Omaha daily bee., 1909-05-01
PUZZLES TEST THEIR SKILL
Clever Work of Clerks in Uncle Sans
Dead Letter Office.
FREAK ADDRESSES DECIPHERED
some of the CHbaIistIc Characters
which They Tackle and Succeed
I'm Sending to the Right
Destination.

II you happen to find in your morning
mail one of these fine days an envelope
covered with cabalistic characters. do not
run to the nearest police station linking
that 1t is a Blacl, Hand communication,
nor need you drop il in a pail OF water TO
insure its not going off"
A few hundred letters Of this sort. bear
ing the name and address in a mysterious
cipher, and carrying no other superscrlp-
ture, are delivered every year by Uncle
Sans letter carriers to the persons for
whom letters are intended.
They are primarily intended as Jokes and
also serve the purpose of demonstrating
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 Of
flee employees can be made to believe that
the sender is wonderfully clever, but that
matters very little to the confirmed joker.
The writing of a name and address en-
tirely in cipher on an envelope is a 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 crytograph inscription-that
10 hAAE q dAIlNltlA AiatAEls uE lldJOIllN
Of ciphers are easy of solution and may
be figured out just as was the mysterious
cryptogram on the Trinity tombstone that
the Sunday papers told about a few weeks
ago. That was solved on the lines laid
down in Poe's 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 ccme the letters A, o. l..
d, II, n, r. S, r, L, Y, c, +, G, l., NJ, W.
b, *, ., y, Z,
On this basis the clerks at the dead letter
office whose special business it is to de-
cipher ~illegible, or blind" addresses-they
are called 'blind readers"-solve nearly all
the cryptograph addresses that come be-
fore them for solution.
A Few HOIdovers.
The cipher addresses constitute bat a very
small part of the puzzling inscriptions the
blind readers" nave to figure out. The
vast majority of blind" addresses are
written in the plain letters of our own
language, but puzzlingly grouped together.
These and the imesible scrawls give the
clerks most Of their hard work.
Quite a large proportion OF the queerly
directed letters that reach the dead letter
office in Washington come from foreigners.
both abroad and in this country. The
writer's are for the most part very ilhterate,
1t was an Italian who, in a handwriting
almost undeCipherable by reason Of its gem
eral scrawlincss and reckless disregard OF
I capitals, addressed his letter to a friend In
CanaJoharie, n. Y, AL siGnor pasquale
csstellani per can Gellarie.' One Of the
/ axnert ssR1{,dr ,c,Iorg ~. uLz.-. A-.,-
the envelope came for translation" read
the inscription slond. In an instant he
had the solution -phonetically. Can
Gellarie is Canajoharie,' he said. The
letter was sent to that town and properly
delivered Another Italian letter directed
to mug Brunett,'' was instantly sent on to
New Brunswick. y. j.
A letter addressed to Annie McGillvery,
Troury Emschers," was intended for Troy,
n, II. Here, too, the sound Of the words
gave the clue, 'Emschers" being quite az
close as the correspondent could get to
New Hampshire. Still another example OF
a correct address discovered phonetically Is
the letter addressed to "Puskkat, Kansas"
The experts bothered over this quite a few
minutes, revolving In their minds the
names OF Kansas cities and towns that
bore names resembling "Pushkat." Fort
scott suddenly exclaimed one OF the
readers. A Fort Scott directory was con-
suited and Horton street, given on the puz-
zling envelope. was found TO be one of the
streets in Fort Scott. The letter was sent
on to that city and delivered 10 the man
for whom il had been intended. In the
same way a letter directed to No. 10 Hin
street, no city specified. was correctly de-
Hvered in Cleveland. 0.
A Good Guess.
Willie Dryer ciump cit wit co inndan'
reached Willie all right after first going TO
the dead letter office. wit co inndau"
was figured out to be Whitley county, In
diana. The rest was easy; 'Clump cit
was Columbia City.
Two letters bearing English postage we're
very quantity addressed. one OF them was
directed Miss Annie Judge, To and over