Enlarge / Section of the so-called “Tavistock letter,” written by Charles Dickens in his idiosyncratic shorthand. The crowd-sourced transcription, now 70 percent complete, reveals a dispute between Dickens and The Times of London. (credit: Public domain) Last October, a collaboration called The Dickens Code project made a public appeal to amateur puzzle fans and codebreakers […]
Enlarge (credit: Reuters/Christian Howe) When Nazi naval officers tossed their ship’s Enigma encryption machine overboard, they probably thought they were putting the device beyond anyone’s reach. Blissfully unaware that Allied cryptanalysts in Poland and at Bletchley Park in the UK had broken the Enigma code, the Nazis had standing orders to destroy their encryption devices […]
Expand / Composite drawings of the Zodiac Killer. A coded message delivered with a brutal serial killer that hasn’t been captured was broken over 51 years later it had been shipped. The male defendant, called the Zodiac Killer, murdered at least five people {} to kill two in Northern California in 1968 and 1969. From […]