
Yesterday, the Internet Solved a 20-year-old Mystery - cgtyoder
http://www.onthemedia.org/story/yesterday-internet-solved-20-year-old-mystery/
======
aw3c2
Actual link is [http://ask.metafilter.com/255675/Decoding-cancer-addled-
ramb...](http://ask.metafilter.com/255675/Decoding-cancer-addled-ramblings)

~~~
mcguire
From the second compilation, by gingerest:

"{OR Please see that we all have blood pressure in the normal range & see that
none of the rest of us have to take blood pressure medication}"

Now, there's a prayer.

(The alternative was: "Please see that we all have bodily perfection in the
next realm, see that none of the rest of us have to bear painful memories."
Which is more likely, I suspect.)

------
shmerl
Such kind of "lossy compression" was used sometimes to transfer secret
messages. It's impossible to fully decipher it without knowing the text, but
it serves as a reminder for those who know it, so they can reconstruct it in
full form if needed. This way the information could be kept in oral form for a
long time (even for generations), while being preserved in written form only
in such way that strangers couldn't decipher it in full. But since common
patterns can be discerned (if you at least know the subject approximately),
one can reconstruct some parts of it with pretty good accuracy.

~~~
chimeracoder
> Such kind of "lossy compression" was used sometimes to transfer secret
> messages. It's impossible to fully decipher it without knowing the text, but
> it serves as a reminder for those who know it, so they can reconstruct it in
> full form if needed.

This was the way that the Qur'an was originally passed down. Originally, the
Qur'an was meant to be a recited work. Furthermore, at the time, Arabic
writing wasn't so much a complete orthographic system as much as a reminder of
the roots of words[0]

This works well in Semitic languages, in which the consonants denote the
general meaning of the word, and the vowels change the specifics.

For example, one might write "SLM", which can be expanded to any of the
following (capitalization for emphasis)

1) iSLaM = "submission" (literally)

2) moSLeM = "one who has submitted"

3) SaLaaM = a greeting, similar to "peace" (etc.)

The writing is not enough to reconstruct the entire text, but it's good enough
for someone whose job it is to recite the work, and simply needs a little
reminder.

[0] In fact, not only did traditional written Arabic lack vowels (much like
Hebrew), but I am told that even consonants were difficult to distinguish from
each other.

~~~
shmerl
Similar idea (using just the initial letters of words) was used in various
Hebrew works. Such kind of text was usually called _megilas sesorim_ (i.e. a
"scroll of secrets").

------
anigbrowl
Ask Metafilter is a very very good place to get random questions answered - a
smart and very diverse userbase, along with some sensible rules on how to ask
a question, which gives it an edge over Quora for my tastes.

~~~
jlgaddis
Plus you don't have to create an account.

~~~
teraflop
Sorry, but that's wrong. Here are the rules for how to sign up:
[http://www.metafilter.com/newuser.mefi](http://www.metafilter.com/newuser.mefi)

~~~
work_account_1
I believe he meant that you don't have to create an account just to view the
answers.

~~~
teraflop
Whoops, in retrospect that should have been obvious.

------
snorkel
I like the post but I don't care for the click baity headline. Please add a
few more words to headline when posting to HN.

~~~
netcraft
HN policy is to always have the title the same as the source, for better or
sometimes worse. There are many cases of them changing a link title even if
the provided one was much more descriptive.

Edit: relevant discussion here:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6572466](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6572466)

~~~
aw3c2
Actually it is not. And I wish mods were not so overzealous.

[http://ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html](http://ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html)

> (...) please use the original title, unless it is misleading or linkbait.

~~~
netcraft
Relevant discussion:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6572466](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6572466)

------
JTon
I love when an online community comes together and solves puzzles like this.
/r/Whatisthis turns up some gems here and there. An another note, I'm
disappointed this particular puzzle turned out to be prayers... boring

~~~
cobrausn
Old woman dying of cancer didn't have the common courtesy to at least scribble
down something more interesting for you to browse for 5 minutes on the
internet later. What a shame.

