{"id":22148,"date":"2023-03-13T17:26:57","date_gmt":"2023-03-13T21:26:57","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lawrencecconnolly.com\/archive\/?p=22148"},"modified":"2023-07-07T22:43:21","modified_gmt":"2023-07-08T02:43:21","slug":"this-week-on-mystery-theatreknock-code-charts-ancient-alphabets","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lawrencecconnolly.com\/archive\/2023\/03\/13\/this-week-on-mystery-theatreknock-code-charts-ancient-alphabets\/","title":{"rendered":"This Week on Mystery Theatre:
Knock-Code Charts & Ancient Alphabets<\/br><\/i>"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"Can the arrangement of carved squares on the front of a locked wardrobe provide a clue for decoding the tapping sounds coming from within? And what about the red-and-white dragon heads in the center of each square? Could they possibly indicate the language of the coded message?<\/p>\n

Those are just some of the questions you and mystery writer August LaFleur will consider in this week’s installment of Prime Stage Mystery Theatre<\/em>.<\/a><\/p>\n

The episode drops on March 16, at which point I’ll include both a link here<\/strong> <\/a>and a player at the bottom of this post.<\/p>\n

If you’d like to listen to this week’s installment without any additional clues, you might want to bookmark this page and come back after listening to Act III.<\/p>\n

However, if you’d like a preview and a few hints that might help solve the mystery, read on.<\/p>\n

\"\"As you will recall, Act I<\/a> of “The \u00c6lf and the Wardrobe” opens with mysterious tapping sounds that lead you to a locked cabinet in a theatre basement. And since the solution to a mystery often lies in a careful examination of relevant details, we might take a good look at the design of the locked doors themselves.<\/p>\n

The locked cabinet from “The \u00c6lf and the Wardrobe.” Note the carved squares and red-and-white dragon heads.<\/em> >>><\/span><\/p>\n

In addition, Act II<\/a> introduces a form of encryption called tap<\/em> or knock code<\/em><\/a>, in which each letter of the English alphabet is assigned a numbered position on a code chart consisting of five rows and five columns (pictured below).<\/p>\n

\"\"Thus, as we discovered in last week’s installment, “Each letter [is] assigned a pair of coordinates\u2014one pertaining to its row, the other to its column,\u201d and the numbers of those coordinates can then be communicated “through knocking or tapping sounds.”<\/p>\n

Sounds easy enough, but then–at the end of last week’s episode–we realized that the code we are trying to decipher contains a set of six taps, evidently referring to a sixth column that does not exist on the English knock-code grid. So what gives?<\/p>\n

For more information on the chart above and on the history of knock-codes, check out the blog post<\/span>\u00a0“<\/span>Cracking the Code<\/a>.“<\/span><\/em><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

When considering the need for a six-column grid, some listeners recalled a comment made by August LaFleur in last week’s episode. “Knock codes,” he said, “have been around for centuries, first developed in Ancient Greece. The Greek alphabet fits quite neatly into a grid of 24 rather than 25 squares.” And when considering the arrangement that might accommodate a 24-square gride, we might come up with the chart pictured here.>>><\/p>\n

But what about the red-and-white dragons? August LaFleur has speculated that they might be a reference to a medieval king written about in Geoffrey of Monmouth’s History of the Kings of England<\/em>. We covered that king in a previous post, which you can find here<\/a>, and if the dragons are in fact a reference to Monmouth’s 5th-century king, we might ask if the 24-letter Old English alphabet might yield the grid we need to decode the tapping sounds.<\/p>\n

\"\"Give it a try. Click here<\/a> to listen to the taps, then use the Old English chart of 24 squares (pictured left) to decode the message. Naturally, you’ll need to translate the results into 21st-Century English. But that shouldn’t be too tough in this age of on-demand information.<\/p>\n

In any event, these images should provide a useful supplement to this week’s episode.<\/p>\n

As always, if you have a question or comment about any of our mystery stories, you can reach us by posting at the bottom of this page or by dropping a note at primestage.com\/contact<\/a>.<\/p>\n