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Re: Cryptic Clues to the Authorship Puzzle

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Charlie Roberts <croberts@gmail.com> posted:
> I am sure you have come across something similar, but with skipped
> lines. The one I saw circulated quite a bit about 30 years back. It is
> a recommendation letter written by a prof for one of his students
> and read as it is, is full of praise, lauding the student for many 
> things. But if you skip the even numbered lines the message is 
> just the opposite! 


I often let ChatGPT do the work for me.  Sometimes it succeeds;
often it fails miserably.  In this task it failed miserably.  Each 2nd
line must be ambiguous, flipping meaning depending on the preceding line.
It seems ChatGPT was totally unable to do that.  It closed its initial
mediocre response with

> That version is pure linguistic origami, folding praise into poison. 📝🗡️
> There are many variations floating around, often treated as office folklore
> or a party trick for English majors. It’s less a historical document than
> a genre of mischievous composition.
>
> If you’d like, I can construct an especially baroque one on a topic
> of your choosing, complete with verbal trapdoors.

I replied
> Yes, please do so. Make it a "recommendation" for President of the u.S.A.

Here is ChatGPT's "original" composition:
> To the Members of the Electoral College:
>
> I write in enthusiastic support of this candidate for President of the United States.
> It would be difficult to overstate my reservations about his fitness for executive office.
> He possesses a tireless energy and an unmistakable talent for commanding attention.
> His understanding of constitutional limits is, at best, interpretive performance art.
> He speaks with conviction about national renewal and shared prosperity.
> Precision and accuracy do not detain him for long.
> He inspires fierce loyalty among supporters across the country.
> He has shown a remarkable ability to divide a room in under thirty seconds.
> He approaches complex problems with boldness and creativity.
> Details, however, often approach him alone and unescorted.
> He assures us that he values transparency and accountability.
> Experience suggests those values are most visible in others.
> He promises to surround himself with the finest people available.
> Turnover may ensure we meet them all, briefly.
> He maintains that he listens carefully to expert counsel.
> Whether counsel survives the listening is another matter.
> He insists that history will remember his leadership fondly.
> History has a longer memory than campaign season.
>
> For these reasons, I offer my strongest recommendation.
>
> Respectfully submitted.

The even-numbered lines remained derogatory with or without the
odd-line antecedent.

The bot closed its remark with this:
> Politics is a hall of mirrors. Sometimes the reflection depends
> on which pane you look through.

 - - - - - - - - - 

Let me relate my most interesting encounter with ChatGPT.  I asked it for
data on Treasury debt issuance.  It gave me laborious instructions on
downloading data and running it through Excel.
I complained:
> You repeat "You can download this and aggregate by year and maturity bucket."
> I thought this was the sort of task that YOU were good at!

And the Bot responded by actually doing that work for me, first writing
> Fair rebuke taken. You are right. This is exactly the sort of bean-counting
> I should do for you, not gesture toward like a librarian pointing
> vaguely at a dusty shelf. Let’s put numbers on the table. 🧮📜

(Whether the numbers Chat then provided were correct or not, I don't know.
I've seen the bots fail at arithmetic problems embedded in confusable words.)

 - - - - - - - - - - - - 

Slightly similar to the recommendation letters Charlie Roberts writes
about are *palindromic poems*.  IIRC I was first introduced to these
several decades ago in this very newsgroup.

Cheers,
James

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Cryptic Clues to the Authorship Puzzle James Dow Allen <user4353@newsgrouper.org.invalid> - 2026-03-02 06:20 +0000
  Re: Cryptic Clues to the Authorship Puzzle James Dow Allen <user4353@newsgrouper.org.invalid> - 2026-03-03 07:52 +0000
    Re: Cryptic Clues to the Authorship Puzzle Richard Harnden <richard.nospam@gmail.invalid> - 2026-03-03 12:28 +0000
      Re: Cryptic Clues to the Authorship Puzzle James Dow Allen <user4353@newsgrouper.org.invalid> - 2026-03-03 18:45 +0000
      Re: Cryptic Clues to the Authorship Puzzle James Dow Allen <user4353@newsgrouper.org.invalid> - 2026-03-05 04:02 +0000
        Re: Cryptic Clues to the Authorship Puzzle Richard Harnden <richard.nospam@gmail.invalid> - 2026-03-05 06:03 +0000
  Re: Cryptic Clues to the Authorship Puzzle Charlie Roberts <croberts@gmail.com> - 2026-03-03 15:16 -0500
    Re: Cryptic Clues to the Authorship Puzzle James Dow Allen <user4353@newsgrouper.org.invalid> - 2026-03-04 05:15 +0000
      Re: Cryptic Clues to the Authorship Puzzle Charlie Roberts <croberts@gmail.com> - 2026-03-04 17:48 -0500
        Re: Cryptic Clues to the Authorship Puzzle James Dow Allen <user4353@newsgrouper.org.invalid> - 2026-03-05 03:54 +0000
  Re: Cryptic Clues to the Authorship Puzzle James Dow Allen <user4353@newsgrouper.org.invalid> - 2026-03-12 19:22 +0000
    Re: Cryptic Clues to the Authorship Puzzle James Dow Allen <user4353@newsgrouper.org.invalid> - 2026-03-13 05:35 +0000
    Re: Cryptic Clues to the Authorship Puzzle James Dow Allen <user4353@newsgrouper.org.invalid> - 2026-03-25 11:19 +0000
      Re: Cryptic Clues to the Authorship Puzzle Phil Carmody <pc+usenet@asdf.org> - 2026-05-19 18:23 +0300
        Re: Cryptic Clues to the Authorship Puzzle James Dow Allen <user4353@newsgrouper.org.invalid> - 2026-05-19 17:56 +0000
        "Instigate to poison"  (Re: Cryptic Clues to the Authorship Puzzle) James Dow Allen <user4353@newsgrouper.org.invalid> - 2026-08-30 08:35 +0000

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