The Fair Game code

The film Fair Game from 2010 is a political thriller. Naomi Watts and Sean Penn play a married couple who get caught up in the mills of the secret services.

In 2014 blog reader Ralf Jäger alerted me to the fact that several dozen letters are highlighted in yellow in the five-minute credits. Together, they make up the following message (the question mark stands for a hidden and therefore unknown letter):

ces?oapchfhteopisfmnadamecaoredatn
rayuurnqwknufrcojrwrmdgeushwtokara

The meaning of these letters is unknown to this day. If it is a coded text (which of course is not said), it is unsolved. The plain text language should be English, because it is a movie from the USA.

Rossignol’s transcript

Blog reader Rossignol, an experienced codebreaker from France, kindly provided me with the entire Fair Game transcript in the form of high quality screenshots. Here is an example:

Source: Rossignol

The complete set is available here. As you can see on the following screenshot, some of the last names are covered with a white bar (probably for legal reasons):

Source: Rossignol

In the screenshot below, you can see that one of the highlighted letters is contained in a hidden last name. This explains the question mark in the message:

Source: Rossignol

Analysis

The frequency distribution of the letters (calculated with CrypTool):

Source: CrypTool

The frequency distribution is uneven and consistent with a monoalphabetic substitution cipher (MASC). The letter A, with a frequency of approximately 12%, could potentially represent the letter E, the most common letter in English. In general, a sample of 67 letters is usually sufficient for a meaningful frequency analysis when a letter substitution cipher has been used.

However, none of these observations has so far led to a successful decryption of the text.

The comment by Martin Halpin

A reader who called himself Martin Halpin wrote the following comment on my first Fair Game blog post:

Translation: Don’t focus on the yellow letters, better interprete thems as markers for the letters to follow.

Does this tip come from an insider? In any case, Martin Halpin only posted this one comment on my blog. It could be that the production company hopes to get the code search going with such a hint, so that the Fair Game cryptogram finally brings the desired publicity.

The pseudonym “Martin Halpin” could be based on a gardener of the same name in James Joyce’s novel “Finnegan’s Wake.” This name also appears in the novels “The Glass Key” (1931) by Dashiell Hammett and “Mulligan Stew” by Gilbert Sorrentino.

If reader Martin Halpin is correct, then it is not the letter highlighted in each case that is relevant, but the letter following it. A blog reader named CJ wrote in response:

I think maybe you should focus on the letters next to the yellow letters.

Combine all the letters that are exactly left of each yellow letter, or combine all the letters that are exactly right of each letter, or combine both all the letters that are exactly left and right of each yellow letter.

From those groupings of letters try to crack the code.

Richard SantaColoma and Racingdevil48 sent me the sequence of letters that results when you take the letter to the right of the highlighted one each time:

TAT?DMOTAEAYEPMLEFCICEASEARTIRINSE
ORANAEOUIUGLEAOSADOAUEARSYUSVWEBRR

The following message is created if you take the left neighbor in each case:

USY?OSNUTSDSRHOBMASHDESRUILOTVEMAG
PMDOFINCAPIPWGNCNOYANIREHMEKLRSAEP

Unfortunately, none of this has led to success so far.

Conclusion

The Fair Game cryptogram has been known for years. Nevertheless, the solution is still unknown. However, I assume that the cryptogram can be solved. After all, the production company has an interest in the solution eventually going through the press.

So the chances are still good that the Fair Game cryptogram will be solved. Can my readers contribute to this?

Literature

Klaus Schmeh, Elonka Dunin: Codebreaking: A Practical Guide. No Starch Press 2023

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