_queue.json

[
 {
  "rank": "1",
  "name": "ADFGVX residue of 1918 top 50",
  "href": "https://scienceblogs.de/klausis-krypto-kolumne/unsolved-adfxvx-messages-from-world-war-i/",
  "fam": "top 50",
  "date": "1918",
  "odds": "1 of 22",
  "oddscls": "md",
  "eff": "done",
  "why": "<b>Attempted Sept 2026.</b> Built a working decoder and settled the transposition convention, which two readings of the published key numbers leave ambiguous and a round-trip test cannot separate. Repaired three of the fourteen keys whose substitution squares the source PDF had mangled into en-dashes. Reproduced page 100 from scratch &mdash; 122 letters received where the reading needs 124, and searching every two-placeholder insertion returns the published plaintext at score 140.7 where nothing else clears 7. Identified page 132&rsquo;s key, where <i>WIEDERHOLE</i> and <i>TELEG</i> emerge unprompted. The other twenty need heavier repair than two insertions.",
  "group": "Attack now"
 },
 {
  "rank": "2",
  "name": "Thomas Urquhart’s encrypted poems top 50",
  "href": "https://scienceblogs.de/klausis-krypto-kolumne/2017/06/30/the-top-50-unsolved-encrypted-messages-28-thomas-urquharts-encrypted-poems/",
  "fam": "top 50",
  "date": "17th c.",
  "odds": "blocked",
  "oddscls": "lo",
  "eff": "done",
  "why": "<b>Attempted Sept 2026.</b> The structure of the August 2026 claim checks out: Wilcock records that the volume ends with proquiritations from <i>thirty-two</i> petitioners hiding behind the initial letters of their names, and the distich is two lines of thirty-two. But the provenance objection holds on an independent copy &mdash; the 1653 book ends in an errata table, and there are <b>zero</b> runs of eight or more numbers anywhere in it, or in Wilcock 1899. The ciphertext could not be located in the source it is said to come from, so the claimed reading cannot be judged yet.",
  "group": "Attack now"
 },
 {
  "rank": "3",
  "name": "Kaliningrad bottle post top 50",
  "href": "https://scienceblogs.de/klausis-krypto-kolumne/2017/10/17/the-top-50-unsolved-encrypted-messages-19-the-kalinigrad-bottle-post/",
  "fam": "top 50",
  "date": "found 2015",
  "odds": "blocked",
  "oddscls": "lo",
  "eff": "done",
  "why": "<b>Attempted Sept 2026.</b> The blocker is transcription, not cryptanalysis: the cryptogram exists only as two photographs and nobody has ever published the character string. Transcription was attempted and abandoned honestly &mdash; cursive n, u, v and w are barely separable in this hand and the reverse side bleeds through. Two observations stand: the primed consonants d&rsquo; l&rsquo; n&rsquo; s&rsquo; t&rsquo; z&rsquo; are exactly the set that takes an apostrophe when Russian palatalised consonants are transliterated, and the text carries dotted initialism groups (z.s.f.d., s.n.c., n.t.d.) that would be the natural place for Bible citations under the outstanding Synodal-Bible claim.",
  "group": "Attack now"
 },
 {
  "rank": "4",
  "name": "Debosnys cryptograms top 50",
  "href": "https://scienceblogs.de/klausis-krypto-kolumne/2020/01/06/the-top-50-unsolved-encrypted-messages-3-the-debosnys-cryptograms/",
  "fam": "top 50",
  "date": "1882–83",
  "odds": "even",
  "oddscls": "md",
  "eff": "medium",
  "why": "<b>Attempted Sept 2026.</b> The alphabet is usually called large and decorative. At three times scale most of it is <b>systematic composition</b> &mdash; a few bases (o, x, w) under a few marks (tilde, dot, bar, double bar, slash, ring), with glyphs repeating across lines &mdash; plus a handful of pictograms (horse, sun-face, tree, figure) that are nomenclator entries, not letters. So the effective alphabet is far smaller than the descriptions imply and the prospect is better than billed. Still needs the transcription nobody has made; the hard part is deciding glyph identity, not reading it.",
