Text: Anonymous, “Edgar Allan Poe: The Cipher Wizard,” T. P.'s Weekly (London, UK), vol. I, no. 19, March 20, 1903, p. 587

[page 587, column 1:]

Some American critics have recently been declaring that Edgar Allan Poe is, after all, the most distinguished literary genius that the United States has produced. There they are right; and it is probable that any reluctance there may nave been to admit it is due to the fact that Poe's genius was so little American. Alike in prose and poetry, his literary affinities were to be sought in Europe, In America he was isolated: his character, genius, and susceptibilities all kept him apart from his fellows. Doubtless he would have been lonely anywhere, but in America he was a definite anomaly. One of his more recent biographers records this story: —

Where Poe was American.

In one particular, however, Poe may be held to have shared the national cuteness and ingenuity, and the New York “Bookman” for February draws attention to it. His power of unravel- ling secret writings was extraordinary. He claimed he could solve any cipher that the wit of man could devise. All who have read that wonderful story, “The Gold Bug,” will remember the cipher and Poe's method of translating it. At first sight (says the “ New York Bookman,” whose interesting article I shall now quote), the cipher in “The Gold Bug,” with its mingling of letters, figures, and symbols, appears bafflingly formidable; but after Foe has started us on the scent by pointing out to us that which should have been at once perfectly obvious, we are ready and eager to carry out the reading of the message for ourselves. But Poe was not only able to invent and analyse systems of secret writing; he stood ready to decipher those which others would submit to him.

A challenge to cipherists.

He even went so far as to assert, in a Philadelphia weekly paper on which he was employed, that no cipher could be sent to him that he would not be able to resolve. This challenge excited a lively interest among the readers of the paper, and letters were sent to him from all parts of the country. In many cases the writers were not strictly scrupulous in observing the conditions of the challenge. Foreign languages were used. Words and sentences were run together without interval. Several alpha- bets were employed in the same cipher. And yet out of, perhaps, one hundred ciphers received there was but one which Poe did not succeed immediately in solving, and that one was proved to be an imposition, a jargon of random characters having no meaning whatever.

Charged with humbug.

But the world is full of suspicious and distrustful people (those persons, for instance, who inquire darkly whether we do not ourselves compose the letters [column 2:] which are answered in the Letter-Box); and by the public at large Poe's feat was looked upon in the light of a gigantic humbug. Some averred that the mysterious characters were inserted for the purpose of giving an odd look and thereby advertising the paper. Others fancied that Poe not only solved the ciphers, but put them together for solution. In fact, very few, with the exception of those who had written the ciphers, really believed in the authenticity of the answers. And it was with the hope of dispelling these ideas of deception that Poe afterwards wrote his papers on “Secret Writing” in the pages of “Graham's Magazine.”

An old world trick.

The first method of cryptography which Poe attacked and riddled was that of the scytalæ of the Spartans, long considered impossible of solution. The scytalæ were two wooden cylinders, precisely similar in all respects. The general of an army, starting on an expedition, received one of these cylinders, while the other remained in Sparta. To communicate, a narrow strip of parchment was so wrapped round the scytala that the edges of the skin fitted accurately each to each. The writing was then inscribed longitudinally, and the letter unrolled and dispatched. The general addressed had only to wrap the second cylinder in the strip to read the message. But, as Poe pointed out, certain solution was easy enough. The strip intercepted, let there be prepared a cone of great length. Let the strip be rolled on the cone near the base, edge to edge; then, still keeping edge to edge, and holding the parchment close to the cone, let it be slipped gradually towards the apex. In this way some of the letters whose connection is intended will come together at that point of the cone where its diameter equals that of the scytala on which the cipher was written; a similar cylinder can be obtained and the message read.

These were child's play.

One of the principal means of devising a cipher, as Poe pointed out, is to take as the key some phrase or name or title containing just the number of letters of the alphabet, and then for “a” to use the first letter of the phrase, for” b “ the second, for “e” the fifth, &c. For instance, the cipher: “R M E E H M E E R R 1 E O K I R C E E H T O E T O E T F C I E O F E E O R T H” has for its key “The Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes,” a title which happens to contain just twenty- six letters, and the above would read: “If you decipher this you are a real Sherlockian.” But the cryptograms in which Poe delighted were not of this simple nature, and in his second challenge to readers, through the pages of “Graham's Magazine,” he invented ciphers of which the key-phrase might be in English, French, Italian, Spanish, German, Latin, or Greek, or in any of the dialects of these languages. Although there were but few responses to this challenge, the complex and intricate nature of these responses, and the swift and unerring manner in which Poe solved them, served to bear out in no doubtful way Poe's contention that undecipherable cryptogram had never yet been found.