Saturday, October 19, 2013

The Dorabella Cipher

It was the year of Queen Victoria’s Diamond Jubilee, 1897. Through a periscope, England was sailing along in all its hope and glory. That summer Edward Elgar turned 40 and was slowly emerging as the country’s greatest composer.
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On July 14, following a visit the previous weekend to some family friends, the Reverend and Mrs. Alfred Penny, Elgar spun off what looked like a drawing or scribble and gave it to his wife, Alice, to attach to a thank-you note. It was intended for Dora Penny, a 23-year-old ardent admirer, who sang in a local choral group and liked to dance.
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The scribble, known as the Dorabella Cipher, has never been decrypted and stands with such other famous unsolved puzzles as the Voynich Manuscript, a 240-page codex dating from the 15th century; the Phaistos Disk, an apparently Bronze-age piece of clay found in Crete in 1908; and the Zodiac Killer ciphers of the 1960s and ’70s.

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