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Re: Cryptic Clues to the Authorship Puzzle

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I may as well show where this thread was headed.

I've been interested in the mysteries of ancient history for a
while.  The craft of the historian is to determine what is LIKELY;
in other words it is an exercise in PROBABILITY, though the
probability is usually close to 1% or close to 99%.  Rather than arithmetic,
estimating probabilities is more a matter of clear thought and common-sense.

For the Authorship Puzzle,  if we ignore ALL alleged skip ciphers and
ignore ALL alleged anagrams  and ignore ALL cryptic hints from contemporaneous
documents, the evidence would STILL point very strongly to Edward de Vere being
the author of Shakespeare's works.

But it is still interesting to guess whether the alleged skip ciphers
and anagrams are deliberate, or just arise by chance.  Littlewood's Law
is good to keep in mind:
* A person will encounter a million-to-one coincidence about once a year.
* A person will encounter a billion-to-one coincidence about once a lifetime.
* A person will encounter a thousand-to-one coincidence about once an hour.

A relevant 5-letter clue in a skip cipher might arise 10^-3 by chance,
but 10^-6 for TWO such encodings in the same document.  And often the
plain-text will have oddities if it's used as a cipher -- this affects
the assessment of probability.

James Dow Allen <user4353@newsgrouper.org.invalid> posted:
> Here's an example of a skip cipher I constructed just now.
> Anyone want to try it?
> James devised:
> > Isn't our beauty most plain to see?
> > Ah, we can rejoice much in a nest. -- Aprl 3rd.
> Hints:
> (1) Delete all spaces and punctuation before solving
> (2) This is a 2-period skip cipher (not 3-period like "3-4-7").

The two periods are 4,3 as hinted by "Aprl 3rd".  April is the 4th month and
has 4 letters. 3rd contains "3" and 3 letters.  Misspelling of April
should be a hint that cipher is intended.
> 
> ... skip ciphers may be used playfully.  The writer HOPES that a
> select few will get the secret message, but will keep it secret.

I'm posting now because a recent post in r.p "spilled a punchline",
that the author of *Shake-speare's Sonnets* was referred to as
"Our ever-living poet."  The dedication page of that book is shown as
an image at https://james.fabpedigree.com/pics/tto1.jpg
and here it is as text:


TO.THE.ONLiE.BEGETTER.OF.
 THESE.INSVING.SONNETS.
 Mr.W.H.ALL.HAPPINESSE.
  AND.THAT.ETERNITIE.
       PROMISED.
          BY.
 OVR.EVER-LIVING.POET.
       WISHETH.
  THE.WELL-WISHING.
    ADVENTVRER.IN.
       SETTING.
        FORTH.
                 T.T.

(As I view this in the newsgrouper  editor, the 12 lines of the dedication
appear center-aligned.  Let me know how it renders in your environments.)

There are several oddities about this text, which allegedly contains
THREE (3) separate skip-ciphers!  In the (unlikely?) event that there really
are three distinct skip ciphers operating in this text, we should offer kudos
to the composer!

The spelling of "only" and"onlie"
is one oddity.  That word occurs 5 times in the Sonnets, twice spelled "only",
thrice "onely" and NEVER as "onlie."  ("Onelie" was also a common spelling
supposedly 400+ years ago when this dedication was written.

The dots after every word, perhaps to remove ambiguity if we're skipping
words instead of letters in the cipher, are also an oddity.  In the image URL
above you can change the '1' to '2' or '3' to see other dedications by
T.T. to see that these oddities are atypical for him.

* How many individuals are mentioned on the dedication page?

* What are the 3 periods (implied by the vertical spacing) of the word-skip cipher?
  (Hint: The periods are clearly implied by the actual poet's name!!)

* Can you find the 5-letter name hidden in a skip-letter cipher with period 13?

I may say more if there's interest.

BUT please please PLEASE do NOT tell us what we already know: that
ChatBot, GrokBot and WikiBot will all insist that the "Authorship Mystery"
is all crackpottery!  Briefly
      Vg vf ABG penpxcbggrel
The LESS people know about the controversy and the relevant evidence,
the MORE eager they are to jump up and down whinging that it's all crackpottery.
Spare us, please.

Cheers,
James

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Thread

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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