Cipher Room

Z Y P R

S T V H I

J P N R

S

   The above is a copy of the original coded message used by Number 6 in 'Hammer Into Anvil. The original was written in Patrick McGoohan's own hand. I have made study of a number of codes, and I can find nothing that corresponds with it. Quite possibly it is simply a number of letters which actually mean nothing. Besides it appears to have two extra letters I in the middle row and the 's' at the bottom.

20 . 60 . 40 . 47

67   81    91   80

  The above it the coded message actually used in 'Hammer Into Anvil,' the one which should read when deciphered;

"Pat-a-cake pat-a-cake bakers man

bake me a cake as fast as you can."

   How the above coded message actually reads this, its impossible to say. It may very well be simply a short random list of numbers, and has no actual reference to any code or cipher that I have been able to find. The second code used in the episode is not in Patrick McGoohan's hand writing, you can tell that as the fingers on the hand are buy no means nicotine stained enough!

  Breaking a code isn't at all easy, unless one knows the basis of any such code, if indeed what we have here are two coded messages. The most common letter is the letter 'e,' so if in any code using letters there is one letter used most frequently we can assume that letter to be 'e' and one can work from there. In this case we have two frequent letter 'p' and 'r' which doesn't help. It is possible that each letter represents a word or phrase, so if we were to transfer that idea to the message, it does work, but that leaves one letter over. As for the second supposed code, there just isn't enough of it! I'm by no means an expert on codes ciphers, but I did used to communicate with friends using ciphers years ago.  If these messages are based on real codes or ciphers, perhaps there is someone who may read this and be able to make some head or tail of it. Although it's quite on the cards that the coded messages have simply been made up.

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