The ‘Easter Nonsense’ challenge has turned out to be a critique of hereditary privileges. Read the text and download a transcript here.
Author: The Dickens Code
Past events
Find out more about past Dickens Code events
Letter to Richard Bentley: Fill in the gaps challenge
Our challenge for May 2023 aims to ‘fill in the gaps’ in a partially transcribed letter to Victorian publisher Richard Bentley.
Deadline: 31 May 2023
‘Didactic’ transcript
‘Didactic’ has turned out to be a short piece criticising Rome and commenting on Catholicism in terms similar to Dickens’s ‘Pictures from Italy’ (1846). Download a transcript here.
Easter ‘Nonsense’ Challenge
Can you help us complete transcription of Arthur Stone’s Notebook A? This time the sentences may not be connected to one another, so we’ll need to treat them as separate items. Download an entry form here and give it a go!
Deadline: 30 April 2023
‘Didactic’
‘Didactic’ means ‘intended to instruct’ – but what does Dickens want to teach his pupil Arthur, here? Let’s find out!
Deadline: 3 March 2023
Christmas Special: Fill in the Gaps Challenge
‘Here is a new game’, as Scrooge puts it in A Christmas Carol. For our Christmas Special, we’re inviting decoders old and new to have a go at ‘filling in the gaps’ and solving the symbols that have so far eluded us. Can you crack these ‘impossible’ symbols?
Deadline: Midnight, 31 January 2023.
‘Sunday Night 5 February 1860’ part I transcript
Thanks to Dickens Decoders Shane Baggs and Ken Cox, a source has been discovered for the shorthand text mysteriously titled ‘Sunday Night 5 February’. Find out more and download a transcript here.
Transcription for ‘Travelling’ part III
Download the shorthand transcript for ‘Travelling’ part III here, which has been solved with the help of the Dickens Decoders.