{
  "id": 7179950,
  "title": "Claude Fable 5.1 Solves the Cyphral Distich, a 370-year-old cipher",
  "url": "https://urgent.news/2026/09/13/claude-fable-5-1-solves-the-cyphral-distich-a-370-year-old-cipher",
  "topic": "ai",
  "section": "AI",
  "published": "2026-09-13T21:06:13.000Z",
  "source": {
    "name": "Hacker News",
    "slug": "hacker-news",
    "url": "https://www.vals.ai/blogs/fable-solves-cyphral-distich"
  },
  "original_language": "en",
  "account": "Claude Fable 5.1 successfully deciphered a 370-year-old cipher known as the Cyphral Distich, authored by Sir Thomas Urquhart. The cipher, found in Urquhart's book Logopandecteision, consists of two lines of 32 numbers each, which correspond to 32 Proquiritations within the text. Despite numerous attempts by humans over the centuries, the cipher remained unsolved until Fable 5.1 employed a clever approach. It identified that the key to decoding lay within Urquhart's Proquiritations, where the first letter of the word indexed by each number in the cipher line revealed the hidden message. This seemingly straightforward solution, which emerged after 44 minutes and 176,000 tokens of processing, proved far more effective than previous attempts that relied on frequency analysis, substitution, and homophonic substitution.",
  "summary": null,
  "key_points": [
    "Claude Fable 5.1 successfully deciphered 370-year-old Cyphral Distich cipher",
    "Key to decoding found in Sir Thomas Urquhart's Proquiritations",
    "Solution achieved in 44 minutes and 176,000 tokens of processing"
  ],
  "editors_take": null,
  "illustration": null,
  "coverage": {
    "outlets": 2,
    "also_reported_by": [
      {
        "outlet": "Hacker News Best",
        "title": "Claude Fable 5.1 Solves the Cyphral Distich, a 370-year-old cipher",
        "url": "https://urgent.news/2026/09/13/claude-fable-5-1-solves-the-cyphral-distich-a-370-year-old-cipher-7192889",
        "published": "2026-09-13T21:06:13.000Z"
      }
    ]
  },
  "ai_generated": true,
  "disclaimer": "Summaries, key points and the editor’s take are written by software from other outlets’ reporting and may contain errors — always check the linked original."
}