Dopers, want to solve a mystery and maybe find $30 million?

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
1

I came across this while ‘grazing’ on the internet. Who better to solve this puzzle than the multi-talented, highly intelligent Teeming Millions?

The Beale Cryptograms

Briefly, in the early 1800’s Thomas J. Beale supposedly led a party of hunters to New Mexico, where, instead of buffalo, they found gold and traded hunting for mining. By 1819 they had accumulated quite a large amount and became concerned about keeping their treasure secure, so decided to transport it by wagon to Virginia, where they built a secret underground vault where they stashed their first load, then set off back to New Mexico for a second shipment.

Concerned that they might meet with misfortune on their second trip, Mr. Beale allegedly left encoded documents describing the treasure and its location with a friend, Robert Morris. Mr. Beale’s instructions were to open the box only if the party failed to return after 10 years, and use the information to locate the gold (and silver) for distribution to the party’s surviving relatives. The group did, indeed, fail to return.

Unfortunately, Beale failed to provide Morris with the ‘key’ to decoding the documents! Morris tried unsuccessfully for years to solve the puzzle; before his death he passed the documents onto a James B. Ward, who claimed to have accidentally solved one of the cryptograms - the one describing the treasure - but had no success with deciphering the crucial ones containing the location. After twenty years of frustration, Ward decided to make the documents publicly available so that others could take a shot at solving the puzzle. He therefore published a pamphlet telling the story and containing copies of the encoded documents.

Many people thought that they had solved the puzzle, and fairly large amounts of Virginia real estate were moved around by various means (including bulldozers and backhoes), but the treasure is still undiscovered. Many people suspected a hoax, and in 1971 a Dr. Carl Hammer used a computer to examine the endeciphered messages; he concluded that there is a pattern to the mysterious numbers, so there is a chance they do contain a decipherable message.

Although the original documents were supposedly lost in a fire, some of the pamphlets survive. At the bottom of the page linked above is another link to a page containing the mysterious cryptograms, for anyone who wants to try their luck at solving this mystery.

*My own gut feeling is that the ‘treasure’ is a hoax, dreamed up by Ward as a way to raise some cash (he sold the pamphlets he published). However, the unsolved cryptograms might still contain a message of some kind, even if it is only “Sucker!”

Can Cecil’s Teeming Millions solve this mystery?

2

Sounds like a hoax to me. That’s a hell of a lot of gold and silver to bring 2000 miles. Why not just sell some of it? That and how do you accidently solve a cryptogram, especially one using the DoI? Sounds to fishy to me.

3

I bet it’s under a big “W.”

4

There was an article about this in one of Uncle John’s Bathroom Readers… the main gist of the article was that thousands of people have tried every conceivable way of translating the cipher or finding the loot.

In my opinion, it ain’t gonna happen.

5

I remember reading that article, and if I really wanted to bother, I could take the time to look through my nine Bathroom Readers and see where that article is, but I don’t. However, I do agree with you… what are the chances? Admittedly not great!

6

The Beale Ciphers - now there’s a blast from the past. Hadn’t thought of them in many a year. A coupla decades back, I had a friend who wanted to take a stab at them, and wanted me to join him in the effort.

My basic thought is that with the code-cracking tools available today, if nobody’s made sense of it yet, there’s probably no sense to be made. And given that there are people in the field who can bring far more resources to bear on this cryptogram than I can, I can’t really see where there’s a reason for someone like me to take a stab at it.

I think the story of the ciphers would make for a great Cecil column - especially since he could investigate the alleged history of the ciphers much better than we could, as well as interviewing experts on the prospects for breaking the code (assuming there is a message). But I’m completely uninterested in a tilt at this particular windmill.

7

I say it’s under an ice scraper in Minnesota.

8

Urk! I went Googling to see what else I could find out - and found out that ‘buried treasure’ attracts a lot . . . flakes. Loons. Nutcases. Whatever you want to call them! Found a few people who claim to have solved the cryptos, located the treasure, and are now looking for ‘backers’ to fund recovery, fights with the government, and fights with supposed long-lost relatives of the original treasure-owners. Of course, they are also trying to raise money by selling a video, book, etc. that explains how they solved it!

Heck, if there ever was a treasure, somebody probably found it about a hundred years ago and was smart enough to keep their mouth shut!

Anyway, apparently solving the cryptograms doesn’t require any skill or anything, it’s just going to be a matter of luck. Cryptanalysts say that despite the simplicity these kind of puzzles are almost impossible to solve, because the only way to do so is to discover what document was used as a key - which means patience, patience, patience and years of researching possibilities and then trying them. And then if the whole thing is a hoax . . .

Maybe the Voynich manuscript would be more interesting?

9

Generally regarded by cryptanalysts as a hoax. Decoding one of the solved messages required an overly fortunate mistake.

But the nutcase True Believers outnumber them of course. Since I have ancestors buried with a few miles of where the treasure is supposed to be, I worry about grave desecration.