The Beale Papers Download For Mac
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The Beale Ciphers by George Love The Beale Ciphers by George Love, guest contributor In 1885, a fellow named James Ward brought out a pamphlet allegedly written by an unnamed author for whom he was acting as agent. A facsimile of the pamphlet is reproduced in Peter Viemeister's book, The Beale Treasure (rev. 1997) (originally published 1987); it's also available for download, et seq.
The best transcript of the pamphlet I've found, by someone identified only by the initials SMB, is available for download. The pamphlet, at fifty cents apiece, purported to supply clues whereby readers might, with industry and luck, discover the hiding place of a fabulous treasure in gold, silver and jewels which had been buried in the hills of western Virginia more than sixty years before.
The stated motive for sharing this extraordinary information was that the anonymous author had wasted over two decades in the search and hoped by giving away the secret to escape the burden. Tauntingly, rather than merely describing the hiding place in vague prosaic terms, its precise location was related, but only in an inscrutable page of code for which, alas, the key had never been found. There are three theories about this little pamphlet: (i) that it was a hoax, plain and simple; (ii) that it was a parable; or (iii) that it was true, or at least substantially true.
Surprisingly, or perhaps not, there appear always to have been, and remain to this day, a committed cadre of believers in the third theory. This notwithstanding the tale's patent implausibility and the complete absence of corroboration.
Though, in defense of the species, believers have always been a very small (albeit energetic) minority. More likely the tale lives on mainly because, to paraphrase George Burns, even if it's not a true story, it's true that it's a good story. And wouldn't it be cool to solve a puzzle that has stumped so many, even if there were no treasure at the end of it? The Beale Ciphers are well known in the lore of cryptography - see, e.g., (duplicate ), and - perhaps because they're one of the earliest extant American examples of the craft. For the same reason, and because they're easily stated, the Ciphers are still used as a teaching exercise. See, e.g., recent. And they still draw believers that the puzzle can be and/or has been solved.
See, e.g., (collecting proposed solutions; other links on site ), (typical melee), (picture of alleged vault but no analysis), (exemplar of position posted to various forums), and (almost no analysis, but offering to sell book with putative solution). Then there's the (quite fun, though improbable).
What I find fascinating about the Ciphers is that, to date, no one seems to have been able to deliver a knock-out punch. Meaning, a clear and convincing argument that persuades all but those who simply refuse to be skeptical. Not that strong arguments haven't been made.
See, e.g.,;; the (Lee Krystek) and; see also the first four sources mentioned in the preceding paragraph, especially NJM and the cryptography newsgroup FAQ. But, though persuasive, I don't find any of these arguments compelling, a point conceded by most of their proponents.
Intrigued, I set out to see whether I could find a knock-out proof. And did, I think. Not entirely on my own, obviously, for I had the benefit of all those earlier analyses. Yet, the hoax is exposed more easily than anyone (at least anyone I've read or read about) seems to realize. Though I'm certainly mindful that the proof may be flawed in some way I can't see.
Anyway, here goes. I'm not going to summarize the whole story. The Finkelstein and UnMuseum pieces, to pick only two, do that very nicely. For our purposes, this will suffice. As mentioned, the pamphlet purports to have been written by someone who has been given ciphers which lead to a buried treasure. The ciphers allegedly were written more than sixty years before by Beale, who was never seen or heard from again.
A key was supposed to have been mailed after ten years, but never arrived. Decades later, our author is brought into the matter and makes an important discovery: the key to Cipher No. 2 (as I'll call it) is the Declaration of Independence. By counting words in the Declaration and matching them against the code, the first letter of each word spells out a message, which is related in the pamphlet. Also set out most helpfully, so the reader can confirm the decryption, is a copy of the Declaration with the word counts indicated in parentheses. See Not all of them, usually only every tenth word, but easy enough to follow.
And, lo, the message does jump right out of the cipher, just as the author says. We must be on the right track! Unfortunately, as the author explains, the same trick doesn't work with the other two ciphers. Meaning, really, the one telling where the treasure is buried. (Who cares, after all, to whom the treasure originally belonged, the subject of the third cipher?) Unfortunately, although Cipher No. 1 is identical in form to No. 2, applying it to the Declaration generates nothing but gibberish.
