In 2001, Janet Fyffe-Yeomans published an article in the Australian Magazine called The Man with No Name about the 1948 Somerton Beach murder/suicide case.

There is a code attached to this case, one of the legendary uncracked codes of history. Janet didnt show a photograph of this code, she simply listed the letters. She missed out lines which seemed crossed out, namely MLIAOI and the letter X. This code was discovered under UV light in a copy of The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam which belonged to the dead man.

Her listing of the code was as follows:

                 MRGOABABD

                 MTBIMPANETP

                 MLIABOAIAQC

                 ITTMTSAMSTGAB

I thought I recognized an alphabet substitution code, which I had seen how to break on the ABCs Codebreakers. I numbered the letters above to look for a recurring pattern. It is not a long note to find the pattern, but M occurs at 1 & 21, P at 15 and 20, T at 11 and 36 and 41, I at 23 and 28. This suggests they are using 5 ciphers.

I rearranged all the above letters in 5 columns, each column representing its own individual letter code. Fortunately the top 2 rows of letters add up to 20.

This produces

MRGOA

BABDM 

TBIMP

ANETP

MLIAB         

OAIAQ     

CITTM     

TSAMS  

TGAB

Next I took Column 1, MBTAMOCTT and allocated all 26 letter possibilities to it. I then did the same with column 2, RABNLAISG producing 676 possible combinations. However there are 9 sets of 5 letters to do comparisons with, so this is not quite as daunting as it seems. I was looking for words that made sense. Most combinations produced gibberish.

After multiple attempts I settled on column 1 M=P (add 3 letters to alphabet) column 2 R= O (minus 3 letters)Column 3 G=R (add 11letters)  column 4 O= T (add 5 letters) and column 5 is uncoded(the letters are exactly as written.)

This results in, by substitution: PORTA

                                                 EXMIM

                                                 WYTRP

                                                 DKPYP      (X goes in later, as an A))

                                                 PITFB

                                                 RXTFQ

                                                 FFEYM

                                                WPLRS

                                                WDLG

Allowing for abbreviations, letter or even word reversal, and a looks like quality where M could be N, W an upside down M, B looks like E, Q like O, and Y like R with the loop closed and a tail.

Then the X, which looks crossed out but isnt, is put in as a column 1 X=A letter after DKPYP.

Hence my translation : PORT  ADELAIDE EXAMINED. MY TRIP (did) PAY (to) DOCK (at )

PA (Port Adelaide) PLEASE FIT EXTRA OFFER. MAKE WAY TO PORT (&) LARGS RESERVE (&) SEMAPHORE, WILL DO LARGS (&) GRANGE.

The decoding of the last 10 letters is my interpretation as an old Adelaide boy, recognising that LR could be Largs Reserve, the only beach with a reserve in my childhood memory. It makes sense in terms of the task of sussing out Adelaide beaches (eg Henley, Somerton) on the day he died. The reason why he was sussing them out we can only speculate about.