  "group": "Attack now"
 },
 {
  "rank": "5",
  "name": "William Perwich to Lord Arlington, Paris",
  "href": "https://cryptiana.web.fc2.com/code/perwich.txt",
  "fam": "",
  "date": "1670",
  "odds": "even",
  "oddscls": "md",
  "eff": "medium",
  "why": "<b>Attempted Sept 2026 &mdash; and it is not a transposition.</b> Everyone reads it as one: the National Archives blog that published it in 2025, Tomokiyo&rsquo;s post, and this tracker. Two tests say no. Chi-squared <i>in place</i> is 154.7 where English of this length gives about 25, while chi-squared <i>sorted</i> is 8.7 where English gives about 12 &mdash; identities scrambled, shape preserved, which is substitution. And hill-climbing the column order on substitution-invariant digram repeats, for every period from 4 to 24, scores identically to shuffles of the same letters. Not a simple substitution either. Reading: homophonic, or substitution with nomenclature.",
  "group": "Attack now"
 },
 {
  "rank": "6",
  "name": "Telegrams found in the sunken Zhongshan",
  "href": "https://cryptiana.web.fc2.com/code/chinesecrypto_e.htm",
  "fam": "",
  "date": "c.1938",
  "odds": "blocked",
  "oddscls": "no",
  "eff": "done",
  "why": "<b>Attempted Sept 2026 &mdash; premise wrong, and blocked at the source.</b> Tomokiyo states he has not located the primary sources; only a five-group opening is published, of 891 telegrams. Verified here against the standard telegraph code: it reads <b>&#38515;&#37096;&#38263;&#21644;&#23494;</b>, &ldquo;Minister Chen, <i>He Mi</i>&rdquo; &mdash; the cipher names itself in its own preamble &mdash; and the closing reads &#39340;&#21320;, the 21st, 11am to 1pm. But He Mi is a <b>separate codebook</b>, one of a family, not a condenser over the standard code, so the Sun Yat-sen machinery does not transfer. There is no key space to enumerate.",
  "group": "Attack now"
 },
 {
  "rank": "7",
  "name": "Chinese gold bar ciphers, Shanghai famous",
  "href": "https://elonka.com/UnsolvedCodes.html",
  "fam": "famous",
  "date": "1933",
  "odds": "low",
  "oddscls": "lo",
  "eff": "medium",
  "why": "The one item on the famous list that plays to this project&rsquo;s strengths: mixed Chinese and Latin script on seven bars, in a banking context, where Chinese telegraph code and a reader of the language are exactly what is needed. Against it, the inscriptions are short, the photographs poor, and the provenance disputed.",
  "group": "Attack now"
 },
 {
  "rank": "8",
  "name": "Telegram from Switzerland, “BLUME SALAMANCA”",
  "href": "https://cryptiana.web.fc2.com/code/unsolved.htm",
  "fam": "",
  "date": "1937",
  "odds": "low",
  "oddscls": "lo",
  "eff": "low",
  "why": "Never attempted here and cheap to try. Salamanca was Franco&rsquo;s headquarters, so the Spanish Civil War supplies cribs, and the coincidence index points at transposition rather than a code. Only two short messages, which caps the odds.",
  "group": "Attack now"
 },
 {
  "rank": "9",
  "name": "Japanese telegram decoded by Yardley",
  "href": "https://cryptiana.web.fc2.com/code/yardley.htm",
  "fam": "",
  "date": "c.1920",
  "odds": "partial",
  "oddscls": "lo",
  "eff": "low",
  "why": "Yardley printed the plaintext, so the scheme is attackable, but Japanese diplomatic traffic of 1920 ran on codebooks. One message can only recover the entries it happens to use, so a complete answer is ruled out by construction.",
  "group": "Attack now"
 },
 {
  "rank": "10",
  "name": "Abwehr agent’s messages, New York to Berlin top 50",
  "href": "https://scienceblogs.de/klausis-krypto-kolumne/2017/02/19/the-top-50-unsolved-encrypted-messages-47-encrypted-messages-of-a-nazi-spy/",
  "fam": "top 50",
  "date": "1944",
  "odds": "even",
  "oddscls": "md",
  "eff": "medium",
