MURPHY’S WAR (SUDOKU) Multi-Cache

Billy Murphy was born and raised in Ireland. A bright lad from an upper class Dublin family, Billy attended Trinity College, where he studied mathematics, Latin and French. As a young man Murphy entered government service, in the Irish diplomatic corps. He served in London and Paris as a translator – and eventually as a spy.

It is important to realize that England has been a mortal enemy of Ireland since the beginning of recorded history. Murphy hated the English and after living there, he despised everything about them. Later, in Paris, he learned about French and Irish plans to support the upcoming American colonial revolution. He became a fervent supporter of the revolution; a war that he hoped would lead to the collapse of the British Empire.

When Ireland established a clandestine embassy in Boston, in early 1773, Murphy volunteered for an assignment there, as a courier and a spy. He earned the friendship and trust of Paul Revere and eventually became an important, though covert, figure in the Boston Tea Party, the opening salvo in the American Revolution.

At the time, the British Army had several thousand troops stationed in Boston. They ruled the colonists with a heavy hand. They had also created an extensive intelligence-gathering network, an attempt to infiltrate and foil the growing revolutionary movement. By offering handsome bribes for information, they succeeded in turning a number of revolutionaries into British spies. As a result, the movement was on the verge of imploding, as the leaders became uncertain about whom they could trust.

Knowing Billy Murphy’s hatred of the British, Revere felt that he could be relied upon to carry important messages from Samuel Adams, in Boston, to George Washington, in New York, and to Benjamin Franklin, in Philadelphia. Murphy eagerly accepted the assignment. At Adams’ request, Murphy developed a cipher to protect their communications from the British.

While in Paris, Murphy had made friends with several Japanese diplomats. He was fascinated by Japanese language and culture. Murphy learned to speak and write Japanese and he enjoyed practicing it with his oriental friends. He considered using Japanese as the new cipher of the American patriots, but realized it would take too long to this difficult language to a team of translators. Then he hit upon a novel idea. The Japanese diplomats were addicted to a logic-based number puzzle they called “su doku” (or sudoku). The name sudoku is the Japanese abbreviation of a longer phrase, "suji wa dokushin ni kagiru," meaning, "all digits must remain single." Murphy quickly learned the puzzle, but was soon bored by its simplicity.

Murphy recognized, however, that he could use sudoku to create a substitution cipher that would be well-protected from prying British eyes. The English had no diplomatic relations with Japan so he knew they would not be familiar with sudoku. If they intercepted a sudoku cipher, they would find an impenetrable string of characters accompanied by a grid, partly filled with numbers (An encrypted message would not include the letters you see here. These would be known by both parties and would be added to the grid upon receipt). By solving the puzzle, the Patriots could quickly translate the encrypted message, yet if intercepted, it would remain totally opaque to the British.

Sudoku encryption was so successful that the British were rarely aware of the Americans’ battle plans. Benedict Arnold, the infamous and paradoxical traitor to the revolution was aware of sudoku but, to his credit, he never revealed it. After the revolution, sudoku was made top secret by the U.S. Army. All sudoku cryptographers were sworn to an oath of confidentiality. Murphy, like his sudoku cryptology teammates, was awarded a modest pension and banished to a life of obscurity on the American frontier. Sudoku remained highly classified until a FOIA request accidentally forced its disclosure in 1976.

Despite its success in the Revolutionary War, sudoku-based cryptography was never used again. In the Civil War, both sides were aware of sudoku, so neither could use it. The Japanese were involved in both WWI and WWII, so the Americans could not use it in those wars. Modern computer-based cryptology has made sudoku obsolete, so its disclosure did not damage American intelligence interests. Sudoku is again a popular pastime, after centuries of neglect. I suspect that few sudoku fans are aware of its cryptic past.

You may be thinking, “Oh no! Yet another sudoku!” I guess you either love them or hate them. But, this is an example of how Murphy used sudoku to transmit secret messages. The grid is a traditional sudoku. When completed, it can be used to decrypt the string of numbers under the grid. For example 29 corresponds to the letter Q, 25 = R, 16 = E, 87 = H.

Note that certain squares in the grid are circled in red. When completed, the vertical column indicates a true bearing (29?º), while the horizontal row indicates a distance, in the format 7.?? Miles. Use this info to project a waypoint from the given coordinates (WP-1) to the cache. WP-1 has no special significance, except to me. It is the intersection of two country roads and the point of origin for your bearing/distance projection to the final.

If you are new to sudoku, this link may be helpful: Wikipedia

You can also solve this sudoku online at: Web Sudoku

Click on “Select a puzzle,” then Select Level = Easy, Number = 2006. Click the “Options” button if you want the computer to help you solve the sudoku correctly.

The cache container is smallish (4”x 6”x 2”), plastic and camouflaged. It can hold a few small items.