This news came out mid-December, and spread far and wide as one of those mystery stories. It is about a woman who bought an antique silk dress and found messages in the secret pocket. It is one of the top 50 cipher mysteries that was unsolved until last year. Why it became big Christmas news is likely another story.
Here's the story: “My first thought was maybe a writing exercise? Or some kind of list,” she wrote in the February 2014 post detailing her exciting find. Rivers-Cofield went on to add: “[...] I'm putting it up here in case there's some decoding prodigy out there looking for a project.”
The post made its way into the orbit of cryptographers around the world who relish the challenge of cracking codes.
University of Manitoba researcher Wayne Chan took on the project and, ten years after Rivers-Cofield stumbled upon the dress, published the answer in Cryptologia, a scientific journal devoted to cryptology.
Turns out "Bismark Omit leafage buck bank" was a weather observation for May 27, 1888, in what is today Bismarck, N.D.
At the time, the U.S. and Canadian governments had an agreement to exchange weather information by telegraph.
That's how names of Canadian cities got into the Silk Dress cryptogram.
It includes observations from stations in Calgary, Minnedosa, Man., Winnipeg and Prince Arthur's Landing — modern-day Thunder Bay, Ont. — which all shared a telegraph line that connected to Milwaukee, Wis., and routed messages to Washington through New York.
This line described a cool spring day at the Fort Garry weather station in Winnipeg: "Garry Noun Tertal lawful palm novice event."
HERE's an article that is detailed on the dress and what makes the code so interesting. The author talks about them being similar to the "semi-improvised (yet complex) rum-runner codes). And a second one here with the locations mapped. Everything about this story is fascinating.
The picture shows the notes. The second article maps the locations across Canada and the U.S. of the silk dress cipher code. Some of the analysis is included.
This is a snowy day at Charles Daley Park - it has excellent hills for tobogganing - all hill no trees. The only drawback is that the hill goes into Lake Ontario on the north side and into the lagoon on the east side. It seems to be that toboggans stop before they enter the water, as far as I can tell. Or not. Last year, there were fences attempting to stop snow sledding on the slopes.
