Poe’s Challenge

People pay attention when Edgar Allan Poe challenges them. And in 1840, he asked readers to give him a cipher that he couldn't decipher in an article he wrote for a magazine. A test to determine if they could surpass the well-known author. During its six-month run, Poe asserted that he had cracked every genuine cipher that had been submitted. He also provided two puzzles from a man by the name of Mr. W. B. Tyler for readers to attempt to solve.

Poe may have written them himself, which would serve as a prank or a tribute to his skill as a codebreaker. The codes were incredibly difficult to decipher. In actuality, it didn't get done for 150 years. In 1992, the first cipher was cracked, and the content inside was taken from the 1713 drama Cato. The second puzzle, however, was more challenging, and Williams College offered a $2500 prize to anyone who could crack it.

It wasn't until the year 2000 that a Toronto-based software engineer succeeded in solving the problem. Instead of the cipher itself, typesetting mistakes contributed to the issue in part. Once it was solved, it became clear that the message was just a flowery passage of writing, possibly penned by Poe but possibly not since it provides no explanation for who or why.