History
Famous Unsolved Coded Messages
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Updated:3/7/2026
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Coded Message↕ | Year Created↕ | Origin↕ | Status↕ | Known For↕ |
|---|---|---|---|---|
Zodiac Killer's Z340 Cipher | 1969 | San Francisco, USA | Solved 2020 (51 years later) | Serial killer's taunting cipher sent to newspapers, cracked by amateur codebreakers in 2020, Z408 solved earlier |
Voynich Manuscript | c. 1404-1438 | Unknown (possibly Italy) | Unsolved | 220-page illustrated codex in unknown script and language, bizarre botanical drawings, defies all decryption attempts |
Kryptos (CIA Sculpture) | 1990 | CIA Headquarters, Langley, VA | 3 of 4 sections solved, K4 unsolved | Jim Sanborn's sculpture at CIA HQ, final 97 characters still unsolved, even the CIA can't crack it |
Beale Ciphers | c. 1820s | Bedford County, Virginia | 1 of 3 solved, treasure unfound | Allegedly describes location of buried gold/silver treasure worth $43M+, cipher #2 keyed to Declaration of Independence |
Dorabella Cipher | 1897 | England | Unsolved | 87 characters written by composer Edward Elgar to a friend, nobody knows the alphabet or the message |
Shugborough Inscription | c. 1748-1763 | Shugborough Hall, England | Unsolved | 8 letters O-U-O-S-V-A-V-V carved beneath relief of Poussin painting, possibly Holy Grail clue, Bletchley Park failed |
Phaistos Disc | c. 1700 BCE | Crete, Minoan civilization | Unsolved | Fired clay disc with 241 stamped symbols in spiral, one-of-a-kind artifact, Bronze Age mystery |
Tamam Shud Case (Somerton Man) | 1948 | Adelaide, Australia | Code unsolved, body identified 2022 | Dead man on beach with torn page from Omar Khayyam, coded letters on back, identity was finally solved via DNA in 2022 |
Chaocipher | 1918 | USA | Algorithm revealed 2010 posthumously | John Byrne's cipher machine offered to US government, rejected, kept secret for 90 years, family donated papers |
Ricky McCormick's Encrypted Notes | 1999 | St. Louis, Missouri | Unsolved | Two coded notes found in murdered man's pockets, FBI's top unsolved cryptanalysis case, may be key to homicide |
D'Agapeyeff Cipher | 1939 | England | Unsolved (author forgot key) | Published as a challenge in a cryptography textbook, the author later admitted he couldn't remember how he encrypted it |
Rohonc Codex | Unknown (pre-1743) | Possibly Hungary | Unsolved | 192-page codex in unknown writing system with religious illustrations, dismissed as hoax by some, 10 times Voynich's size |
Copiale Cipher | c. 1730s | Germany | Solved 2011 | 105-page manuscript of a secret society's initiation rituals, cracked using computational linguistics, revealed oculist lodge |
Linear A | c. 1800-1450 BCE | Minoan Crete | Unsolved | Script of the Minoan civilization, predecessor to Linear B (which was deciphered), language itself is unknown |
Zodiac Killer's Z13 and Z32 | 1969-1970 | San Francisco, USA | Unsolved | Short ciphers claiming to contain the Zodiac's real name, too short to crack statistically, taunting 'My name is...' |
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