What Does It Say?

"The Gold Bug."
By Edgar Allan Poe.
Short story.
First appeared in Philadelphia Dollar Newspaper, June 1843.
Online HERE.

If you're "in to" codes and ciphers, these might be of some interest.

~ "Edgar Allan Poe on Cryptography" (1903):

An interesting chapter in the life of Edgar Allan Poe, which seems to have been forgotten by most people, although it is curiously illustrative of one important side of his genius, is that which showed his great power in the matter of unravelling and deciphering secret writings.

In "The Gold Bug," he gave a singularly lucid description of the method of translating a cipher message. At first sight the cipher in "The Gold Bug," with its mingling of letters, figures and symbols, appears bafflingly formidable; but after Poe has started us on the scent by pointing out to us that which should have been at once perfectly obvious, we are ready and eager to carry out the reading of the message for ourselves. . . .

~ "A Baffling Cipher" (1903):

The best thing in The Red Triangle, Mr. Arthur Morrison's recent contribution to detective literature, is an exceedingly clever cryptogram which we think we could safely defy the most astute and persevering of our readers to decipher if they would battle with it strictly on the merits of the case and refrain from looking ahead. . . .

Resource:
- An earlier ONTOS posting about Arthur Morrison is HERE.

Category: Detective fiction