~~~
Luc
What the hell. It's a perfectly reasonable thing to remark on. It was
presented as a conundrum, and it turns out it's something disappointing to the
grandparent. You're the one dramatising things.

~~~
cobrausn
The 'boring' remark is the only thing that set me off. The post without that
would seem reasonable - as it stands though, it looks like someone complaining
about not having something more interesting to read about, not someone
expressing disappointment there wasn't something more meaningful to her heirs.

~~~
Luc
Seems reasonable to express disappointment at the decoded message. I'm not
sure why you're trying to be the white knight in this.

~~~
samstave
"Drink more ovaltine"

~~~
deaconblues
Son of a bitch!

------
thehme
The title of this article does not reflect what the article is actually
talking about. Also, while a nice gesture of the family member to write, as I
read the article I was building up excitement and really wanted to know if she
had written some interesting/secret information for the kids, but then found
she was just praying. Nothing wrong or against that, just that my curiosity
was sparked but ultimately my interest went unfulfilled.

~~~
judk
Welcome to magazine journalism.

------
IvyMike
I thought this was going to be about the redditor who uncovered Tommy Wiseau's
country of birth, but that's just a 10-year-old mystery.

[http://www.reddit.com/r/theroom/comments/1vklp3/i_think_i_ha...](http://www.reddit.com/r/theroom/comments/1vklp3/i_think_i_have_found_tommys_nationality_new/)

------
iM8t
It's incredible what people can do just because of curiosity. I mean - there's
no practical gain from helping another person decipher a code other than just
out of curiosity. I'm fascinated by the message and the relentlessness of the
person who kept the code and tried to crack it for 20yrs. This is just so
cool!

------
jccalhoun
Be sure to drink your Ovaltine.

~~~
protomyth
If it was one of my relatives, it would have been that or some geo coordinates
to an almost impossible to get to place resulting in nothing (or a sign that
said "gotcha").

------
Jabbles
How hard did the family actually try to solve this mystery though?

[https://www.google.co.uk/search?q=OFWAIHHBTN](https://www.google.co.uk/search?q=OFWAIHHBTN)

~~~
gry
To be fair, this wasn't searchable in 1996. :)

They rediscovered the card a couple days ago and the string of characters only
results in the content itself.
[https://www.google.co.uk/search?q=OFWAIHHBTNTKCTWBDOEAIIIHFU...](https://www.google.co.uk/search?q=OFWAIHHBTNTKCTWBDOEAIIIHFUTDODBAFUOT)

The solution was someone recognizing the pattern, not arbitrary Googling,
which I find far more interesting.

~~~
smackfu
Actually, arbitrary Googling works pretty well. Just start chopping letters of
the end, and you get a hit on "OFWAIHHBTNTKCTWBDOEAIIIH" from 2007.

------
yetanotherphd
I wonder if n-grams could solve this automatically?

If we consider the actual words to be a latent variable, then we can use an
n-gram model to compute the maximum likelihood estimate (sorry Bayesians)
using dynamic programming.

There is also the Bayesian approach where you treat it as a Bayesian network
and use belief propagation to compute the marginal posteriors over each
letter.

EDIT: took a while to figure out the ML approach.

~~~
jjwiseman
Yes, that's what I did:
[https://github.com/wiseman/finalletters](https://github.com/wiseman/finalletters)

It uses a bigram model and Viterbi decoding. With the right corpora (the repo
includes the King James Bible and some Lutheran hymnals, as the woman was
reportedly Lutheran) it's easy to decode "OFWAIHHBTN" into "our father who are
in heaven hallowed be thy name".

------
ithinkso
If mystery was not known then no one could say it was 20-year-old mystery.
Media headlines.

~~~
interstitial
True, but viral it up: Minutes old mystery solved instantly, but what happened
next made me fall off my chair.

~~~
jlgaddis
_> You'll never believe what happened next!_

~~~
deaconblues
Code crackers hate her!

~~~
jtheory
72-year-old grandmother passes a message from beyond the grave with this one
weird trick

------
richardlblair
I love the interweb.

------
sebnukem2
spoiler: prayers.