  "why": "Nine hundred and twenty-one letters over five messages, a decent corpus by this list&rsquo;s standards. The system is unknown and Enigma variants were exhaustively excluded in the original thread. Published as an image only, so transcription comes first.",
  "group": "Long shots, already diagnosed"
 },
 {
  "rank": "11",
  "name": "Catokwacopa newspaper advertisements top 50",
  "href": "https://scienceblogs.de/klausis-krypto-kolumne/2018/06/17/the-top-50-unsolved-encrypted-messages-8-the-catokwacopa-cryptograms/",
  "fam": "top 50",
  "date": "1875",
  "odds": "even",
  "oddscls": "md",
  "eff": "low",
  "why": "Two personal advertisements in the <i>Evening Standard</i>, the second explicitly intelligible only in connection with the first, with full transcriptions published. The working hypothesis is interleaving of two streams with letters omitted rather than substitution, which gives a real structural handle. Partial readings exist and disagree.",
  "group": "Long shots, already diagnosed"
 },
 {
  "rank": "12",
  "name": "Censorship manual steganograms top 50",
  "href": "https://scienceblogs.de/klausis-krypto-kolumne/2017/05/03/the-top-50-unsolved-encrypted-messages-33-the-censorship-manual-steganograms/",
  "fam": "top 50",
  "date": "1943",
  "odds": "even",
  "oddscls": "md",
  "eff": "low",
  "why": "Already half solved: readers recovered Morse hidden in pen strokes on a map of Amsterdam and matched it to the manual&rsquo;s own published gloss. The residue is unusually well specified &mdash; the Morse in the second drawing, and the exact German wording of the first. Originals are at the National Archives in KV 2/2424.",
  "group": "Long shots, already diagnosed"
 },
 {
  "rank": "13",
  "name": "Copenhagen cryptogram top 50",
  "href": "https://scienceblogs.de/klausis-krypto-kolumne/2017/08/17/the-top-50-unsolved-encrypted-messages-23-the-copenhagen-cryptogram/",
  "fam": "top 50",
  "date": "c.1835",
  "odds": "low",
  "oddscls": "lo",
  "eff": "low",
  "why": "Found behind an 1835 painting of a Danish general and sent to the American Cryptogram Association, which never broke it or even wrote it up. A hundred and seven characters over twenty-five symbols, almost certainly simple substitution and almost certainly <b>not English</b>. That makes it a multilingual reading problem rather than a cryptanalytic one, which is the angle nobody has pushed.",
  "group": "Long shots, already diagnosed"
 },
 {
  "rank": "14",
  "name": "Scorpion letters top 50",
  "href": "https://scienceblogs.de/klausis-krypto-kolumne/2018/01/30/the-top-50-unsolved-encrypted-messages-12-the-sccorpion-letters/",
  "fam": "top 50",
  "date": "1991",
  "odds": "low",
  "oddscls": "lo",
  "eff": "medium",
  "why": "About two hundred and fifty symbols over two homophonic ciphers in Zodiac style; the remaining letters are withheld by law enforcement. The Z340 break showed what searching transposition alongside substitution can do, but this is a quarter of that length.",
  "group": "Long shots, already diagnosed"
 },
 {
  "rank": "15",
  "name": "Vatican Challenge, Part 5 (Farnese to Poggio)",
  "href": "vatican.html",
  "fam": "",
  "date": "1542",
  "odds": "low",
  "oddscls": "lo",
  "eff": "—",
  "why": "Attacked here five times and now identified: a polyphonic-syllabic cipher of the Elio family, built for Paul III&rsquo;s chancery. Five measurements match that design. The specialists who solved its siblings state in print that ciphertext-only attack on this family is near-impossible even with modern computing, and that the one published key naming Poggio was tested and failed. Needs the key, the manuscript&rsquo;s word division, or the clear register copy in Chigi L III 65.",
  "group": "Long shots, already diagnosed"
 },
 {
  "rank": "16",
  "name": "D’Agapeyeff cipher famous",
