Crossword Panic of 1944 | Hacker News Reader

Crossword Panic of 1944

historic-uk.com

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>Why, the officers demanded to know, had he chosen these five words within his crossword solutions?

>“Why not?” was Dawe’s indignant reply. Was there a law against choosing whatever words he liked?

That's one of those cases I kinda fear being in.

How do you prove you're not giving away secrets in some secret way when the clue is some random events in life that have little behind them other than happenstance.

Makes me think of something Camus would write about.

> How do you prove you're not giving away secrets in some secret way when the clue is some random events in life that have little behind them other than happenstance.

Isn't this the entire foundation of the fundamental right of innocent until proven guilty? Of course in practice it isn't so simple. In an extreme condition that is extremely unlikely, you could be found guilty exactaly for that reason perhaps. At what point statistically is it on the wrong side of "reasonable doubt"?

It seems that a lot of Rule of Law goes out the window when it comes to (apparent) matters of national security.

I think that’s often true, but it doesn’t seem to be the case here. The authorities saw something suspicious, they investigated, and ultimately it went nowhere. That’s exactly how it’s supposed to go.

Well as for a trial, probabbly not guilty.

I'm just thinking of assuring the local security folks that I'm not doing a bad thing / avoiding the hassle of them thinking I am. When I probabbly don't know what the bad thing even is.

The problem is that three-letter agencies aren't known to be big fans of due process...

> Isn't this the entire foundation of the fundamental right of innocent until proven guilty?

Well, not really, that's more about simply being accused not being enough to imprison or hang you.

An accusation is absolutely enough to be jailed. Due process and rule of law are fictions in our current society.

In that case, the probability of choosing 5 words so relevant at random (including the two main targets, the code name of the whole operation and the code name of the most crucial part of it) are so small that their suspicions were totally warranted statistically.

They tried to transform their suspicions into material elements and came empty handed, and left the man alone, which is the core difference between a democracy and an authoritarian regime.

However this coincidence is so strange that on that basis alone I am wondering if they did not miss something.

Read the footnote, the compiler had a habit of asking around for words.

It's even likely to be the other way around, that the generals who came up with the code name were directly/indirectly influenced by some common cultural influence that led to the same words.

The linked article is rather thin. There is more detail on Wikipedia [0], including links to more thorough Telegraph stories from 2004 [1] and 2014 [2].

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/D-Day_Daily_Telegraph_crosswor...

[1] https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/1460892/D-Day-crossw...

[2] https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/features/10789884/Who-put-s...

This almost reminds me of the Foundation series. Where with enough math/statistics one can extract the future. Except here applied to 6th graders, distilling the information they had heard, and breaking an operation that way.

6th formers are aged 16-18. I think 6th graders are much younger?

Correct. 6th form (lower sixth and upper sixth) is the two academic years prior to going to uni in the UK. 16-18 year olds.

It's an England and Wales thing, not a UK thing.

> I think 6th graders are much younger?

About 11-12 years old.

Yes, usually 11-12.

I can readily believe that they may have picked up Utah and Omaha from US soldiers' casual conversation, but if Mulberry and Overlord were being bandied about with enough frequency to have made an impression, I do not suppose they were very secret.

I first heard about this on the Omnibus Project podcast (Ken Jennings & John Roderick).

Here's the link if anyone would like to listen to some light-hearted discussion on the topic: https://www.omnibusproject.com/podcasts/the-d-day-crosswords...

I read a theory that the crossword maker had unconsciously picked up these words being used by kids, who themselves would like to hang out near soldiers that would use those code words.

That is mentioned in the footnote: “it was often his practice to call in 6th formers and ask them for words for inclusion. At that time the US Forces were liberally strewn through Surrey, particularly in the Epsom area and there is no doubt that boys heard these code words being bandied about and innocently passed them on.”

This sounds absurd to me. Ordinary soldiers are unlikely to have been told the codewords for their area of operations until the last minute. They certainly wouldn't have been told about other code words for other areas of operation that they were not part of!

I don't buy it one bit. I also find it unlikely that the bulk of the invasion force was in Surrey in May '44. I think they might have moved to the coast by then.

The wikipedia article on this topic also indicates that there is some reason to suspect that the crossword author was not being entirely truthful about it, but at the end of the day, who knows.

I’m having a hard time imagining what value putting code names in the crossword would have. Did they suspect the compiler was encoding information in the position of the words or something?

Seems like an unnecessarily hard way to exfiltrate data.

Based on what we knew of enigma and codebreaking at the time knowing frequently-used or high-value words and phrases may have assisted German codebreaking efforts.

Considering the circumstances extreme paranoia seems justified.

True, but you can still imagine why they'd be worried to find so many of these related code words regarding the most critical secret operation of the war being published in this cryptic fashion.

If you had limited bandwidth, but knew other agents existed, "have the other guy ask about Operation Overlord" would be a useful message to get out.

Although one shouldn't assume, the Abwehr was so totally outgunned in WW2 that they did not successfully insert any agents into Britain. All who landed were either converted to double agents (Some just volunteered without being asked) or captured (and presumably some "dealt with")

“Coincidences are strange and dangerous things.”

— Douglas Adams, Dirk Gently’s Holistic Detective Agency

BBC TV drama "The Mountain and the Molehill" (1988) at:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1nANoCftnK0

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