I’ll try to be kind.
We need to talk about Gordon Cramer, well, not so much to talk but ask him a few questions and this looks like the only place that can be done as Cramer is very sensitive on such matters, either declining to post an enquiry, let alone a response, or relegating it to an old, seldom read post when he feels a little threatened.
To begin:
1) Where would Jessica Harkness have learnt to understand and write a code such as the Morbit and Hill Ciphers and use the Anamorphic technique?
2) Similarly, where would Boxall have been taught to read same?
3) Given your recent claim that the Boxall Rubaiyat has a total of seven different types of concealment, possibly amounting to hundreds of letters and numbers, what method would he have used to be able to read them, a magnifying glass? The equipment you are using to do so is many generations advanced, yes?
4) Harkness was a young trainee nurse working shifts in a public hospital – where would she have gathered the information that required the use of such sophisticated secrecy?
5) Boxall was a heavy duty mechanic/engineer in a harbour- side boat shed – what use was this information to him?
6) Would it have been likely that Boxall, knowing that the Rubaiyat contained secret and incriminating coding, would have kept it in his living room bookshelf then offer it to Stuart Littlemore when being interviewed, and on camera?
7) Given your claims that both were extensively trained in reading and writing secret codes, would it have been simpler and safer for them to have undertaken lessons in retentive memory?
8) What did Boxall do with the information?
9) You claim both Harkness and Boxall were spies yet they met regularly and openly, would you agree there was a risk of them both being exposed?
10) You claim there are secret messages hidden in every word of the Jestyn inscription, the image of the woman, the publisher’s details, the book bindings, the book’s title, every letter of the code and the Tamam Shud slip .. given all those instances, would it have been likely there was more inside the Freeman Rubaiyat, the one with the (coded) Tamam Shud slip removed?
11) And if so, why wasn’t it given to Naval Intelligence?
Gordon lives here …
The Somerton Man .. 
He hopes one day someone will find a hidden message for him and then he can say, see I told you so
It will never happen. There are no hidden messages
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Presumably, the messages are (all?) written in English, if so-what do they say? Simple stuff to show, surely?
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In response to anonymous over at GC’s blog, I’m not ‘shading’ Cramer here, quite the opposite, I’m putting forward a series of reasonably worded questions in the hope Cramer might provide some answers, especially seeing that he rates his blog as the most factually based of all ..
And Gordon, you claim reading this post is sad to watch and indicates my declining ability to contribute to these forums, where in truth the fact that you seem to be unable to rise to the challenges presented here indicates the problem lies closer to home.
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The saying put up or shut up comes to mind. All of these claims for hidden messages over and over and yet not one message has ever been shown to exist in all that time
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This morning (the 15th) I submitted a comment on Cramer’s blog, nothing threatening, nothing nasty .. just a quiet invitation for him to respond to the above questions. I think it’s most important he at least attempts to do so as there a many aspects of his claims of micro-writing and using codes that need addressing, not just for my sake but for his thousands of readers.
And as far as the as yet unpublished comment of mine is concerned, I hold little hope anyone will ever see it. Still, we wait in hope.
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He going to avoid it, just like I avoid going to the gym haha
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I think he has stated the names listed in the code are Ukrainian, but then he states he believes the SM wasn’t Ukrainian, so that means exactly?
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My view remains that if all of this stuff was done in 1948, how come now with far more advanced techniques nothing meaningful has been found – and what little he claims to have found then has some massive leaps to make it seem relevant. The old crowd at CM that used to mock about microcode are probably right.
Your point 7 is an interesting one (I mean, most of them are interesting, but I think 7 makes a particularly good point). The ultimate point to a cipher in this context is a failsafe in case it’s intercepted. It’s generally still important not to be found in the first place. While Cramer is potentially right that this is the reason you use things like microcode to ‘hide things in plain sight’, it ignores the fact that you should avoid writing things down unless they absolutely have to be. This might be because multiple recipients need to receive the same message, or that for whatever reason the message needs to be read later (perhaps it has more complicated detail than one could remember), etc….but in any event, once the message is no longer useful, it should be destroyed so it can’t be analysed retrospectively.
This also ties into your point 6. I’m sure people would make the case that it shows the confidence Boxall has in their concealment, but I think someone trained at a spy minimises the risk by avoiding a situation where somebody *might* spot something, and having something like that filmed so that it can be re-analysed later seems particularly foolish.
But it does segue a slightly different angle. Boxall knew Littlemore was coming to film in 1976. Perhaps the Harkness Rubaiyat was there quite deliberately (I’ll leave it to others’ imaginations to consider why). I think JohnS might have addressed this in the past, but how do we know the Rubaiyat Boxall showed Littlemore in 1976 is the same one he showed bolice in 1949?
One final point. Boxall worked at the Bus Depot before and after the war. Does it seem a little odd that someone from the Bus Depot has the background to become a spy? Perhaps more pertinently, having become a spy during the war does it make sense that you return to a mundane job on the buses? I get why the Government might *want* things to work like that, but I’m pretty sure if you realise you have skillz during the war you might start rethinking your career (into a white-collar consultancy or similar). Maybe he just really like buses.
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I will always wonder how it is that Cramer, with all his self-acclaimed expertise in the intricacies of WW2 coding didn’t realise the Rubaiyat code itself had a deliberate pattern in the placement of the capital letters.
Some other genius found it but modestly prevails and he wishes to remain anonymous.
The same genius drew Cramer’s attention to the contradiction in evidence with regard to the clothes found being worn on the body in the morning compared to those seen being worn on the man found lying by the steps in the early evening. In conclusion we would like to remind Cramer that it was the same genius who unearthed PC Moss’ newspaper interview re: No matches were found on the body.
And as a further development…
I’ve succeeded on two fronts with Cramer: 1) His most recent comment indicates he’s losing a little control over his temper. Someone’s getting under his thin skin, and 2) now I’m banned from commenting on his site when all I’m doing is trying to be helpful.
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He attacks by calling everyone mentally ill
Funny about that
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