The daily Gate City. [volume] (Keokuk, Iowa) 1855-1916, 1909-05-03
PUZZLES TEST THEIR SKILL.
Clever Work Of Clerks In Uncle Sans
Dead Letter Office.


find in your morning mail one of thes'
fine days an envelope covered will
lcabalistic characters, do not run t.
the nearest police station thinking tina
it is Black Hand communication, MOI
need you drop it in a pail of water t.
insure its not going off.
4 A few hundred letters of this sort
bearing the name and address in {
mysterious cipher, and carrying M
other superscripture, are delivered
every year by Uncle Sans letter car
lriers to the persons for whom letters
are intended.
/ They are primarily intended as jokes
and also serve the purpose of demon
strating both to the recipient Of the
letter, to Uncle Sam himself and to the
blind readers" at the dead letter
office in Washington how very clever
is the sender of the letter. Neither
Uncle Sam nor his dead letter office
employees can be made to believe that
the sender is wonderfully clever, but
that matters very little to the confirms
ed joker.
The writing of name and address
entirely in cipher on an envelope is q
very easy thing to do. Any school
boy, in fact, can construct a cipher to
suit himself. There is nothing at all
clever about it. But to decipher a
lcrytograph inscription-that is quite
la different matter. The majority of
lciphers are easy of solution and may
be figured out as was the mysterious
crytogram on the Trinity tombstone
that the Sunday papers told about a
few weeks ago. That was solved on
the lines laid down in Poes famous
story of THE Gold Bug viz: that the
character occurring most frequently is
probably the letter E, because that
letter is used more than any other. In
the order of their predominance in
writing next come the letters A, o, 1,
D, H, N, R, S, T, o, Y, C. F, G, L, NJ,
W, B, X, @, X, q.
V On this basis the clerks at the dead
letter office whose special business it
is to decipher illegible, or blind adj
dresses-they are called blind read
rs"-solve nearly all the crytograph
addresses that come before them for
solution.
A Few HoIdovers.
The cipher addresses constitute but
very small part of the puzzling in
scriptions the blind readers" have to
figure out. The vast majority of
Lind addresses are written in the
plain letters of our own language. but
puzzling grouped together. These
and the illegible scrawls give the
clerks most of their hard work.
Quite a large portion of the queerly
directed letters that reach the dead
etter Office at Washington come from
foreigners, both abroad and in this
country. The writer's are for he most
part very illiterate.
1t was an Italian who, in a hand
writing almost undecipherable by reas-
On of it's general scrawliness and reck-
ess disregard of capitals, addressed
lis letter to a friend in Canajoharie,
Y. Y, AL sIGnor pasquale castellani
Der can Geilarie One of the expert
'blind" readers into whose hands the
envelope came for translation, read
he Inscription aloud. In an instan- he
lad the solution Theoretically. Can
5ellarie is Canajoharie, he said. The
etter was sent to that town and prop
srly delivered Another Italia. letter
directed to mug Burnett" was instant
y sent on to New Brunswick, N. J.
a Letter addressed to Annie McGill.
very, Troury Emschers," was intended
or Troy, N. H. Here, too, the sound of
he words gave the clue. "Emschers"
being quite as close as the correspond
INT could get New Hampshire. Still
another example of correct address
discovered Theoretically is the letter
addressed to "Puskkat, Kansas The
Experts bothered over this quite few
minutes, revolving in their minds the
James of Kansas cities and towns that
,ore names resembling "Pushkat."
Fort Scott" suddenly exclaimed one of
he readers. A Fort Scott directory
vas consulted and Horton street. Civ
IN on the puzzling envelope was found
o be one of the streets in Fort Scott
rhe letter was sent on to that CITY
md delivered to the man for whom IT
vas intended. In the same yay a LET
er directed to No. 10 Hill rect. no
'ity specified, was correctly delivered
n Cleveland, o.
A Good Guess.
willie Dryer clump cit co inndan"
cached Willie all right after first %.
Dg to the dead letter office. ~Wit CO |
was figured out to be Whitley /
,ounty Indiana. The rest vas easy:
Clump cit was Columbia City.
Two letters bearing English postage |
we're very quantity addressed One of
hem was directed Miss Annie Judge
% and Over street, Sailing, Mass.
1t was, Of course. meant
or No. 2 Andover street. Salem. Mass
he other, to Miss Annie oBrien AZ
fridge street, NJ. NJ. America" delight
d Miss OBrien, in her home at Man
hester, n H.
Mrs. Sillie Mesler" was the recipi-
mt OF letter addressed to Hell +