#An anamorphic with an obscene solution – Klausis Krypto Kolumne

In my new book Codebreaking: A Practical Guide, co-written with Elonka Dunin, an encrypted message written by a prison inmate is covered. One of our proof-readers made us aware that the plaintext of this note contains the “N-word”. It might have been okay to leave this passage in the book, as it is a quote, not a statement made by the authors. Anyway, we finally decided to delete the paragraph in question in order to avoid misunderstandings.

I was in a similar situtation when I recently found an anamorphic on Reddit. The solution of this puzzle might be considered obscene. However, as I don’t find it extremely disgusting, this time I decided to publish it. I will introduce this anamorphic at the end of this post.

Anamorphics

An anamorphic is a puzzle based on a certain kind of secret writing. Here is an example on a postcard from 1905, provided to me by Tobias Schrödel:

Source: Tobias Schrödel

To read the message, we need to compress the writing. Here’s what we get after a horizontal compression (turned by 90 degrees):

And here’s the result of a vertical compression:

Here’s another anamorphic postcard Tobias provided me (this one is from 1905, too):

Source: Tobias Schrödel

Here’s the solution:

Another anamorphic postcard was provided to me by Karsten Hansky:

Source: Karsten Hansky

The plaintext is a German patriotic parole from the First World War:

The following advertisement puzzle from 1904 represents an anamorphic, too:

Source: Derby Daily Telegraph

You certainly can solve it yourself.

Blog reader Horst told me that German comedian Karl Valentin (1882-1948) sometimes signed his name as an anamorphic (source):

Source: Yandex

The following is an anamorphic Christmas greeting (source):

Source: iFunny

Here’s another postcard with an anamorphic (source):

Source: Cabinet Magazine

Blog reader Tony Gaffney sent me another puzzle of this kind:

Source: Gaffney

Blog reader Karsten Hansky once provided me a scan of yet another anamorphic postcard:

Source: Hansky

The solutions can be seen here:

Another anamorphic

All the anamorphics presented in this article have been published on this blog before. Let’s now come to a new one. It’s the anamorphic I mentioned at the beginning of this article. I found it on Reddit. To my regret, I don’t have any information about the background of this puzzle:

Source: Reddit

Good luck solving it! And don’t blame me for the solution.
Follow @KlausSchmeh

Further reading: The Top 50 unsolved encrypted messages: 4. Kryptos

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