The first
message submitted to me was so short that it was impossible for
me to do more than to say, with some confidence, that the
symbol ~ stood for E. As you are aware, E is the most common
letter in the English alphabet, and it predominates to so marked
an extent that even in a short sentence one would expect to find
it most often. Out of fifteen symbols in the first message, four
were the same, so it was reasonable to set this down as E. It is
true that in some cases the figure was bearing a flag, and in some
cases not, but it was probable, from the way in which the flags
were distributed, that they were used to break the sentence up
into words. I accepted this as a hypothesis, and noted that E was
represented by ~.
"But now came the real difficulty of the inquiry. The order of
the English letters after E is by no means well marked, and any
preponderance which may be shown in an average of a printed
sheet may be reversed in a single short sentence. Speaking
roughly, T, A, 0, I, N, S, H, R, D, and L are the numerical
order in which letters occur; but T, A, 0, and I are very nearly
abreast of each other, and it would be an endless task to try each
combination until a meaning was arrived at.
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