Editor's Note: Today's column is something of an experiment, and we expect many of our readers will find it quite esoteric and difficult, and indeed possibly rather annoying. Take on the full challenge if you wish, but do feel free to make liberal use of the "hint" buttons found at various points in the narrative.

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The summer season in North Dakota is short, so as always Sal Westerman's Coffee and Cake Checker Club was on summer hiatus, which meant no Saturday afternoon get-togethers at the Beacon Cafe in the city of Bismarck. The club adjourned from just before Memorial Day until just after Labor Day as the members took vacations and spent time outdoors tending to their yards and gardens, going on weekend camping trips, and enjoying the brief respite from the cold weather that prevailed during the rest of the year.

This year Sal contemplated a very unusual vacation. His wife, Sylvia, planned on a week of shopping with her sister Phoebe, who lived about 90 miles west in Dickinson, North Dakota. They would travel together by train to Minneapolis and spend a week in what Sylvia called "gay abandon." Sal wasn't invited, nor did he wish to be, as he and Phoebe did not have what you might call a warm relationship.

Now, Sal, as one who greatly enjoyed intellectual pursuits such as checkers, was also a member of a couple of somewhat obscure groups. He had long belonged to the National Puzzlers Association (NPA), a group of enthusiasts who composed and solved word puzzles of many different types. He was also a member of the American Cryptogram Society (ACS), an interest that stemmed from his work during the previous World War.

It just so happened that this year, 1955, the NPA was having its annual convention in Greenfield, Massachusetts; and on the following day the ACS would be having their own convention in Philadephia, Pennsylvania. Sal was making plans to attend them both. He would take the train from Bismarck to Chicago, then another from Chicago to New York, still another from New York to Boston, and then a local train to Greenfield. After the NPA convention ended in the evening, he'd take late trains back to Boston, New York, and finally Philadelphia.

It would be a lot of tiring travel for someone of Sal's age (let's just say he had seen 70 a few years ago). Sylvia didn't know if it was such a good idea but Sal insisted. "I can sleep easily on trains," he said, "and it will all work out." Sal would be away for about a week and would be home just in time for the season's first meeting of the Coffee and Cake Checker Club.

So it was all arranged, except for one thing. Sal wanted to compose a puzzle for the conventions, and he wanted it to be a single puzzle that combined checkers, wordplay, and cryptography. That was a tall order, but after quite a few afternoons in his basement study and a couple of trips to the public library, Sal had prepared his problem and sent it off to both societies.

Finally it was departure day. It turned out that Phoebe and Sylvia were on the same morning train as Sal, but they did have seats in different cars. At the Minneapolis station stop, Sylvia came back and said goodbye to Sal, while Phoebe harrumphed about wasting time and money when most likely Sylvia's house needed painting, and besides, who was going to mow the yard?

It was indeed a long trip spanning the better part of two days, but Sal eventually arrived in Greenfield. The NPA convention was small this year and was held at the home of one of the members. Sal presented his special puzzle.

The word puzzle part of the problem was the following rhyme. Sal wasn't the best poet ever but he made a good effort.

Here's a checker problem, quite OLD
It's easy so just be FAITHFUL and bold
Continue to the 14TH try, and mayhap
The deCIPHERed solution will fall in your lap.
Then SUBSTITUTE in all the right moves.
To be a POLYglot, this problem behooves.
And those ALPHABETICs, don't ignore
So we will give you one hint more
There's a TRI-THEME here to be seen
If you happen to know what we mean.

Then came the cryptography portion. Sal told the conventioneers that the run-up to the checker problem was given by the following cryptogram.

L-P Y-V K-P 1-X K-Q 0-X 0-4 F-C Z-5 E-2 0-C P-N C-H V-S D-H 1-Y B-H 1-Y G-M 2-Z O-S

At this point Sal declared, "White to Play and Win!"

At both conventions, this elicited some blank stares, some scratching of heads, and the occasional smile of comprehension.

"Hints are available," Sal offered, and during the conventions, he was definitely asked for hints by some number of attendees. Sal layered the hints, each successive hint giving away a little more.

One of the NPA members did manage to solve it by the end of the convention but then again only about half the members played checkers.

Sal went on to Philadelphia that evening and the next day presented the puzzle to the ACS. That group was a fair bit larger and had something of a better grasp of cryptography, and three of the members solved it by the end of the convention. Most NPA and ACS members thought the puzzle was clever although some thought it "tried too hard" to combine checkers, word puzzles, and cryptography. Still overall Sal felt good about it and immensely enjoyed his trip. He returned home tired, happy, and ready for his club to resume its weekly meetings.

