Steve Ekwall's ES & 8am...

[Nick Pelling <incoming@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Hi everyone,

A quick thought: here's one possibility for what Steve's ES meant when 
saying that 8am meant "back two and splice" - it may be no more than a 
simple way of hiding doubled letters.

	e.g.	PELLING
	-->	LING	PEL	8am	(ie, "back two and splice")

This could also be applied to numbers (however they're actually encoded):-

	e.g.	100
	-->	0	10	8am

Or, it could be used as a way of obfuscating otherwise common strings:-

	e.g.	SHAKESPEARE
	-->	SPEARE	SHAKE		8am
	or	PEARE		SHAKES	8am
	or	EARE		SHAKESP	8am	(etc)

Finally, if true, it would seem likely that there would be a few rare 
situations where you would need to do a couple of 8am splices consecutively 
in order to avoid doubled letters - ie, z y x 8am 8am - which is a 
phenomenon that does occur in the VMS, but might otherwise be difficult to 
explain.

OK, it has a bit of an ixnay pig latin feel to it: but if our contextual 
dating of 1450-1480 is even moderately accurate, I think we're more likely 
to find many simple codes joined deviously than one humungously complex 
code that's born 100+ years premature. :-)

Cheers, .....Nick Pelling.....

PS: I haven't tested this even slightly, I thought I'd post the idea while 
it was fresh. :-)