Cardinal Alessandro Farnese

New Capabilities

As of September 2026: Historical figure; died 1589

A 484-year-old papal letter written in a numeric cipher has been cracked using simulated annealing, an optimization algorithm that accepts worse solutions to escape dead ends. The cipher used variable-length codes and decoy nulls; the recovered key, 18 letters plus one null, held up when each half was solved independently.

Updated Sep 19