THE 7 LINE CODE PAGE, EACH LINE BEGINS WITH THE LETTER 'M' & IT CONTAINS THE 'DANETTA' AUTHENTICATOR, UPDATED

 THIS INFORMATION FIRST POSTED ON 

'AN EMPTY GLASS'
28th NOVEMBER 2019

link here...

The following is posted to clear up any misunderstandings as to the nature of the code page layout. 

It was made prior to the revelations regarding the proven presence of microcode written into the individual letters on the code page as per the INK H method described in the 1943 British SOE manual. I have included additional comments to reflect the current information and more recent finds about the Code page...

THE CODE PAGE EXPLAINED

Background:

The code page as such presents a different kind of challenge when looking for an acrostic name because of course there are no visible words. But an acrostic decoding method can still be applied using a simple formula based on 7 consecutive numbers each of which directly relates to the position of a letter on a line.

In this case, as you can see in the image at the top of the page, we appear to have 5 lines including the so-called 'crossed out' line, line 2.

But, the reality is that there are 7 lines, each one beginning with the letter M as in the following format:

1. MRGOABABD

2. MLIAOl

3. MTBI

4. MPANETP

5. MLIABOAIAQCVTT

6. MTSA

7. MSTGAR

Note that the letter A only appears in two of the 7 lines in the 7th position, Line 1 and Line 5

THE CODE PAGE LETTERS WERE ARRANGED IN GROUPS BEGINNING WITH THE LETTER M 

Whoever wrote the Code page commenced with the first line ending in D.

Next, he or she wrote the second line MLIAOI and then moved on to the third line MTBIMPANETP and realised that there may not be enough physical space on the page for both of the M sections/code letter groups to be placed on separate lines and so they were joined onto one line which consisted of 2 groups.

Whilst we have MTBIMPANETP in that 3rd line we have the two groups, MTBI and a second, separate group of MPANETP.

Next, we move to the sequence MLIABOAIAQC but there wasn't enough physical  room on the page to insert the VTT after it so it was moved to the next line as follows: VTT MTSA MSAGAR Space on the page was extremely tight and that's why the lines were 'compressed' as in:

the 5th message group MLIABOAIAQCVTT followed by the 6th message group MTSA and finally followed by the 7th and last message group MSTGAR

Please note, the very last letter on the code page is not in our view the letter B but the letter R with a 'flourish' beneath it (as first published some years ago on this blog)

The person who was to receive the code would know that the letter M was the key letter for each group of letters that followed the M.

THE 'DANETTA' AUTHENTICATOR 

Decode

An operator receiving this information would be looking for a way to confirm that this was an authentic 'broadcast' an authenticator was needed. In this case the operator was looking for a name: DANETTA.

Individual letter positions that form the name DANETTA WITHIN THE REFORMATTED code page can be fixed and then read from left to right or from right to left:​​​​​​ the numbering sequence relates to the position of each letter within the numbered lines and there must be 7 sequential letter positions

D = Line 1, position # 1 READ Right to Left

A = Line 5, position # 6 READ Right to left

N= Line 4, position # 4 READ Left to Right

E= Line 4, position # 5 READ Left to Right

T = Line 3, position # 2 READ Left to Right

T = Line 7, position # 3 READ Left to Right

A = Line 5 position # 7 READ Left to Right

In strict sequence of placement, we have:

1=D, 6=A, 4=N, 5=E, 2=T, 3=T, 7=A

Bringing it all together we have:

Letter Position 1 = D

Letter Position 2 = A

Letter Position 3 = N

Letter Position 4 = E

Letter Position 5 = T

Letter Position 6 = T

Letter Position 7 = A

And this is the authenticator code name:

DANETTA

The same code name authenticator found in Tibor Kaldor's last letter, Verse 70, The Marshall case Rubaiyat and more...

Another Perspective..

We have 7 letters M

We have a 7 line code page

We have the name DANETTA which contains 7 letters

We have Jess choosing verse 70 for her inscription in her gift to Alf

We have Alf signing off the inscription with the number 70

Let's look at what letters in the reformatted code page turn up at 7 letter intervals:

MRGOABABDMLIAOIMTBMPANETPMLIABOSIAQCVTTMTSAMSTGAR

A  O  A  I  Q  S R   what do you know! Another 7 letters.
This takes us nicely to the last letter on the code page...

You might want to check this over, nothing like another set of eyes.... What I can tell you is that when you pass these letters through a Hill cipher decoder you will get a few strikes one of which is
SS COWARA, a HMAS COWARA was laid down in 1939 Still looking for the SS Cowara.

In a Vigenere cipher, well it gets awfully close, maybe even close enough to prove the point. DANATEE? But maybe 'close enough' is not good enough?

So, there we have it, a strict 7 number sequence linked to individual letters with the first two letters, D and A, being read from right to left and the remainder being read left to right, our letter positions are numbered in sequence 1,2,3,4,5,6,7.

When you look critically at this arrangement you can see the logic that has been applied, the first letter is a known key and it commences the sequence which the other 6 letters must follow:

1 is by itself then 2 + 3, then 4 + 5 with 6 + 7 being the outer two numbers within which we find 2,3,4 and 5. It is relatively simple and straightforward.

​​​​​The question as to why it was done this way is this, it is thought that it was done to provide the reader with a confirmation that this a real message set, DANETTA was the authenticator in this case as it was in Tibor Kaldor's last letter.

Critically this decode only works when you arrange the code into 7 lines format each of which begins with the letter M.

The fact that an authenticator is used confirms the clandestine nature of the code page. This decode exercise does not affect the presence of micro-written code that has been found on the page. ( In fact it validates it, more on that in another post)