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Comment by frogpelt | Hacker News Reader

That title though.

Has anyone figured it out yet?

I tried for a while but am having trouble with the offsets (and possibly the correct edition of the DOI). The smartest way to get the offsets correct would be to copy the numbers from the image and cross reference them with the decrypted text. But who's got time for that? :)

Some Python code if anyone wants to play with it:

     words = doi.replace(',', ' ').replace('\n', ' ').replace('  ', ' ').replace(':', ' ').replace('.', ' ').replace("'", ' ').replace('"', ' ').replace(';', ' ').split(' ')
     words = filter(None, words)

     def getcode(w, i, offset):
          print w[i-offset][0],

     for code in [89, 263, 201, 500, 337, 480]:
          getcode(words, code, 0)

I used http://www.constitution.org/usdeclar.txt and deleted the header and title.

I tried that and got nothing.

The numbers and text are here: (http://cipherfoundation.org/older-ciphers/beale-papers/beale...) Credit to kencausey

I think you're probably right on your lucky guess (I see you edited it out, so I'll suppress the spoiler alert as well :)).

I was able to get something fairly close to that with variable offsets.

What text did you find it in?

I "roughly" got it using the DOI txt I linked above.

I tried again with the pre-mapped text you linked to, and got `e o a p s p` which is an anagram for `appose`... perhaps that is the word? "Appose" means "to place (something) in proximity to or juxtaposition with something else." Maybe I'm grasping at straws here...

Offset of +1 yields `b s a i t h` which is an anagram for habits.

Offset of -1 yields `a t a l b t` which is an anagram for Alt-Tab (which is roughly what I'm doing right now to get out of this :p)

I also tried all offsets within 0-7 for each character, to see if "CIPHER" could fit in that range. CI_H_R is possible but there is no P or E within +/- 7 offset of 201 or 337.

Here's the python:

    txt="""<<Pasted from http://cipherfoundation.org/older-ciphers/beale-papers/beale-papers-transcription/>>"""

    import re

    codes = txt.split(' ')
    codes = filter(None, codes)

    code2word = {}

    words = []
    for code in codes[0:-1]:
        try:
            index = re.search(re.compile(ur'\((\d+)\)'), code).group(1)
        except:
            index = index + 1

        word = code.replace('(%d)' % int(index), '')

        code2word[int(index)] = word

        print index, word

    for code in [89, 263, 201, 500, 337, 480]:
        word = code2word[code]
        print word[0],

Good luck

I was using ps to try to find it real quick: At first tried the DOI:

(Today's)

DOI (Today) 89 "by" 263 "such" 201 "all" 500 "of" 337 "to" 480 "has"

DOI (from Then) from earlier link:

89 / e 263 / o 201 / a 500 / p 337 / s 480 / p

Didn't see anything, so then I tried the article text itself. There was an "and/or" combination that I didn't know how to space so I took word X-1, X, and X+1:

89 of / two / years 263 tantalizing mystery of 201 remained / stubbornly / undechipherd 500 "American" / Dollars / I 337 locked / them /inside 480 punctuation / added, / the

89 o/t/y 263 t/m/o 201 r/s/u 500 a/d/i 337 l/t/i 480 p/a/t

Maybe that X+1 column is support to say "you d it?" Not sure. Having to divert attention now. Fun title though.

So, from the comment at the bottom of the article I played around with the article itself a little more.

If you separate the word innkeeper into two words you can get the following:

    89  years
    263 of
    201 undeciphered
    500 words
    337 inside
    480 numbers

You Win.

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