Unsolved Codes and Ciphers That Might Just Be Jokes (Or Even Gibberish)

The Voynich ManuscriptThe Voynich ManuscriptLinguists and codebreakers have puzzled over this undeciphered vellum codex for years. It came from Central Europe, likely the late 15th or early 16th century. The public knew nothing of it until Wilfrid Voynich, a Polish-American book dealer, bought it in 1912.

The manuscript shows strange beauty. Its 240 surviving pages contain hundreds of bizarre drawings. These include depictions of people, medicinal herbs, astrological signs, and unidentified plants, among other things.

Starting in 1912, experts generally agreed the manuscript was not impossible to read. It remained complicated, but not uncrackable.Gordon Rugg introduced a new theory in 2004.Rugg backed his theory with solid research. This research showed one could make a complex hoax using a Cardan grille encipherment method and nonsense letters. If Rugg is correct, the manuscript is a fake.

Ricky McCormick, a 41-year-old misfit, had his dead body dumped in a Missouri cornfield in June 1999. Police labeled the case "suspicious" for 12 years, finding no real leads. Then, in 2011,the FBI discarded another piece of information.They found encrypted codes in McCormick's pockets. The FBI asked the public to help crack them.

The FBI asked the public to solve the cold case of McCormick.Use this online form to submit answers.The bureau thinks the coded notes might reveal who killed the oddball ex-felon.

Nobody has cracked the code yet. Many people think the code is pointless; random letter jumbles are likely nonsense. McCormick was not sharp; his family said he could barely write his name, let alone coded letters. His auntsaidhe had a "brick wall in his mind." His own mothercalled him retarded.How could he write a code that stumped the FBI's top cryptanalysts—and everyone online so far?

If an 1885 pamphlet is trustworthy,millions of dollars in silver and gold are buriedwas somewhere in Bedford County, VA.The pamphlet, published by James Ward, explains how Thomas Jefferson Beale gave an innkeeper named Robert Morriss a locked strongbox—and instructions to wait 10 years before opening it.

Morriss waited 23 years. When he finally opened the strongbox, he found a letter detailing an unbelievable treasure. Three more encoded letters followed, containing the treasure's location, a description, and contact info for the 30 men who moved it from Colorado to Virginia.

Morriss could not crack the coded letters. He passed them to Ward in the early 1860s. Ward cracked the second letter using the Declaration of Independence as a codebook. Ward could not figure out the other two. Ward made the mystery public hoping someone else would find the treasure.

This story is fine, but digging in Virginia soon seems like a waste of time. Beale does not appear in any census records. His first and middle names seem convenient because Thomas Jefferson's most famous work became the codebook. Reading more makes it look like a hoax.Beale's Code is a hoax.Ward dreamed up this.

The papers contain [omitted content].The Blitz Ciphers exist.German bombs brought up the Blitz Ciphers. During World War II, a blast ripped a cellar wall in London. This revealed hidden boxes where someone had hidden the mysterious papers. Nick Pelling, the cryptanalyst who runsCipherMysteries.com.The Blitz Ciphers and.CipherFoundation.org., and named these ciphers the Blitz Ciphers. Pelling believes they are much older than the war.

The Blitz Ciphers use about 60 distinct characters or glyphs. They mix Greek letters, astrological symbols, alchemical symbols, and geometric shapes. Pelling calls the text a presentation hand and an annotation hand. It looks nice, but it remains a total mystery. Many people doubt its authenticity because of the ink, writing, and pages. Pelling's view seems smart:

"What I personally learned from the long, fruitless failure isThe Voynich Manuscript.research shows speculative theories always fail to crack such objects. Hunches are useful but must stay limited, or things go wrong. Stop the theories. We must use proper historical tools to crack these.

Another dead man, another secret code. InThis case involves the Somerton Man., there is much less information and more confusion. Nobody knows who this man was. That is why he is called the Somerton Man, named after where he was found in late 1948—Somerton Beach, Australia, south of Adelaide.

A few months passed before someone saw the mystery man's pants had a small "secret" pocket detectives missed. Inside, a tiny, rolled paper bore the wordsThe Tamam Shud., Persian for "It is ended." The paper came from a book that turned out to be a copy of Omar Khayyam'sRubaiyat.That book, once found, held the Tamam Shud Code. Detectives used ultraviolet light to see it, but they never decoded it.

More exists about the Somerton Man, including a woman who saw his body but flat-out denied knowing him—and ghost copies of theRubaiyat.Cryptographers noted the code might just be meaningless scribbles. Given the mystery surrounding this guy, some believe the code is just gibberish.

Forrest Fenn is a successful Santa Fe art dealer, amateur archeologist, and former Vietnam pilot. He was known for his eccentric nature. In 2010, at age 80, Fenn walked into the wilderness.Fenn walked into the Rocky Mountains.He hid a 10" x 10" x 5" Romanesque treasure chest filled with gold nuggets, American Eagles, jewelry, and artifacts worth over $1 million. Then, he published a book calledThe Thrill of the ChaseThis book contains a six-stanza poem with nine clues pointing to the treasure's location.

