Mystery Puzzle History: The Progenitor Age: The Hunt for the First Mystery Puzzle Game...

Could the first Mystery Puzzle Game be The Gold Bug by Edgar Allan Poe?


Goldbug
When we think of Mystery Puzzle Games, we tend to think of subscription games like Hunt a Killer, Murder Mystery in a Box, The Society of Curiosities; box games like Exit, Unlock, or Box One; and books like Prisoner 7, Montague Island, or The Paper Labyrinth.

So where do these great games of this mysterious hobby come from? This series of articles will investigate the origins of this hobby!

In 1843, The Gold Bug was first published, and within it, something new for a novel… a secret code! Edgar Allan Poe, lover of cryptograms hinged his story around one, and with it you can tell not only his love of ciphers, but his seemingly strong desire to share it with his audience!

To a modern audience, this section of the story may feel like a text-book, but it is also a great way to learn about ciphers and see a detailed example of one!

Now, what does this have to do with the Mystery Puzzle Game (MPG) hobby? It is a story about an exciting mysterious search for buried pirate treasure--a search that leads to a mysterious code that must be solved by a detective-like character that leads to the conclusion! The cryptogram is provided to the reader before the solution is given so if the reader wishes, they can solve it themselves. It has all the nascent elements of an MPG, even though that is not what it is or was trying to be.

Below is the cipher from the short-story if you would like to try to solve it before it is discussed on the next page.






Edgar Allan Poe’s short story introduced many readers of the time to ciphers (secret ways to easily disguise the written word) in general, and what is now known as the Gold-Bug Cryptogram specifically.

The character Legrand solves it in the story and then lays out the methodology for the reader.

This type of cipher is a simple substitution cipher, where the real challenge is figuring out which symbol equals which letter and how to do it.

Since there are no spaces or obvious punctuation, it is impossible to know the size of the words until the letters are solved. In order to solve the letters there must be some way to begin to estimate at least some of the correct letters beyond random assignment. It is here that the genius of Legrand shows: creating a table of each symbol and how often it appears in the cryptogram, then comparing that to a table of how often each letter in the english language appears on average. From there we have an educated guess as to what some of the letters probably are, and with several attempts a solution can begin to form!

It is recommended to read the story for the full explanation as Poe does it so well.

Note: This story contains negative and outdated depictions including racial stereotypes


Further reading:





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