MW Codes, Ciphers, and Puzzle Series: The Ottendorf Cipher

 

This segment of MW Codes, Ciphers, and Puzzles talks about the Ottendorf Cipher.  Those of you who have watched the movie, National Treasure, are probably familiar with it, but just might not remember the characters saying the specific name for what the cipher was in the movie.

In the popular film, National Treasure, there were numbers hidden on the back of the Declaration of Independence which turned out to be an Ottendorf Cipher.

The Ottendorf Cipher is a form of Book Cipher.  Its ciphertext is made up of numbers in groups of 3, and these numbers correspond to positions in a book (or other type of text).  Most often the numbers refer to Line, Word, and Letter.

To encode a message, the encoder needs only to utilize a piece of text written within a book (or other location) to indicate letters to create a message.  The decoder needs to then know the ‘Key’ (the text) of which to apply the numbers of the ciphered message to.

For example, in the case of National Treasure; the book/texts were the Silence Dogood letters.   The Silence Dogood letters were letters written by Benjamin Franklin.  He used the pen name, ‘Mrs. Silence Dogood’ in order to be published in his brother James Franklin’s newspaper, the New England Courant.  Ben Franklin had tried to publish under his own name, but his writings were turned away.  Using the pen name, Franklin was finally able to have 14 letters published.  His brother eventually discovered it was Ben and was furious. The letters stopped.

But anyway….

So in the movie, the numbers found on the back of the Declaration referred to the lines, words, and letters found in the text of Franklin’s letters.   Applying the list of numbers to the Dogood texts revealed letters spelling out the message, ‘The vision to see the treasured past, comes as the timely shadow crosses in front of the house of Pass and Stow.’  It was another clue in the movie and led to a different location.

However, unless someone knew the ‘key’ (as they figured out), the message the list of numbers hid was secure.  The book or Ottendorf cipher is very difficult to break without knowledge of the correct key.  A popular code (with two unsolved) which is known to have used the book cipher is The Beale Papers.

In the text below, a person can apply the following numbers to reveal a message for practice.

2-1-4   5-1-2   8-7-1   1-2-1   3-12-3

11-1-1   1-4-2   7-1-5

8-7-1   5-1-1   7-3-2   9-1-3    5-1-2   1-3-3   16-4-6

The first letter is E.  This is found by applying the first 3 numbers of 2-1-4:  to the  2^nd line, 1^st word (life), and 4^th letter lifE, for E.

Can you solve the rest?

E ?