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AI cracks a code that had resisted solution for 373 years in 44 minutes

From Clarín · () Spanish

Translated from Spanish and summarized by DistantNews. Read the original for the full story.

At a glance

News Named sources Outcome reported
  • Anthropic’s Claude Fable 5.1 solved the Cyphral Distich, a 64-digit code created by Scottish writer Thomas Urquhart in 1653, in 44 minutes, Vals AI said.
  • The key was found in Urquhart’s book, where 32 numbered wishes identified the words needed to decode the message.
  • The resulting text asks God to support King Charles II and make him the country’s supreme ruler.

A code that had resisted solution for 373 years was deciphered in 44 minutes by Claude Fable 5.1, the latest version of Anthropic’s artificial intelligence model. Vals AI said the process used 176,000 tokens.

The Cyphral Distich consists of two lines containing 32 numbers each, or 64 digits in total. Scottish royalist writer Thomas Urquhart included it in his 1653 book, Logopandecteision. The puzzle later appeared in a collection of his works published in 1834 and was presented as an open problem in Notes and Queries in 1899.

Several people tried to solve the code over the years. They tested frequency analysis, substitution and homophonic methods, but none worked, according to the report. The cipher also appeared on cryptographer Klaus Schmeh’s list of “50 unsolved ciphers.”

The crucial clue was not an outside alphabet but the book itself. Immediately before the cipher, Urquhart had printed 32 numbered wishes, which he called “Proquiritations.” Each number pointed to a word in the corresponding wish. The first letters of the selected words formed a rhyming couplet and a royalist prayer: “O GOD UPHOLD KING CHARLS THE SECOND AND MAKE HIM THE SUPREME RULER OF THIS LAND.”

O GOD UPHOLD KING CHARLS THE SECOND AND MAKE HIM THE SUPREME RULER OF THIS LAND

· Decoded messageThe text revealed by the cipher asks God to support King Charles II and make him the country’s supreme ruler.
About this summary

Originally published by Clarín in Spanish. Translated, summarized, and contextualized automatically by DistantNews, with a note on how the source frames the story. Not individually reviewed before publishing. How this works.

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