Progress

In 2012 I mentioned that Helen Fouché Gaines’ 1956 textbook Cryptanalysis: A Study of Ciphers and Their Solution ends with a cipher that’s never been solved. Reader Michel Esteban writes:

I think I found what kind of cipher Helen Fouché Gaines’ last challenge is.
In my opinion, it is a seriated Playfair of period 5 with two peculiarities:
– Zs are nulls in the ciphertext,
– Z is the omitted letter in the cipher square (instead of J).
If I am right, period 5 is the most likely reasonable period: we can observe no coincidences between upper and lower letters.
On the other hand, six reciprocal digrams appear: FD-DF, EC-CE, JN-NJ, JB-BJ, QL-LQ and GW-WG. These are almost certainly cipher counterparts of common reciprocal digrams (ES-SE, EN-NE, IT-TI, etc.).
I did not solve this cipher, because it is too short to use statistics. The only way to solve it is to use some metaheuristics (like Hill Climbing), but I have no computer!
I have no doubt you know someone that will be able to unveil the plaintext after having read these considerations.

Can someone help? I’ll add any updates here.

| Puzzles · Science & Math

Same Thing

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:October_sky_poster.jpg

In 1998, as aerospace engineer Homer Hickam’s memoir Rocket Boys was being adapted for the screen, Universal Studios’ research warned that women over 30 would not see a movie with that title.

So the name was changed to October Sky — the same 10 letters in a different order.

| Entertainment · Language · Trivia

The Roving Wazir

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mutilated_chessboard_problem#Related_problems

A wazir is a fanciful chess piece that can move one square horizontally or vertically, but not diagonally. This one finds itself in the upper left corner of the board. Can it make its way to the lower right while visiting each square exactly once?

Click for Answer
| Puzzles

Upgrade

https://archive.org/details/sim_strand-magazine_1903-03_25_147/page/356/mode/2up#page=357

From the Strand, April 1903:

This photo is of a cabin on one of the Flushing Line steamers. It has the peculiarity that, while showing a small room (cabin), on looking at it upside down [below] it gives an excellent representation of a very large room, which can be likened to a ball-room, with on right-hand side a doorway, large open fireplace, pictures, windows, etc., on left-hand a series of pictures and windows, with doorway at far end. — George A. Goodwin, 28, Victoria Street, S.W.

https://archive.org/details/sim_strand-magazine_1903-03_25_147/page/356/mode/2up#page=357

| Oddities

Finale

On Jan. 30, 1874, Tamil poet Ramalinga Swamigal entered his one-room home in Chennai and directed his followers to lock the door from the outside. If the door were forced open, he said, nothing would be found inside.

In May the government forced open the door. The room was empty. The disappearance has never been explained.

| Oddities

An Awkward Pause

In 2014, three truck drivers sued Oakhurst Dairy of Portland, Maine, alleging that they’d been unfairly denied four years’ worth of overtime pay. Maine law generally required time-and-a-half pay for each hour worked above 40 hours, but it listed exemptions for:

The canning, processing, preserving, freezing, drying, marketing, storing, packing for shipment or distribution of:

(1) Agricultural produce;

(2) Meat and fish products; and

(3) Perishable foods.

That’s not quite clear. Does the law exempt the distribution of the three categories listed, or does it exempt packing for shipment or distribution of them? The confusion shows the value of the so-called Oxford comma, the often-skipped comma that follows the next-to-last item in a series, as in “A, B, and C.” A comma after “shipment” would have eliminated the ambiguity in the language above; the drivers’ lawyer said, “That comma would have sunk our ship.” But without the comma, the court ruled, the meaning is uncertain, and the dairy had to pay the drivers $5 million.

In 2017 the state legislature replaced the troublesome passage with this:

The canning; processing; preserving; freezing; drying; marketing; storing; packing for shipment; or distributing of:

(1) Agricultural produce;

(2) Meat and fish products; and

(3) Perishable foods.

The New York Times wrote, “So now we get to replace Oxford comma pedantry with semicolon pedantry.”

See Details.

(Thanks, Edward.)

| Language