Sunday 24 June 2018

SOMERTON MAN: THE CARDAN GRILLE AND VERSE 70


THE CARDAN GRILLE





This templates above were an essential part of the 'Cardan Grille' code. It dates back to 1550 and was invented by Giralamo Cardan. In most cases a cardboard or paper template would have holes cut into it. When this template was placed on top of a written page, certain letters would show through the holes revealing the message. Variations include using a printed book page or a jumble of letters.


Consider the function of this device, it acts in such a way as to leave visible only the target words and letters of the message. Most importantly, by default, it positions the words and letters precisely by covering up the superfluous information on the page.


DOES THIS APPLY TO VERSE 70?

In Verse 70, we already have the letters' in fact a name, DANETTA, which I would imagine would be easier to memorise than a set of letters.  The question now is, in the absence of a grille device, how do we point our accomplice to the correct letters. I say that because there are a number of words that contain similar letters to those required to spell out the name DANETTA. The idea is to have the exact right letters because it is they that have the secret, hidden, micro written code.

A careful reading of the passage would reveal letters that would spell out the target name but we had a number of letters to choose from. To reveal the correct letters you need to know the right line and position for each 'message' letter and we may need to know the right sentence. Could the answer be that we would have been given a set of sequential numbers as in 1,2,3,4,5,6,7 or maybe even just the last number as in '7'? In other words, you would choose only those letters that matched the sequential number code. As Milongal discovered with the letter 'e', choose the wrong one and you don't get the sequence.

What I am saying is that this or a very similar code may well have been used to hide the word Danetta in Verse 70 and to recover it.

One enthusiastic and boisterous commenter went so far as to claim that he could find the same name hidden in almost any passage, but it's not that simple, it has to be the right letters and they must have the right sequence as in physical position within a line and/or sentence or other markers such as the end or beginning of a paragraph.

This is not a case of confirmation bias, this is the result of research. What needs to happen now is that it should be tested and that will be done in the next post on the topic. Comments are welcome, would be interested to hear your thoughts.
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2 comments:

  1. I can understand how the Cardan Grille would work in theory, but in the case of written words and the closeness of each letter, I'm assuming that the cut-out in the template would have to be extremely small, in order to focus on a particular letter? Am I correct in thinking, that if plastic had been available in 1550, then all that would have been required is to have drawn/etched a horizontal line in a piece of plastic and placed it over the words/page. The horizontal line would then underline the code letter? Clive

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  2. Trying to fit with a grille like that might certainly account for the differences in letter shapes throughout SM's code.
    Perhaps SM's code is an attempted decryption of the wrong text, say the wrong verse in the Rubaiyat, or even a result of using the right grille on the right text at the wrong orientation - assuming the holes are square there would be 8 different ways to put the grid - rotating through 90 degrees or flipping it over.
    I think this idea particularly works if he was intercepting rather than being the intended recipient. So he puts the grille on and sees that the letters don't appear to make sense in English, so he jots them down thinking there must be some secondary code to solve from them.

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