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."

Comments

But that's not all...

[Junta]

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.

Found a site with a close-up photo of the monument

[The I Shing]

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.

Relationship to Holy Grail.

[David Hume]

I find it hard to believe that they'll find the Holy Grail from a 10 letter code.

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.

Re:I recognize that

[Zak3056]

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."