What kind of message is the Dorabella note?

Answers 5

History

1. 1937Powell: dora said Elgar never explained it, and he loved puzzles that teased.For: The note is a joke made to look like a cipher and carries no recoverable message.
2. 1970Sams puts forward: a plain monoalphabetic substitution of ordinary English, one symbol per letter, read line by line.
3. 2018Schmeh: symbol frequencies resemble those of a short English text.For: A plain monoalphabetic substitution of ordinary English, one symbol per letter, read line by line.
4. 2021Hauer et al. puts forward: english in Elgar's alphabet with irregularities (phonetic spelling, abbreviations, private words, mirrored…
5. 2021Hauer et al. puts forward: the note is a joke made to look like a cipher and carries no recoverable message.
6. 2021Hauer et al.: several solvers fail on Dorabella while solving 87-letter English controls.Against: A plain monoalphabetic substitution of ordinary English, one symbol per letter, read line by line.
7. 2021Hauer et al.: ciphertext language identification ranks English as the most likely language.For: English in Elgar's alphabet with irregularities (phonetic spelling, abbreviations, private words, mirrored…
8. 2021Hauer et al.: character-model classifiers assign higher probability to English than to Bach or Elgar music.Against: The note encodes a melody, the eight orientations standing for notes and the arc count for a modifier.
9. 2021Hauer et al.: the excess of mirrored pairs is unlikely by chance, which the authors read as evidence against a hoax.Against: The note is a joke made to look like a cipher and carries no recoverable message.
10. 2023Wase: algorithms that solve English and Latin substitutions of Dorabella's length fail on it.Against: A plain monoalphabetic substitution of ordinary English, one symbol per letter, read line by line.
11. 26 Oct 2026Asked on this site

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