Misc.

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Misc.

Here are some quotes and musings I have collected, as well as bits and pieces from my favorite authors. THE POE CODE HAS JUST BEEN CRACKED! See the article below for more info.

Published Sunday, December 3, 2000, in the Miami Herald

Poe's puzzle solved 151 years after his death

Meaning, author of sentimental `cipher' still remain a mystery

BY JEFF DONN

Associated Press

WILLIAMSTOWN, Mass. -- Edgar Allan Poe, master of the mysterious and the macabre, might have uttered his last words from beyond the grave.

A coded message that Poe published in 1841 in a magazine that he edited has been deciphered with the help of modern computing and the intuition of a young puzzle solver, 151 years after Poe's death.

As it turns out, the translated passage wasn't Poe's message for readers yet unborn or a key to comprehending his enigmatic stories.

In fact, the passage is so inept and sentimental that he probably didn't write it all. But the mystery of whether he selected and encoded the passage remains.

It was one of two encoded texts that Poe presented as the work of a ``Mr. W.B. Tyler,'' challenging readers to break their codes.

Edgar Allan Poe was obsessed with death and premature burial.

No one did -- maybe no one cared to -- until scholars, in recent years, began embracing the theory that Poe himself came up with the messages and devised the codes.

The theory holds that Poe, obsessed with death and premature burial in The Tell-tale Heart and other stories, would have encrypted his own words in nearly impenetrable code meant to be pried open only long after his death.

In 1992, Duke University doctoral student Terence Whalen, while procrastinating on his dissertation, finally decoded the first message.

It was a passage from the 1713 play Cato by English writer Joseph Addison.

But it took computer power and more time to fathom the second.

``I can't really say if I cared what it would say, one way or the other. But I was curious to see what it would yield,'' said Gil Broza, 27, a computer programmer from Toronto who cracked the code.

For his solution, he was awarded $2,500 in October by Williams College, in Williamstown.

Shawn Rosenheim, a Poe scholar there who had pondered the problem for years, established the contest in 1996.

The two texts were much like complex versions of today's newspaper cryptograms.

In Poe's time, they often were called ``ciphers.''

The first cipher put the original message backward.

But its solution took just a few days because each letter in the original message matches just one other letter in the code.

The second cipher is far more complex.

Each letter in the original has multiple variants. The letter ``e,'' for example, has 14.

The code freely mixes upper and lower case and turns some characters upside down.

It is also maddeningly brief -- fewer than 150 words -- and so a discovered letter might provide clues to few words.

It also is littered with what appear to be typographical errors.

Rosenheim and many others tried to solve it and failed.

The breakthrough came when Broza decided, in traditional deciphering technique, to assume that each three-letter code word could represent ``the,'' ``and,'' or ``not'' and to play with the possibilities.

With a computer program of his own design, he scanned lists of phrases showing the same patterns of letters.

He finally identified four letters in one word and conjectured correctly, like a contestant on Wheel of Fortune, that it was ``afternoon.''

That gave him yet more letters to decode more words and ultimately the whole text, within two months.

The deciphered message is a treacly passage wholly unlike Poe's work, with references to sultry breezes, amorous zephyrs and delicious languor.

``I can't imagine Poe would have taken the trouble to construct an elaborate cryptogram to disguise something this banal,'' said J. Gerald Kennedy, a Poe expert at Louisiana State University in Baton Rouge.

On the other hand, Poe was a prankster who used to write anonymous reviews of his own work, accusing himself of plagiarism.

Some believe Poe chose the name Tyler to tweak President John Tyler, whose administration had passed over the chronically broke Poe for a job.

Annabel Lee

By Edgar Allen Poe

It was many and Many a year ago,

in a kingdom by the sea,

that a maiden there lived whom you may know by the name of annabel lee;

and this maiden she lived with no other thought than to love and be loved by me.

I was a child and She was a child,

in this kingdom by the sea,

but we loved with a love that was more than love----i and my annabel lee----

with a love that the winged seraphs of heaven coveted her and me.

and this was the reason that, long ago,

in this kingdom by the sea,

a wind blew out of a cloud, chilling

my beautiful annabel lee;

so that her highborn kinsmen came

and bore her away from me,

to shut her up in a sepulchre

in this kingdom by the sea.

The angels, not half so happy in heaven,

went envying her and me:---

Yes! that was the reason (as all men know in this kingdom by the sea) that the wind came out of the cloud by night,

chilling and killing my annabel lee.

But our love it was stronger by far than the love of those who were older than we--

Of many far wiser than we--

And neither the angels above,

Nor the demons down under the sea,

can ever dissever my soul from the soul of the beautiful annabel lee:--

For the moon never beams, without bringing me dreams of the beautiful annabel lee;

And the stars never rise, but i feel the bright eyes of the beautiful annabel lee:

And so, all the night tide, I lie down by the side of my darling--my darling--my life and my bride, in the sepulchre there by the sea--

in her tomb by the sounding sea.

TV light

By Matthew J. Doucette

lying quietly with her by my side

her gentle breathing complements

the blue caste of the television light

her hair flows gently over bronzed shoulders and her soft sculpted back.

her eyes dreamily look up at me

i see pure love in her sky eyes

i run my hand through her rain of hair

i kiss noble lips

a kiss thankfully returned

gentle fingers run down the length

of her back

as she readjusts her head on my shoulder.

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