A 1950 Cipher Meant to Prove Life After Death Has Finally Been Cracked
Solving the 1950 cipher meant to test life after death
In 1950, solicitor T. E. Wood published a 21-letter cryptogram using Robert Thouless's book-key method, hoping a medium would return the key after his death. The key came from a foreign-language book, and the message was said to mix languages. A computer search through thousands of texts, including 19 Bible translations, found it: the Luther Bible's Lord's Prayer, starting at Matthew 6:9, decrypts to "Hier bin ich, Totsiens, T.E.W." — German for "Here I am," Afrikaans for "goodbye," and Wood's initials.
Wood meant the message to be read after his death, once a medium had passed on the key. In it he announces himself, says goodbye, and signs his name.
- creilly11235
Author here, this was the last of four cryptograms from #35 of Klaus Schmeh’s list of 50 unsolved cryptograms. The first 3 were cracked in 1948, 1996 and 2019 with the last one remaining uncracked for 76 years. Wood initially set up the cipher to try to prove he could pass the key through a medium after his death.
The key ended up being the Lord's Prayer from a 1912 German Bible. The message reads Hier bin ich. Totsiens. T.E.W. "Here I am" in German, "goodbye" in Afrikaans, with Wood's initials.
Since the release of Fable I’ve been using Claude and OpenAI to try to tackle these open problems, Opus 5.5 wrote the search code and identified the books to use for the key phrase and Astra verified the results. All the code and results related to the search are up on GitHub - https://github.com/creilly11235/wood-cryptogram-1950
Klaus has confirmed the results here - https://klausschmeh.net/woods-cryptogram-from-the-crypt-anot...
- Magicrafter13
a beautiful (static?) website for showcasing a beautiful cipher
excellent work on both fronts (solving, and showcasing)
while he failed to demonstrate that the spirits of men continue to exercise control over this realm (after all, is it not Satan who presently rules this world?), he left something beautiful and interesting that genuinely took a while to solve considering how close it was to the computing revolution
- reader9274
So he proved there is life after death. He sent the key 76 years later, just had to help invent chatbots first