Paolo Guinigi was Lord of Lucca at the start of the 15th century: the Lucca archives hold the Governo da Paolo Guinigi (“GPG”), a substantial collection of his correspondence fro… Read More
2020-06-02 20:23
According to a news item I found just now, Mary D’Imperio died on 28th May 2020 in Springfield VA, at the age of 90. The details were relayed by her cousin Robert G. D’Imperio. V… Read More
2020-05-02 15:29
Apparently it’s Voynich Art History trivia weekend here at Cipher Mysteries. First up is this and this, both prints of Master E.S.’s “The Visitation” that I found rec… Read More
2020-04-25 15:23
As should be clear from the last few posts here, my Voynich research focus has recently turned to the wave of astronomical instruments that appeared in the German-speaking lands in the first… Read More
2020-04-18 17:04
It turns out that the timeline of theoricae planetarum I previously put forward was missing three important entries: Theorica planetarum [antiqua] (misattributed to Gerard of Cremona) Theori… Read More
2020-04-13 21:25
It struck me increasingly hard as I reached the end of my last post that I didn’t really know the history of astronomical volvelles in manuscripts. That is, pretty much all the astrono… Read More
2020-04-12 19:08
Back in 2006, I argued (in ‘Curse’, pp.58-61) that a series of seven consecutive circular diagrams in the Voynich Manuscript’s Q9 (‘Quire 9’) and Q10 probably r… Read More
2020-03-30 20:40
While idly flicking through the splendid ex-library copy of Hellmut Lehmann-Haupt’s (1929) “Schwäbische Federzeichnungen” that landed on my doorstep this morning, my e… Read More
2020-03-28 23:10
If, like me, you’ve been looking for a nice guide to illustrated manuscripts in the Universitätsbibliothek Heidelberg’s Cod. Pal. Germ. collection for a while, you’re… Read More
2020-03-23 00:42
While searching for the early 15th century German source images from which some images in the Voynich Manuscript were copied, we have so far found two manuscripts of the Welcher Gast (one fr… Read More
2020-03-20 23:57
A recent comment by Marco Ponzi on Voynich Ninja helpfully highlighted a 2019 comment there by Linda which pretty much everyone else had overlooked. She had previously suggested visual paral… Read More
2020-03-13 21:26
Here’s a nice article on Trove from September 1951 that I think sets a fair level of expectation about how car thieves and car theft worked at that time in Adelaide. Enjoy! 🙂 C… Read More
2020-03-10 15:24
It just struck me that I haven’t seen anyone suggest that the most useful part of the Somerton Man’s Juicy Fruit chewing gum packaging might simply have been the aluminium (AKA … Read More
2020-02-23 16:14
My recent “Pax Nax Vax revisited” post led me to a new Voynich hypothesis that I don’t recall reading anywhere. Given that (as Jan Hurych helpfully pointed out) our Voynich… Read More
2020-02-21 12:17
Back in 2010, I speculated that one of the oddly-unreadable lines of text on the Voynich Manuscript’s last page (f116v) might have originally read “pax + nax + vax”. Here&r&hell…Read More
2020-02-15 11:39
In a 2017 post, I listed the copies of Nicole Oresme’s (1368) “Treatise of the Sphere” (“Traité de l’espere“) that are still extant: * BNF MS Franc… Read More
2020-02-06 21:54
“The Ghost Hunter” is a fascinating article, well-presented in long form by Leah Sottile in the Atavist Magazine. It tells the story of how a secret poet by the name of Cameron L… Read More
2020-02-02 11:54
I’ve just finished reading @MargalitFox’s excellent book “The Riddle of the Labyrinth“, which untangles the skein of history around the decryption of Linear B to reve… Read More
2020-01-20 20:15
Let’s start with the original 26th Jan 1949 news story in the Adelaide News, the Sydney Daily Telegraph, the Geraldton Guardian, and the Age: Melbourne.- Two prominent M… Read More
2020-01-11 00:22
Towards the end of last year, I went through a period where I tried to finesse different ways of raking through the Australian archives to pursue the Melbourne nitkeeper research thread in t… Read More
