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Cryptic Code Stumps Experts
moonboy writes "From the CBSNews.com article: 'The experts who cracked Nazi Germany's secret codes are tackling a 10-letter enigma that has stumped fine minds for more than 250 years - D.O.U.O.S.V.A.V.V.M. Former code-breakers from Britain's World War II intelligence center at Bletchley Park set out this week to decipher a cryptic inscription on an 18th-century monument at an English country estate. Legend says it reveals the location of the Holy Grail. Some believe it is a private message to a deceased beloved. No one knows for sure."
It is from the 18th century, not from an Enigma machine.
The D and M are below the rest it says in the article.
XML is like violence. If it doesn't solve the problem, use more.
My appologies if this was already obvious.
Good old google shows a relatively interesting page with respect to this with more potential background:e nnes-sion.htm l
http://www.veling.nl/anne/templars/r
XML is like violence. If it doesn't solve the problem, use more.
Not sure what's in the cbsnews.com article (American TV news *rolls eyes*), but in the PA News article it does say:
Looking at just the letters is misleading. The letters are on a monument with a mirror image of a known painting, and even within the letters, the D and M are positioned differently, and there are the words 'Et in arcadia ego' with the image.
Add to that that other aspects of the monument may be significant, or there may be significance in the context of other monuments in the garden and/or other entities.
Now as to whether it will be solved, can be solved without knowledge of an inside joke, or even contains interesting subject matter at all is one issue. If it does have meaning, I would give it better odds of being figured out than a plain 10-letter inscription.
XML is like violence. If it doesn't solve the problem, use more.
No, that's Up-Up-Down-Down-Left-Right-Left-Right-Select-Start ... which is also a popular backdoor code in many other video games from that era.
Bletchley Park tries to crack a 250-year mystery: Do 10 letters at stately home lead to Holy Grail?
Allergy advice: Contains eggs.
what type of answer could satisfy such a short "code" better?
One that matched the letters?
Properly called the Konami Code. It has variations, such as the 60 lives for Bad Dudes on NES (Awesome sidescroller asskickin' game.) U D U D L R L R B A B A Select Start on the second controller. :)
"Why do you consent to live in ignorance and fear?" - Bad Religion
I was looking through all these posts to see if anyone had placed a link to a picture of the actual monument, and couldn't find one, so I poked around a bit, and found a photo of the monument here. Just click on the one on the right and you can see a bigger version.
You are in error. No-one is screaming. Thank you for your cooperation.
There is an academic article discussing the purported relationship between the "D.O.U.O.S.V.A.V.V.M" code and the Holy Grail: The Mysteries of Rennes-le-Chateau and the Prieure du Sion. The article is by Dr. Steven Mizrach of Florida International University.
The book discussing the subject is: Holy Blood, Holy Grail. This is the book that inspired (or was ripped off) by The Da Vinci Code.
The Disinformation page on the subject is: here.
Only Women Bleed (Sex, Sharia remix)
I don't see how the U fits. If the word was "you," that'd be lame but acceptable. I don't think U can be used for "your" though.
"The question of whether a computer can think is no more interesting than that of whether a submarine can swim" -EWD
No, that's Up-Up-Down-Down-Left-Right-Left-Right-Select-Start ... which is also a popular backdoor code in many other video games from that era.
Actually, It's "Up-Up-Down-Down-Left-Right-Left-Right-B-A." The "Select" you're remembering was to choose two player mode, while "Start" of course started the game--but neither of the last two were actually part of the code.
This was the standard "30 lives" (NOT infinite lives) cheat on NES games by Konami, and not just "many other games from that era."
What part of "shall not be infringed" is so hard to understand?
Posting to my own response, but oh well...
I finally found some more information and pictures of the inscription. See the BBC Radio 4 program from May 12th. Includes an audio interview with the Bletchley Park director.
Whoever designed level 61 in Frozen Bubble is a sadistic bastard.
The Phaistos disk is a little different from the other examples you offer, because the disk is not encrypted, or made purposely hard to read; it was mean to be easy to read, and that's why the same thing is written in two different writting systems on the front and back of the disk.
But the real reason I responded was to point out that the Phaistos Disk has (at least tenatively) been solved, by Steven Roger Fischer, who describes it in his book "Glyphbreakers". The message is a call to arms, asking cities and kings to contribute ships and arms against an invasion of the area.
I think it is likely the Voynich manuscript is a hoax, done either for fun or to make money selling the document.
The shortness of the text is a key issue as you point out. Claude Shannon also had some sort of formula that used the lengths of the encrypted and decrypted bodies, and the complication of the proposed encoding scheme, to express the liklihood of that particular decoding over any other. I wish I understood that math enough to explain it well to others, because I think it would stop of this "bible code" superstition.
Then, drawing upon some of what one person has posted to that BBC Radio article too, you'd have:
;-)
"Out 'ure own sweet vale Alicia vanisheth vanity 'twixt deity and man."
Sounds good to me.
Mystery solved.
Whoever designed level 61 in Frozen Bubble is a sadistic bastard.
The francmasons usually use *very long* abbreviations (just look at obituaries -- altough I don't think masons are *that* public in many countries). This happened in England, so I won't be suprised if it turns out that this monument has some significance for francmasonry, and that D.O.U.O.S.V.A.V.V.M. is some kind of message for them.
There's a story like that in Stanislaw Lem's "Cyberiad". Might be the one you're thinking of. Basically, one character sends messages to another one; the messages are intentionally trite, with no hidden meaning whatsoever, but everyone thinks that it's a fiendishly complicated cypher. In the end, it turns out that the only purpose of the messages was to discredit the recipient in the eyes of his paranoid master, who, unable to discern the "secret", simply assumes the worst.
It seems abbreviated phrased on tombstones was a common practice, ie. (from wikiquote)
* Non fui, fui, non sum, non curo.
o Translation: "I was not, I was, I am not, I don't care." (found on tombstones abbreviated NFFNSNC)