The last few Sunday Morning Puzzles have been lessons in a short course on Moderately Difficult Decryption. Now, in keeping with the season, it is time for the final exam.
Below is a piece of text entitled “A Glimpse of the Future”. The text has been obscured. Can you recover the original passage and find its source?
++++++++++
ECCELHW dCLJA, BAt YSTHEI APOT, RTSTLE LGN USNHEIEL, EQUT SBE FDO TBA KERST YGL BA PPRNTLAEIAG TO WECceLH CLGRYNS, NNSAMCLG KAHoROST NRVRAmlA. BAT RSONAL KOR TSbE AsTP WSL BLTT WNVRBAAA BAT OuRtNKAA ALYR OCG DOY OOCJAG LT SBE AHCAPOYR BA BLG TBA ALAXTRSnSORY VSONeE KO RYNSCLG BLMEMNN GALG ON OWSMLCC. BAT VSONEE DAILHA RTYALCE aCATWV YRSAL CLATR WNBA CLGRYNS WSL BLMAGN ORK KMAORRY.
Oh Crikey! I was hoping for a movie title jumble. I have been sucking wind at these codes, lately. Oh well. At least I have my printer up and running. Here I go…
MonkeyMensch: Don’t worry about “sucking wind” over the last few code puzzles. The final exam usually counts as half the grade. You can still pass this course.
Will there be partial credit? I’ve decrypted the text, but I’m not getting anywhere yet with the source. Incidentally, a romp through Google gives me the impression that an artist getting hanged for forgery was not all that rare in the eighteenth century.
Certainly you can have partial credit…Of course, the difference between an** A** and an A+ on your report card is small…and you are graduating with honors…why be a perfectionist anyway?..It was still quite the feat to solve most of this puzzle even if the source that ties it all up quite satisfactorily is missing…I don’t quite know whether to accept your final answer or whether I might perhaps decline to accept it…What to think?..That’s the real question indeed!..I suppose I can choose to affirm this as your full response or I may choose to refuse to affirm it…Yes or No?.. True or False?..Arrrgh!
The long school year must be getting to me too.
Then again, maybe MonkeyMensch or some other solver can can clear up the mystery regarding the source?
Here’e the solution to the text decoding. Congratulations and diploma to Peregrine for solving it. The source…still TBA?
William Blake, the mystic poet, artist and musician, quit his job the first day he apprenticed to William Rylands, England’s foremost engraver. The reason for this step was that whenever the fourteen year old boy looked at his employer he had the extrasensory vision of Rylands hanging dead on gallows. The vision became reality twelve years later when Rylands was hanged for forgery.