i
U
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Z
‘That makes Diagram 1 look wrong,’ she said. ‘Why? What have we done? Oh, I know. E and N can’t come together, so if that’s the right diagram, E must come in the third line. I say! That would mean a key-word of eleven letters!’
‘Not necessarily. E may be in its proper alphabetical place. But if Diagram 1 is right, then the beginning of Line 3 is the only place for it. Let’s get on. S and T come in one line, and so do R and T, but RST don’t follow one another, or RS would become ST, which it doesn’t. I should like ST to go in the two places next before U, but we can’t be sure that that is the right place for them. Well, dash, it! stick ’em down — if we’re wrong we must do it again, that’s all. There! Now in that case, R must be in the key-word and therefore in one of the top two spaces on the right of the diagram. That means that RS will be something — T.’
But we know RS! If AT=RS, then RS=AT.”
‘Good lord! so it does! That’s fine? That practically proves that our S and T are correct. And now we know that AR must come next to one another in the key-word.’
Harriet pored over the diagrams again.
‘Can’t we do something now with NX=AW? Yes — look! If we put A into either of the squares in Diagram 1, so as to make NX=AW, then A won’t come next to R! So either we’re all wrong, or we can wash our Diagram 1 altogether.’
‘Hurray! — Brilliant woman! I always hated Diagram 1, so we’ll stash it. That leaves us with a very hopeful-looking Diagram 2.’
e
N
ia
r
e
N
ia
r
e
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T
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‘I’m glad you think it’s hopeful! How about this, of M and N coming in the same line? Can we do anything with that now?’
‘Why not? Let’s try. Put M immediately, below the N spaces. That leaves five spaces, between it and S and only three letters to fill them, because we know that N and R are in the key-word. So that M must come in one of the four spaces in the top left-hand corner: Now we do know that NÉMG. Obviously G can’t come immediately between E and N anywhere, because that would give us a key-word with MNG in it, which sounds almost incredible. But that still leaves us with several possible arrangements. Is there anything else we can do?’
‘We can fill in Q in the space before S. It isn’t likely to be in the key-word without its U, and we know roughly what has become of R.
‘Yes. All right. There it is. Do any of these pairs of letters make sense in the letter itself, by the way?’
‘No. I’ve been trying to fit them in, but they’re remarkably unhelpful. There’s a group ATGM which works out as RSEN, but that might be anything. And quite near the beginning there’s TS followed by QJ. TS=SQ, and you’d expect the next group to be U — something, but it isn’t. QJ must be S — something-?
‘So it is; that shows we’re on the right track. Q is an arbitrary letter stuck in to separate the two S’s it’s curious how little one can get out of the actual text at this stage. Shows what an ingenious beast of a code it is, doesn’t it? Wait a jiff the group before that is MG=NE — that gives us NESS. Perfectly possible and even probable, but it might be anything. Here it comes again! Whatever it is, it appears to be important — its the same word, BFFY followed by NESS, but BFFY is simply baffling, I can see nothing for it but to go on struggling with the top left-hand corner. Let’s write out all the possible positions for NE =MG.
E
G
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G
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M
N