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Mysterious coded messages appear in a university library

Last posted Mar 25, 2014 at 02:07PM EDT. Added Mar 24, 2014 at 12:28AM EDT
7 posts from 4 users

The block quote below is taken from this Toronto Star article. You can find the blog with images of all the pages here and a subreddit meant to keep tract of the conversation here.

At least 15 hidden messages have been discovered at the school’s D.B. Weldon Library, written entirely in symbols on standard printer paper, and concealed in plain-white envelopes tucked inside the pages of various books.

Each note is accompanied by an item, like a feather or a gem stone, that appears to relate to the symbols. On each note there is also an image of a household item like a vase or table.

“It’s completely baffling!” said assistant professor Mike Moffatt, who found one of the messages two weeks ago Sunday.

“I’d taken a book off the shelf on international economics,” he said. “Inside the book there was an envelope. I immediately thought somebody had been using it as a bookmark.”

“But when I opened it up, there were two items in it. One was a green plastic leaf, like something you’d buy at a dollar store, with two paint splotches on it. The other was this piece of paper covered in symbols with an image of a pillow,” he said.

Moffatt snapped a photo of the note with his smartphone and shared it on Twitter, hoping others had come across similar puzzles. He was not disappointed.

“People started saying they had found notes in the past as well,” he said. “Some had actually kept theirs, so over the last two weeks people have been coming forward.”

The economics professor has been keeping track of the cryptic messages on his blog, but despite an influx of attention, no one has been able to figure out what the cryptic notes mean or where they came from.

Moffatt said various cryptography enthusiasts have tried to the crack the code, performing frequency analysis (looking at how many times symbols appear) as well as various deciphers, but to no avail.

stevoqwerty wrote:

Must be some kind of art project, marketing stun or prank.

The letter noted in the first post is must be prank 'coz this is the only one so far founded with a leaf. The others are founded with feathers and gems. About the symbols. They reminds me to those symbols from the Microsoft Word text program. If you choose one of the symbol collection at the writing style chooser, you can found something similar there.

Penny wrote:

The letter noted in the first post is must be prank 'coz this is the only one so far founded with a leaf. The others are founded with feathers and gems. About the symbols. They reminds me to those symbols from the Microsoft Word text program. If you choose one of the symbol collection at the writing style chooser, you can found something similar there.

Someone already checked up on the symbols and found that there were over 40 of them – too much for them to be just a different font or a substitution cipher.

Platus wrote:

Someone already checked up on the symbols and found that there were over 40 of them – too much for them to be just a different font or a substitution cipher.

Maybe you are right but everybody could create new symbols. The important stuff is the texts are have any logical format and context, so that's a real language or just some scratch together.

EDIT: I checked up the letters and as I said the leaf one is suspicious 'coz in it only 5 times marked the leaf symbol while in the others 6 times. Also if you check the feather symbols in the letters come with feathers are at the same spot, same with the gems. Expect if the item's picture on the letter is on the other side but even those matching with the same type. But this makes me think if one person doing this why did he/she putted that pic on the other side and why putted it back to the other side on an another letter. I think this is maded by a group.

Last edited Mar 24, 2014 at 06:12AM EDT

Has there been any kind of response by the librarians in regards to these codes? If not, it could very well be an extremely elaborate outreach strategy to generate interest in library resources to the students and faculty at the university.

Last edited Mar 24, 2014 at 11:59PM EDT

level4outbreak wrote:

Has there been any kind of response by the librarians in regards to these codes? If not, it could very well be an extremely elaborate outreach strategy to generate interest in library resources to the students and faculty at the university.

If I remember right. No they said only, they have no idea.

Skeletor-sm

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