  "href": "https://elonka.com/UnsolvedCodes.html",
  "fam": "famous",
  "date": "1939",
  "odds": "low",
  "oddscls": "lo",
  "eff": "medium",
  "why": "196 digit pairs, and the author admitted he had forgotten his own method, so a real cipher certainly exists. Probably a Polybius square with transposition, which suits the annealing solvers here. Heavily attacked for eighty years, and short enough that a unique solution may not be provable.",
  "group": "Long shots, already diagnosed"
 },
 {
  "rank": "17",
  "name": "Maltravers to Ormonde, the last nine codes",
  "href": "ormonde.html",
  "fam": "",
  "date": "1634–35",
  "odds": "low",
  "oddscls": "lo",
  "eff": "low",
  "why": "The alphabet is recovered and every spelled word reads. The nine nomenclator codes still resting on context need either the real key or more ciphertext, and neither is online.",
  "group": "Long shots, already diagnosed"
 },
 {
  "rank": "18",
  "name": "Colbert passages (Mélanges Colbert)",
  "href": "https://de-crypt.org/decrypt-web/RecordsView/2734",
  "fam": "",
  "date": "1665–74",
  "odds": "low",
  "oddscls": "lo",
  "eff": "low",
  "why": "Three passages too short to break, with all twelve reconstructed Colbert keys already failing. The only route left is paging Gallica for a deciphered sibling letter.",
  "group": "Long shots, already diagnosed"
 },
 {
  "rank": "19",
  "name": "Thurloe intercepts (Dutch, French, English)",
  "href": "https://www.british-history.ac.uk/thurloe-papers/vol5/pp333-350",
  "fam": "",
  "date": "1653–56",
  "odds": "low",
  "oddscls": "lo",
  "eff": "low",
  "why": "Four pieces of sixteen to one hundred and thirty-six groups. Every period key on the catalogue fails and hill-climbing yields fragments only. The Rawlinson originals are not digitised.",
  "group": "Long shots, already diagnosed"
 },
 {
  "rank": "20",
  "name": "D’Estaing to Gérard",
  "href": "https://cryptiana.web.fc2.com/code/unsolved.htm",
  "fam": "",
  "date": "1779",
  "odds": "low",
  "oddscls": "lo",
  "eff": "low",
  "why": "Two hundred and seventeen numbers of a six-hundred element code with no key material. Doniol and Meng print only the neighbouring letters; the deciphered copy sits in the French foreign ministry archives.",
  "group": "Long shots, already diagnosed"
 },
 {
  "rank": "21",
  "name": "Le Tellier to Castelnau",
  "href": "https://cryptiana.web.fc2.com/code/louisxiv0.htm#SEC6",
  "fam": "",
  "date": "1657",
  "odds": "low",
  "oddscls": "lo",
  "eff": "low",
  "why": "Two hundred and two tokens. Le Tellier&rsquo;s 1650 tables do not fit, and an exhaustive search of alphabetical syllabary offsets against a French model returned nothing. Too short to solve unconstrained.",
  "group": "Long shots, already diagnosed"
 },
 {
  "rank": "22",
  "name": "Dorabella cipher famous",
  "href": "https://elonka.com/UnsolvedCodes.html",
  "fam": "famous",
  "date": "1897",
  "odds": "very low",
  "oddscls": "lo",
  "eff": "low",
  "why": "Eighty-seven symbols from Elgar to a friend. Short enough that many readings fit and none can be proved, which is why a century of proposed solutions has convinced nobody.",
  "group": "Famous, and famous because they resist — or because they are not ciphers at all"
 },
 {
  "rank": "23",
  "name": "Kryptos, passage K4 famous",
  "href": "https://elonka.com/UnsolvedCodes.html",
  "fam": "famous",
  "date": "1990",
  "odds": "very low",
  "oddscls": "lo",
  "eff": "high",
  "why": "The most worked-over ninety-seven characters in the world, with published cribs and three decades of organised attack. Sanborn also sold the solution privately in 2025, so the prize is gone even if the passage falls.",
  "group": "Famous, and famous because they resist — or because they are not ciphers at all"
 },
 {
  "rank": "24",
  "name": "WWII pigeon cipher, Bletchingley famous",