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Do you find all of this a bit confusing, or do you have a clue about what's going on? We'll offer you Sal's hints as an aid to solving. Click on the Details arrow to reveal the hint. Please use the hints only if needed!

Hint No. 1: An explanation of the word puzzle.

The "word puzzle" is not so much a puzzle as a series of hints or guidelines.

Here's a checker problem, quite OLD
It's easy so just be FAITHFUL and bold
Continue to the 14TH try, and mayhap
The deCIPHERed solution will fall in your lap.
Then SUBSTITUTE in all the right moves.
To be a POLYglot, this problem behooves.
And those ALPHABETICs, don't ignore
So we will give you one hint more
There's a TRI-THEME here to be seen
If you happen to know what we mean.

OLD and FAITHFUL means 11-15 is the opening move.

14TH further tells us that the opening sequence is the Old 14th.

CIPHER and SUBSTITUTE of course mean that this is a substitution cipher, where in this case symbols replace the numbers of the squares on the checkerboard.

POLY means the cipher is polyalphabetical, which tells us that the meaning of the symbols changes continuously.

TRI-THEME is a bit more obscure and tells us that the cipher is a Trithemius cipher, where the substitution alphabets shift one letter to the left each time.

Hint No. 2: More on the cryptogram.

The cryptogram works as follows. For the first square of the first move, we use this substitution:

ABCDEFGHIKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ012345

In other words square 1 is 'A', square 2 is 'B" and so on until square 32 is '5'.

For the next square of the first move we shift to the left:

BCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ012345A

So now square 1 is 'B' and so on. We shift again after enciphering each square number. This gets tedious so we wrote the following computer routine (in elisp) to do the work for us.

(defun rjn-encode-checkers (movelist)
"Use a simple polyalphabetic cipher to encode checker moves"
(interactive)
(let* ( (32squares "ABCDEFGHIJLKMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ012345")
(moves (split-string movelist "[\n -]"))
(theoutput "")
(odd 0)
themove thenumbermove spaceordash)
(while moves
(setq themove (car moves))
(setq moves (cdr moves))
(setq thenumbermove (- (string-to-number themove) 1))
(if (= odd 0)
(progn
(setq spaceordash "-")
(setq odd 1))
(progn
(setq spaceordash " ")
(setq odd 0)))
(setq theoutput (concat theoutput (substring 32squares thenumbermove (+ 1 thenumbermove)) spaceordash))
(setq 32squares (concat (substring 32squares 1) (substring 32squares 0 1)))
)
theoutput
))

Hint No.3: The solution in cryptogram form.

3-0 W-A M-I X-1 K-J 5-E I-C C-I P-K L-P V-N J-0 S-M J-T S-M I-S E-C 5-H N-V

Hint No.4: The run-up translated and the problem diagram.

The run-up in plain text and the diagram.

11-15 23-19 8-11 22-17 4-8 17-13 15-18 24-20 10-15 19-10 7-14 26-23 11-15 28-24 8-11 30-26 2-7 26-22 3-8 23-19 7-10

BLACK

WHITE
White to Play and Win

W:W13,19,20,21,22,24,25,27,29,31,32:B1,5,6,8,9,10,11,12,14,15,18

And finally, everything will be revealed by clicking on Read More. Good luck!

Full Solution

Here's an annotated run-up:

1. 11-15 23-19 2. 8-11 22-17 3. 4-8 {Old 14th} 17-13 4. 15-18 24-20 5. 10-15 {9-14 or 10-14 preferred} 19x10 6. 7x14 {slightly in White's favor} 26-23 7. 11-15 28-24 8. 8-11 {loses; 2-7 would draw} 30-26 9. 2-7 26-22 10. 3-8 23-19 11. 7-10 *

And the solution:

11. ... 20-16 12. 11x20 31-26 13. 8-11 26-23 14. 12-16 19x12 15. 11-16 22-17 16. 15-19 24x15 17. 10x26 17x10 18. 6x15 13x6 19. 1x10 27-24 20. 20x27 32x7 White Wins.

The composer of the problem is the well-known old-time problemist and player Chas. Hefter of Chicago, who derived it from a game played against Berry Mitchell on November 24, 1885, almost 140 years ago.

If you'd like further information on the cryptography used in this column, you can check on polyalphabetic ciphers and the Trithemius cipher. You can also learn about the real-life National Puzzlers League and the American Cryptogram Association.

We hope you enjoyed this excursion into the obscure and difficult. And never fear, it's hardly something we plan to do very often. Do let us know what you think.