Beatrice Multi-tasking

Can you handle another Da Vinci Code story? It has just emerged that Justice Peter Smith, who presided over the Dan Brown plagiarism trial, embedded a secret code within his ruling that refers to both The Da Vinci Code and Holy Blood, Holy Grail, whose authors sued Brown. In the first 13 and a half pages of the 71-page ruling, a handful of italicized, boldfaced letters are embedded, that when combined, spell out “Smithy Code.” But there’s more. A further jumble of italicized, boldfaced letters have yet to be deciphered. In her New York Times piece, Sarah Lyall describes a series of “brief and ultimately frustrating e-mail messages” in which she tried to pry the solution from Smith, to no avail. She also relates Smith’s dismay when, for the first couple of weeks after the ruling was released, no one noticed the secrets that lay within: It has been nearly three weeks since he handed down the ruling. Probably disappointingly for Justice Smith, nobody seemed to notice anything unusual about it when it was first released. But he alluded to the possibility that there was something more soon afterward as a throwaway line in an e-mail exchange with a reporter for The New York Times, saying, “Did you find the coded message in the judgment?”It’s silly, but I admire Justice Smith for his cleverness. After all, a blogger can’t exactly look down on someone for grasping at his 15 minutes of fame.Update: From the comments, a mysterious anonymous commenter has provided us with the code. It starts out “smithy code” and from there, the jumble of letters is “Jaeiextostgpsacgreamqwfkadpmqzv”.Anybody want to take a stab at it?Update 2: Judge Smith has released some clues.Holy Blood, Holy Grail refers to the Dossiers Secret and the hidden message. It is revealed by spotting that certain random letters appear to be different in form from the majority of the text.Applying that to the judgment reveals the following highlighted letters: SMITHYCODEJAEIEXTOSTGPSACGREAMQWFKADPMQZVZ (the first part reveals there is a message)There is no significance to the placing of the letters in the text.Da Vinci Code also uses codes. The most liked one is apparently a numerical one (p.255 The Fibonacci Sequence). In the book it is changed.The correct sequence up to 21 is: 1, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13, 21The code is created by letter substitution.The letter change is creating by applying the Fibonacci Sequence numbers above letter by letter.The relevant number shows where you start for each letter to substitute. Thus the first letter is identified by rewriting the alphabet stating at the first letter in the alphabet ie for the first letter A A. The second letter is also started at 1; the third at 3. When 21 is reached the code reverts back to 1 etc and repeats that until all the letters are substituted. A message ought then be revealed (there is a deliberate typo to create further confusion). The message reveals a significant but now overlooked event that occurred virtually 100 years to the day of the start of the trial.The preparation of the Code took about 40 minutes and its insertion another 40 minutes or so.I hate crosswords and do not do Sudoku as I do not have the patience.Update 3: The Smithy Code has been cracked.

Amar Bakshi was about five years behind me at my high school in Washington DC, but he has my dream job, traveling the world to author a blog for the Washington Post, taking on the charged topic, “How the World Sees America.” I started reading it because of the high school connection (Amar is a friend of my little brother’s), but I’ve become an avid reader of it over time as Amar follows in the footsteps of some of my favorite traveling journalists: Jon Lee Anderson, Paul Theroux, and, of course, Ryszard Kapuscinski. Unlike those masters of the form, Amar also carries a video camera with him to further chronicle his experiences. Since starting in May, he’s been to England and India, and now he’s back in the States hashing out plans to travel farther afield. It’s an interesting experiment from a young writer. Worth a read if you’re looking for another blog to follow.

In the world of Google, we are all aware of our doppelgangers. These people share our names, but we never meet them except to rub elbows in search engine results. In pre-Internet days, however, fewer of us felt the odd sensation of sharing your identity with another person. In order for this to happen, you either needed serendipity or a very common name, or you needed to share a name with someone notable.My parents aren’t big football fans so when they named me, they had no way of knowing that the name they gave me was effectively identical to the man who scored the first touchdown in the first Super Bowl.Max McGee was a tight end for the Green Bay Packers, and it didn’t seem to matter to football fans that our names are off by a letter (like me, he also went by his middle name). My whole life, people, upon hearing my name have asked me if I knew about him. It wasn’t long before I knew by heart the story of that first Super Bowl. I’ll let Wikipedia recount it:In his final two seasons, injuries and age had considerably reduced his production and playing time. Ironically, these two seasons would be the ones for which his career is best remembered. In the 1966 season, McGee caught only four passes for 91 yards and a touchdown as the Packers recorded a 12-2 record and advanced to Super Bowl I against the Kansas City Chiefs. Because McGee didn’t expect to play in the game, he violated his team’s curfew policy and spent the night before the Super Bowl out on the town. The next morning, he told starting receiver Boyd Dowler, “I hope you don’t get hurt. I’m not in very good shape.”However, Dowler went down with a separated shoulder on the Packers’ second drive of the game, and McGee, who had to borrow a teammate’s helmet because he had not even brought his own out of the locker room, found himself thrust into the lineup. A few plays later, McGee made a one-handed reception of a pass from Bart Starr, took off past Chiefs defender Fred Williamson and ran 37 yards to score the first touchdown in Super Bowl history. By the end of the game, McGee had recorded seven receptions for 138 yards and two touchdowns, assisting Green Bay to a 35-10 victory.I bring this up because I’ve just heard the news that McGee died at the age of 75. Tragically, it happened following a fall from his roof, where he’d been clearing leaves. Since I’ve talked about McGee with people regularly for my whole life, it seemed strange not to mention his passing. I suspect people will still note the name we (almost) share, but probably less and less as his gridiron feats recede into history.