People theorize about the treasure's location. Some believe it exists. Others think Fenn, an avid outdoorsman, set it up as a joke. The poem's cryptic clues support this idea.

Begin it where warm waters halt.
Take it in the canyon down.
Not far, but too far to walk.
Put it below the home of Brown.

That's about as clear as mud. Even with Fenn's extra clues and the map in his follow-up book, Too Far to Walk, the search seems hopeless.Too Far to Walk.Fenn says a child could solve the poem's clues with the poem and map. People are missing something, or the treasure does not exist.

At Shugborough Hall in Staffordshire, an 18th-century monument shows a relief of Nicolas Poussin's paintingThe Arcadian Shepherds(pictured). A short inscription below the relief generates many theories. One theory suggests it reveals the Holy Grail's location, inspired by Shugborough Hall's past connection to the Priory of Sion, the Knights Templar's successor.

The inscription is just a short letter string, OUOSVAVV, framed by D and M. People try to give meaning to it, often using it as an acronym. One example isOrator Ut Omnia Sunt Vanitas Ait Vanitas Vanitatum.This Latin means "Vanity of vanities, saith the preacher; all is vanity" (Ecclesiastes 12:8). So far, the inscription stays more mysterious than understood.

Some experts suggest the inscription is not that significant. For example, grave and monument expert A.J. Morton theorized thatthe letters are just graffitiadded later by former Shugborough residents. This is less exciting but might be closer to the truth if OUOSVAVV means something.

TheRohonc CodexThe Rohonc Codex takes its name from Rohonc, Hungary, now Rechnitz, Austria. It is long.The Voynich Manuscript contains many religious drawings. It is also long.The Voynich Manuscript contains many religious drawings. It is also long.The Voynich Manuscript. We heard little about it until long after its creation. Since Count Gusztav Batthyany gave it to the Hungarian Academy of Sciences in 1838, the manuscript remains a mystery. Experts still do not know what language it shows, though Old Hungarian is suggested.The Voynich Manuscript. We didn't hear much about it until long after its creation. Since Count Gusztav Batthyany donated it to the Hungarian Academy of Sciences in 1838, the manuscript has been a mystery. Experts still don't know what language it represents, though Old Hungarian has been suggested.

The most common theory suggests the manuscript is a forgery. Around the time Batthyany donated it, an antiquarian named Samuel Literati Nemes made forgeries and passed them off as real. This fact, plus the manuscript's uncertain origin and strange traits, points to it being nonsense, like the Voynich Manuscript.The Voynich Manuscript..

In 2015, the British Library contacted the public asking for help with a 13th-century sword.The British Library reached out to the public.The British Library asked for help with a 13th-century sword. The double-edged sword came from a Lincolnshire river in 1825. It has a mysterious inscription with gold-wire inlays. The inscription reads: +NDXOXCHWDRGHDXORVI+. Some debate the "W" should be an "M," but this is secondary; the inscription remains hard to read.

Medieval swords often had inscriptions like this in the 13th century. Most experts think these inscriptions are religious blessings. For example, the letters ND might mean the Latin "Nostrum Dominus" (our Lord). Other letters could stand for saints or the sword owner, but figuring out what they mean is often impossible.

One commenter on the British Library post suggested an illiterate blacksmith just engraved random letters to make his sword look better to other illiterate buyers.

In a church in Moustier, Belgium, two altars display odd inscriptions.odd inscriptions.The inscriptions total 20 lines of unintelligible uppercase characters. Each inscription appears on traditional pictures of the stone tablets where God wrote the Ten Commandments for Moses.

Since 1961, a professor named Jean Connart could not solve the inscriptions. He worked on the history of Moustier and asked many scholars and cryptologists for help. Nobody understood the letters, so he contacted experts at the NSA. They could not crack it, but they published a short story about it in the September 1974 issue of Cryptolog.the September 1974 issue ofCryptolog.the NSA's journal.

The presentation of the cryptograms suggests they decode into the Ten Commandments. Still, nobody knows how they are encoded or what they say. Did an old stone carver play a huge joke on people?

The story ofIsaac's alien cipherIsaac worked on alien technology at the top-secret CARET Laboratory. Nobody knows anything about CARET Laboratory except Isaac. CARET Laboratory might not have ever existed. Isaac's identity remains unknown; he may just use other online names.

Isaac showed the cipher to the world using five diagrams.

The first diagram shows curved lines and circular devices covered in strange script resembling science fiction. The other four diagrams zoom in on the first one. All five diagrams feature obscure captions like "Compound junction in a dual-link union with heavy-state tri-switch and diffuser." This slick look and Isaac's strange story make most people think the alien cipher is a hoax.

It might be a joke, but you never know.