{"title":"A treatise on the Rilke cryptogram","authors":"Floe Foxon","doi":"10.1080/01611194.2022.2092784","DOIUrl":null,"url":null,"abstract":"Abstract The ‘Rilke Cryptogram’ is a possible cipher of German, WWII origin. This study summarises the text’s history, and examines explanations for its nature. Statistical techniques are applied to an updated transcription. The text consists of 18,760 characters in 3,305 unique groups of four, arranged into 670 rows by seven columns on 33 pages of an otherwise ordinary book. The distribution of these groups is not particularly Zipfian, suggesting the text is likely not a code or monoalphabetic substitution cipher. Its alphabet is longer than English and German (46 characters). Character and N-gram entropy analyses suggest the text is less ordered than English and German, but more ordered than random text. Machine-learning modelling suggests the text is a substitution cipher, but frequency and Kasiski-Kerckhoff analyses suggest otherwise. Sukhotin’s algorithm results for the text are somewhat consistent with results for German, though N-gram distributions do not strongly resemble English or German. Statistical analysis of physical typewriter key distances suggest the text’s groupings are highly unlikely to appear at random, and are consistent with intentional ‘lazy’ typing. The text is inconsistent with machine ciphers of its era (e.g., Enigma), and other features are not entirely consistent with non-cipher explanations. Further investigation is required.","PeriodicalId":55202,"journal":{"name":"Cryptologia","volume":"47 1","pages":"493 - 510"},"PeriodicalIF":0.3000,"publicationDate":"2022-08-04","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":"1","resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":null,"PeriodicalName":"Cryptologia","FirstCategoryId":"5","ListUrlMain":"https://doi.org/10.1080/01611194.2022.2092784","RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"工程技术","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":null,"EPubDate":"","PubModel":"","JCR":"Q4","JCRName":"COMPUTER SCIENCE, THEORY & METHODS","Score":null,"Total":0}
引用次数: 1
Abstract
Abstract The ‘Rilke Cryptogram’ is a possible cipher of German, WWII origin. This study summarises the text’s history, and examines explanations for its nature. Statistical techniques are applied to an updated transcription. The text consists of 18,760 characters in 3,305 unique groups of four, arranged into 670 rows by seven columns on 33 pages of an otherwise ordinary book. The distribution of these groups is not particularly Zipfian, suggesting the text is likely not a code or monoalphabetic substitution cipher. Its alphabet is longer than English and German (46 characters). Character and N-gram entropy analyses suggest the text is less ordered than English and German, but more ordered than random text. Machine-learning modelling suggests the text is a substitution cipher, but frequency and Kasiski-Kerckhoff analyses suggest otherwise. Sukhotin’s algorithm results for the text are somewhat consistent with results for German, though N-gram distributions do not strongly resemble English or German. Statistical analysis of physical typewriter key distances suggest the text’s groupings are highly unlikely to appear at random, and are consistent with intentional ‘lazy’ typing. The text is inconsistent with machine ciphers of its era (e.g., Enigma), and other features are not entirely consistent with non-cipher explanations. Further investigation is required.
期刊介绍:
Cryptologia is the only scholarly journal in the world dealing with the history, the technology, and the effect of the most important form of intelligence in the world today - communications intelligence. It fosters the study of all aspects of cryptology -- technical as well as historical and cultural. The journal"s articles have broken many new paths in intelligence history. They have told for the first time how a special agency prepared information from codebreaking for President Roosevelt, have described the ciphers of Lewis Carroll, revealed details of Hermann Goering"s wiretapping agency, published memoirs - written for it -- of some World War II American codebreakers, disclosed how American codebreaking affected the structure of the United Nations.