AI Systems Reportedly Solve Wood's 76-Year-Old Cryptogram
A Reddit user reports that Claude Opus 5.5 wrote search code and identified books to use for the key phrase, while Astra verified the results. The reported key was the Lord's Prayer from a 1912 German Bible, yielding “Hier bin ich. Totsiens. T.E.W.,” described as “Here I am” in German and “goodbye” in Afrikaans, with Wood's initials. The poster says Klaus Schmeh confirmed the result, but the linked confirmation page was not included in the supplied evidence and could not be independently assessed.
If independently validated, the reported result would provide a notable example of AI systems assisting historical cryptanalysis, although the available source does not include the cited expert confirmation.
This was the last of four cryptograms from #35 of Klaus Schmeh’s list of 50 unsolved cryptograms. The first 3 were cracked in 1948, 1996 and 2019 with the last one remaining uncracked for 76 years. Wood initially set up the cipher to try to prove he could pass the key through a medium after his death.
The key ended up being the Lord's Prayer from a 1912 German Bible. The message reads Hier bin ich. Totsiens. T.E.W. "Here I am" in German, "goodbye" in Afrikaans, with Wood's initials.
Since the release of Fable I’ve been using Claude and OpenAI to try to tackle these open problems, Opus 5.5 wrote the search code and identified the books to use for the key phrase and Astra verified the results.
Klaus has confirmed the results here - https://klausschmeh.net/woods-cryptogram-from-the-crypt-another-top-50-crypto-mystery-