But, doubtless we've hit on (been directed to) the right method. All we have to do now is find the right key text!
At this point, the analyses I've seen proceed in one of two directions. Either they move on to Cipher No.
1 and see what conclusions may be drawn; or they stay with Cipher No. 2 and try to figure out more about how it was written. I'm going down the latter path. It has long been recognized that No.
The Beale Papers Pamphlet
2 doesn't line up with the Declaration quite so neatly as the pamphlet suggests. Remington notes, for example, 'The Beale version appears to have been a DOI Declaration that had been shortened to conform to some unknown editor's available space. Thus there are gaps of 10 or 11, and even 68, words where Beale's numbering fails to conform to the numbering of the standard DOI.'
For a detailed analysis of discrepancies between No. 2 and the Declaration, see NJM.
The discrepancy point is well taken, but, I submit, gets the problem backwards. There's no mystery about what form of the Declaration was used for No. It's printed in the pamphlet.
As noted above, a copy, with word counts, was included so the reader could follow how the cipher was broken. (Thus teaching how to decode No. 1 and find the treasure!) Moreover, for what it's worth, a careful reading of the pamphlet's Declaration against the standard version shows they match, except the pamphlet uses inalienable rather than unalienable, inserts a spurious 'a' at position 155, and omits an 'of' from a late passage not used for the cipher. Thus, the rogue non-standard Declaration upon which No.
2 is speculated to have been based is an illusion. But, the discrepancies? Indeed, they are suggestive. To my mind, clinching proof of the hoax. Consider this. How did the pamphlet author decode No.
The numbers don't match the Declaration, of which his copy was substantially correct. Like the dog that didn't bark in the Sherlock Holmes classic, The Adventure of Silver Blaze, the answer is right in front of our noses. The reason Cipher No. 2 and the pamphlet's Declaration match up is that they use the same word counts. Stated a little differently, No. 2 works if, and only if, the pamphlet Declaration word counts are used. It's that simple.
A complete demonstration of the assertion follows, but before getting lost in the thicket, let's stop to consider what it means. Assume for a moment that the demonstration will be convincing. What follows? Obviously, that No. 2 was written with the pamphlet Declaration word counts in view. Well, yeah, but what follows from that? Nothing less than that No.
2 was not written by Beale. As will be seen, there are more than 130 miscount errors between No. 2 and the Declaration. Of course Beale could have made mistakes counting words; indeed we would expect at least a few. For the same reason, it would be unsurprising for the pamphlet author (in a hoax scenario, presumably Ward) to have made mistakes interlineating word counts. In fact, as I note in the Appendix, there are six errors, cumulatively affecting over half the word counts (albeit words used less often in the cipher than correctly-counted words). Significantly, how far wrong a particular count is depends on where in the Declaration the word appears vis-a-vis the six counting errors.
So, sure, Beale and the pamphlet author doubtless both made mistakes. It is improbable, though, to the point of impossibility, that they made the exact same mistakes. Bear in mind that nothing in the early part of the story points to the Declaration. There are three letters, three ciphers and some useless receipts. Not even the original recipient of the materials thought of using the Declaration as a key. In fact, he appears not to have recognized the ciphers as book codes.
It wasn't until the papers reached the pamphlet author that this insight occurred. Thus, the match between No. 2 and the word counts is conclusive proof that the pamphlet author wrote No. But, but, but. 2 is 'cooked' but maybe the rest of the story is true?
And if you believe that, I've got a big orange bridge for sale. Demonstration: Take Cipher No. 2, copied here from Remington. (SMD corrects without comment various widely-recognized typos. For details, see Remington.
Here, typos are indicated by italics, pamphlet code on the left, apparently-intended code on the right.) Marked in bold are Declaration words miscounted in the pamphlet text, as indicated by my (easily confirmed) bracketed notes in the Appendix. As there demonstrated, the miscounts occur between 155 and 241, and all entries after 480.