The Beale Cipers may be a hoax, or may contain instructions which lead to a hoard of gold. They were published in the US in the 19th Century, with a decoding for Cipher 2. The three ciphertexts each consist of a list of numbers. For Ciphertext 2, these numbers refer to words in the Declaration Of Independence. For the other 2, the key is unknown, although using the DOI as a key to cipertext 3 does result in a number of interesting patterns. These are known as the "Gillogly strings" and consist mainly of runs in alphabetic order "ABCDE...".

A transcript of the papers, including all 3 cipertexts: http://unmuseum.org/bealepap.htm

Summary article with data for cipers 1 and 2: http://www.albany.net/~cybernet/beale.htm

The graphs below take the data for ciphers 1 and 2 from http://www.albany.net/~cybernet/beale.htm and for cipher 3 from http://unmuseum.org/bealepap.htm Points of interest include the "gaps" in the sorted plot for Ciphertext3, the "streaks" in the original data for Cipertext3, and the "807" line in the original data for Cipertext2 (which corresponds to the letter "i" from the word "into").

• beale.xls: Spreadsheet containing Beale data and simple graphs

• Ciper 1 - Scatter plot of values against position:
  

• Ciper 2 - Scatter plot of values against position:
  

• Ciper 3 - Scatter plot of values against position:
  

• Cipher 1 - Plot of values (sorted) :
  

• Cipher 2 - Plot of values (sorted) :
  

• Cipher 3 - Plot of values (sorted) :
  

• Cipher 1 - Difference between adjacent values :
  

• Cipher 2 - Difference between adjacent values :
  

• Cipher 3 - Difference between adjacent values :
  

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See also:

• Speculation on how the cipher 2 was created, and a comparison with 1 and 3 - http://www.uglx.org/beale.html
• Good analysis, particularly of the Gillogly strings which occur in B1 and B2 - http://www.ariplex.com/tina/tbeale05.htm

• A testable claim to have cracked 3 - " If you will go to Code #3, Line 37, 38 & 39 You will find the numerals: 34,127,139,34,128,129,74,63,120,11,54,61,73,92,180,66,75,101,124,265,89,96,126, If you will take the Adams/Onis Treaty l8l9 and number it correctly starting with the third article and number each word as you did with the DOI, except now you take the third letter of each word instead of the first letter of each word. If a word has less than three letters you use the last letter of the word [...] decipherment: SECOND EXCAVATION OR VAULT FOUND" -

http://www.treasurehunt.org/forum/messages/3951.htm