I don’t think I’m very good at ciphers after all. After many months of determined effort, I haven’t succeeded at cracking the code. Argh! I hope some of you are having better luck than I have had. I keep looking for #BealeCiphers to be trending on Twitter or Instagram and read about a brilliant young cipher guru who succeeded when all others have failed.
Until that happy day, I’ve decided to now pursue deciphering the story itself, and all articles that have been written about the Beale ciphers. I hypothesize that the REAL cipher is found hidden in the written words, similar to the way nefarious plotters communicate through email, writing innocuous and trifling emails, seemingly about the weather, or plans to attend a wedding, etc, that are really code speak for something else entirely.
Thomas Jefferson was the master of this type of communication, writing hundreds, maybe even thousands, of cryptic letters that meant something else entirely, several of which have gone missing, and one of which is the foundation for the rocking new book series The Secret Tortoise Sleepy Hollow SAGA I.
Spending time on this trail, I learned two very interesting facts:
- The year that the Beale ciphers were first made public, was the exact same year that the Civil War ended and that an anti-slavery French artist proposed the construction of the Statue of Liberty. This is obviously very significant.
- I found one blatantly false statement in the written description which I consider a major clue. This because if there’s one false statement, there’s bound to be more. If we gather all the false statements, and piece them together, they will likely “speak to us,” revealing another, bigger clue. This totally seems like National Treasure. I’m going to have to watch National Treasure again.
The Beale Papers are a lot of information to wrap our minds around. UVA’s / Thomas Jefferson’s Academical Village is likely to be an important hot spot to find clues, ie Edgar Allen Poe’s room that’s memorialized, and on view to the public 24/7 through a glass door.
Good luck all you brainiacs who know how to crack codes. I can’t wait to learn what you come up with. In the meantime, I’ll keep hunting for false statements in the written articles and essays.
secrettortoise.com 