Dorabella Cipher - Proposed Solutions

Proposed Solutions

Eric Sams, the musicologist, produced an interpretation in 1970 but, although he made a number of reasonable points, his method of attack is convoluted and difficult to follow. His interpretation of the message is;

STARTS: LARKS! IT'S CHAOTIC, BUT A CLOAK OBSCURES MY NEW LETTERS, A, B BELOW: I OWN THE DARK MAKES E. E. SIGH WHEN YOU ARE TOO LONG GONE.

The length of this text is 109 letters (ignoring the parenthetic note on Greek), whereas the original text contains only 87 or 88 characters: Sams claimed the surplus letters are implied by phonetic shorthand.

Javier Atance has suggested that the solution is not a text but a melody, the 8 different positions of the semicircles, turning clockwise, corresponding to the notes of the scale, and that each semicircle has 3 different levels corresponding to natural, flat or sharp notes.

Tim S. Roberts claims a solution via a simple substitution cipher and offers a statistical justification

P.S. Now droop beige weeds set in it – pure idiocy – one entire bed! Luigi Ccibunud luv’ngly tuned liuto studo two.

In December 2011 Canadian cryptographer enthusiast Richard Henderson claimed to have found the correct clear text, encoded once again as a simple substitution cipher (with two letters as nulls), although some details remain to be worked out. His solution would read;

whY AM I VERY SAD, BELLE. I SAG AS WE SEE ROSES DO. E.E. IS EVER FOND OF U, DORA. I kNOw I PeN ONE I LOVe. All Of My Affection.

In July 2012, a claimed solution has been published on a French blog (The Dorabella Code). The key element of this analysis is the date which replaces the signature at the bottom of the message. The author has identified the name of Elgar hidden in this date, and thanks to this, to the Templars code and a deep letter frequency analysis he proposed a new substitution code.

The next step is based on the use of anagrams, by line, using key words or entries. The solution would be at the end:

YELL EUREKA! CLASSIC CODE – HINT WXYZ
SWEETHEART, I WANT YOU AS WIFE. SHRED
DONA DORA, I LOV’YOU SO MUCH. ADIEU. HIC A

Each end of line is a hint to attack the next line (WXYZ being replaced by "The last four letters", SHRED giving the authorization to "shred" letter "O" in two letters "C", and HIC A giving CUP, through A HIC-CUP, which is the cup of victory).

An original supplementary solution is based on a graphic representation of the coded symbols on a 24 graduations wheel (or on a 24 hours clock). This graphical solution give the word ADIEU, and combined to the end of the message would give the date and the hour of a "date" between the two lovers to become...