  "href": "https://elonka.com/UnsolvedCodes.html",
  "fam": "famous",
  "date": "1942?",
  "odds": "none",
  "oddscls": "no",
  "eff": "—",
  "why": "Twenty-seven five-letter groups that GCHQ assesses as one-time pad. If that is right the message is information-theoretically secure and no amount of work recovers it.",
  "group": "Famous, and famous because they resist — or because they are not ciphers at all"
 },
 {
  "rank": "25",
  "name": "Enigma message of 10 January 1945",
  "href": "https://cryptiana.web.fc2.com/code/unsolved.htm",
  "fam": "",
  "date": "1945",
  "odds": "very low",
  "oddscls": "lo",
  "eff": "high",
  "why": "A single message against a bombe-scale search that others have already run. Nothing here that specialist projects do not do better.",
  "group": "Famous, and famous because they resist — or because they are not ciphers at all"
 },
 {
  "rank": "26",
  "name": "Voynich manuscript famous",
  "href": "https://elonka.com/UnsolvedCodes.html",
  "fam": "famous",
  "date": "c.1420",
  "odds": "not a cipher?",
  "oddscls": "no",
  "eff": "—",
  "why": "Six hundred years, an entire academic field, and radiocarbon dating have produced no key. The weight of evidence now points at a constructed or glossolalic text rather than an encipherment, in which case there is nothing to solve.",
  "group": "Famous, and famous because they resist — or because they are not ciphers at all"
 },
 {
  "rank": "27",
  "name": "Phaistos disc famous",
  "href": "https://elonka.com/UnsolvedCodes.html",
  "fam": "famous",
  "date": "c.1800 BC",
  "odds": "not a cipher",
  "oddscls": "no",
  "eff": "—",
  "why": "241 stamped signs on one object. An undeciphered script with a corpus of a single artifact cannot be read by cryptanalysis; it needs more text or a bilingual.",
  "group": "Famous, and famous because they resist — or because they are not ciphers at all"
 },
 {
  "rank": "28",
  "name": "Linear A famous",
  "href": "https://elonka.com/UnsolvedCodes.html",
  "fam": "famous",
  "date": "c.1800 BC",
  "odds": "not a cipher",
  "oddscls": "no",
  "eff": "—",
  "why": "An unknown language in a partly known script. Ventris broke Linear B because the language turned out to be Greek; Linear A has no such handle, so this is a problem for linguistics, not codebreaking.",
  "group": "Famous, and famous because they resist — or because they are not ciphers at all"
 },
 {
  "rank": "29",
  "name": "Indus script famous",
  "href": "https://elonka.com/UnsolvedCodes.html",
  "fam": "famous",
  "date": "c.2600 BC",
  "odds": "not a cipher",
  "oddscls": "no",
  "eff": "—",
  "why": "About four hundred signs, but the inscriptions average five characters and there is no bilingual. It is disputed whether it encodes language at all.",
  "group": "Famous, and famous because they resist — or because they are not ciphers at all"
 },
 {
  "rank": "30",
  "name": "Rongorongo, and the Etruscan, Proto-Elamite and Meroitic corpora famous",
  "href": "https://elonka.com/UnsolvedCodes.html",
  "fam": "famous",
  "date": "various",
  "odds": "not ciphers",
  "oddscls": "no",
  "eff": "—",
  "why": "Undeciphered writing systems rather than concealed messages. Meroitic can even be read aloud without being understood, which is the opposite of a cipher problem.",
  "group": "Famous, and famous because they resist — or because they are not ciphers at all"
 },
 {
  "rank": "31",
  "name": "Lüderitz consular telegram",
  "href": "https://cryptiana.web.fc2.com/code/unsolved.htm",
  "fam": "",
  "date": "1911",
  "odds": "none",
  "oddscls": "no",
  "eff": "—",
  "why": "Forty-three five-figure groups from a Foreign Office codebook. Without the book there is no attack, only guesswork.",
  "group": "Famous, and famous because they resist — or because they are not ciphers at all"
 }
]