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Whodunnit?

 

So who devised this puzzle if it wasn't Elgar? I was, for a time, convinced that the author was A G Denniston, already identified as the long-serving Head of GC&CS - but the 2nd part of the X Y Conundrum doesn't fit for Denniston. Perhaps a contemporary, who knew Denniston and that his daughter was named 'Y'? The 'Y' dates the message to some time after 1925 and D-Notice 6/66 seems to narrow the date span to between c1936 and early 1937, when the message first appeared in print. It turns out that the name of the cryptographer is hidden in the various component parts of the message not yet used. By combining the graphics (alla steganography?), his name is revealed and fits the bill in that he :

  • was a skilled cryptographer and cryptanalyst

  • was working for GC&CS in the 1930s

  • was a firm friend of A G Denniston and his family

  • was specifically deployed in training potential recruits from universities in the likely event of hostilities with Germany

  • had served with the King's Own Scottish Borderers and would therefore have been exposed to the North-East dialect

 

To reveal the name, we use CV6, CV4, CV3 and CV1 (the unused bit) and piece them together.

 

[I've made a very small adjustment to the font used in one of the graphics - for the sake of clarity; also, note that the CV4 and CV3 shapes are in reverse image.]

 

To see the bits assembled, click here

 

Conclusion

 

So, there you have it. A cipher sent by Elgar to Dora? Or a pre-WWII crypt training exercise?

 

On the one hand, Dora wrote that the message was sent by Elgar (and the hoop characters are those used elsewhere by Elgar). Against that, we have the solution presented here. Ask yourself 'what are the chances of all of this fitting togther in the way it does and not being correct?'. To recap, we have a complete cryptographic system, consisting of:

  • a 6-segment Running Key that points to a mid-1930s date and refers to a mystery nuz ban (D-Notice 6/66) being the hearcy o' the daemon

  • segments 4-6 of the Running Key that form a 3-part conundrum using the unknowns X and Y

  • a message Indicator and Keyphrase (split over the 2 parts of the message) controlling the stuttering key from within the Plaintext

  • 2 complete Type IV Quagmires substitution systems (ie - 4 Mixed alphabets), recovered back to their originating Running Key phrases

  • several variants of transposition systems

  • a Plain text that makes sense and is biographically correct (house name and town, Alice, Edward, piano tutee '86, wed at Brompton Oratory)

  • a cryptic crossword-like abbreviation which explains the full stop in the cipher after char 65

  • the name of the cryptographer hidden within the system cryptovariables (and suggestive of him being the Class Instructor)

 

I leave you, the reader, to draw your own conclusion. Thank you for taking the time to visit this website - and hopefully getting this far.

 

If you have any queries or suggestions for improvements/clarifications - please drop me an email (via the Contact Me page).

 

 

 

Dorabella - Full Decrypt

Allan Gillespie

May 2015

 

Postscript. December 2016

 

What of the mystery news ban? I haven't yet got any further with tracking down 6/66 - BUT I ran a search for "news ban - 1936". The result was most interesting. I have pasted a couple of links below but the story is essentially the same - namely, that there was indeed a news ban in force (for several months) in 1936, apparently operated under a gentleman's agreement by the editors/proprietors of the various national newspapers. There is a further angle to this, which I will report on in due course. For now, here are 2 (of, no doubt, several) links.

 

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/2707571.stm

 

https://www.theguardian.com/theguardian/from-the-archive-blog/2011/dec/09/edward-simpson-affair-press-1936

 

 

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