2020-01-07 21:48
From 1991 onwards, John Walsh – the well-known host of “America’s Most Wanted” – received a series of ominous and threatening letters signed “SCORPION&rdq&hell…Read More
2020-01-01 11:32
Here’s a nice post from the BBC covering the Dyatlov Pass mystery, a topic I know a good number of Cipher Mysteries readers have an interest in. Lots of people – including the Ma… Read More
2019-12-25 00:30
It’s that time of year when a Voynich researcher’s mind turns to life’s most important questions. Such as whether it is possible to use Father Christmas to decrypt the Voyn… Read More
2019-12-01 00:03
When a comment landed here today from Diane O’Donovan about the (sometimes asserted, sometimes denied) connection between the Voynich Manuscript’s Q13 (the ‘balneo’ f… Read More
2019-11-24 02:48
A recent post on voynich.ninja brought up the subject of differences / similarities between Voynichese words starting with EVA ch and those starting with EVA sh. But this got me thinking mor… Read More
2019-11-15 22:32
There are plenty of things about Edward Elgar’s Dorabella Cipher that rarely appear in the countless gosh-wow sites that feature it on the web. And arguably one of the biggest of these… Read More
2019-11-09 14:17
On board the S.S. Ormonde (at the same time as both Triantafillos Balutis and Stelios Balutis) in February 1923, there was a very special passenger: Her Royal Highness the Grand Duchess, Pri… Read More
2019-11-07 11:30
Given that I’ve paid my findmypast subscription (and that money’s not coming back any time soon), I thought it might be interesting to look at the records it holds for Thomas Bea… Read More
2019-11-02 21:34
I thought I had gone through pretty much all the sources available online to find out about Triantafillos Balutis, the Melbourne waiter who the PRO Victoria flagged as possibly being the mys… Read More
2019-11-01 14:09
I just received this very helpful email from the Public Record Office Victoria, in response to a request I put in a few days ago to have a look at the Victoria Police Gazette 1945, 1946, and… Read More
2019-10-28 01:08
OK, stripping the Somerton Man’s story back, I’m still minded to believe that the Somerton Man was some kind of crim: and that the most credible piece of external evidence we hav… Read More
2019-10-20 21:02
As Derek Abbott liked to point out (particularly when he was trying to raise Somerton Man crowdfunding from Americans), we can easily imagine the Somerton Man having some US connection. This… Read More
2019-10-15 23:37
For some time, I have been looking at the Somerton Man case from the point of view of tangible evidence. For a start, the much-repeated belief that he was unidentified simply doesn’t h… Read More
2019-10-12 16:47
While (yet again) raking through Trove a while back for anything to do with the missing bookmaker’s clerk (and gambling nitkeeper) John Joseph Kean(e), I found two mentions (here and h… Read More
2019-10-07 21:27
Anyone in Dublin this week with even a passing interest in Ethel Voynich could surely do no better than drop by Dr Angela Byrne’s talk: Ethel Voynich, Transnational Revolutionary at 5… Read More
2019-10-05 23:50
While yet again raking through Trove for bookmakers’ clerk John Joseph Keane, I found another Keane: Jack Gordon Keane of Broken Hill. Back in 1916, this J. G. Keane was prosecuted by… Read More
2019-09-17 21:11
The normal scenario for Voynich fashion is for some short-run digital-print textile house (whether making T-shirts, hoodies or whatever) to put some nice evocative Voynich image on the stuff… Read More
2019-09-14 11:07
I was recently sent a fascinating (and, at 88 pages, substantial) dossier by François Parmentier on the Plougastel-Daoulas inscriptions. It’s a very pleasant read (Franço… Read More
2019-08-31 00:51
If asked who the greatest historical codebreaker was, would I point to Jim Reeds, Jim Gillogly, or even William Friedman? No! That accolade would surely have to go to Dan Brown’s Rober… Read More
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