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Please Patiently Ponder Purported Poe Puzzle

Posted by timothy on from the distributed.net-won't-help dept.

grouchomarxist writes: "Salon has an article about a cryptograph attributed to a certain W. B. Tyler, possibly a pseudonym for Edgar Allen Poe. There is a $2500 prize for the person who solves the cryptograph." The Gold-Bug , which rates a mention in the Salon article, was by far the most spell-binding story in my old Horace Mann Reader, and it's the tale that first turned me on to The Divine Edgar. Could it be that the reason this cryptograph has remained unsolved for so long is that it is actually insoluble? Now that would be the ultimate posthumous practical joke. Even if you have no intention of trying to solve it, take a look -- the cryptograph itself is strangely hypnotic.

3 of 195 comments (clear)

  1. Are the two puzzles related? by Lionfire · · Score: 5

    Just a thought -- perhaps the first puzzle, which was apparently reasonably easy to solve, is a clue to this second puzzle?

    It could be used as a form of "key" to solve the second...


    Or maybe that's just my sick twisted mind enjoying the idea of having people struggle to understand something left behind for 150 years while the clues are sitting right there on the same page :)


    ...MoO!

  2. I solved it by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5
    It says,
    I poured hot grits down my pants while Natalie Portman was petrified and naked with ninjas and pancakes.

    FIRST POST!

    Way ahead of his time, Mr. Poe was.
  3. Diophantus' Arithmetica by Yardley · · Score: 5

    I have assuredly found an admirable resolution to this, but the margin is too narrow to contain it.

    And perhaps, posterity will thank me for having shown it that the ancients did not know everything.

    --

    --
    He lives in a world where those who do not run the client software of the omnipresent meme are unacceptable.