Check out the results from our latest challenge here!
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Solution to the July 2024 challenge
Check out the results from our latest challenge! Can you identify the source of the unidentified text discovered by the Dickens Decoders?
Solution to the June 2024 challenge
In our June challenge, the Dickens Decoders identified two more pages of dictation from Sydney Smith’s ‘I would not live always’ – and another two without an identified source text. Find out more and download a line-by-line transcript here!
Solution to the May 2024 Challenge
The Dickens Decoders matched most of the shorthand in our May challenge to passages from Sydney Smith’s work – but two unidentified lines remain! Find out more and download a line-by-line transcript here.
2024 Easter Challenge Solution: A new Dickens shorthand mystery?
Rather than a new mystery, the curious ‘specimen’ of shorthand from The Strand Magazine turned out to be an old ‘friend’ from the Brachygraphy manual… Find out more and download a line-by-line transcript here.
Continuing Notebook D II: Solutions
The Dickens Decoders have made short work of a further four pages from ‘Notebook D’, which Arthur Stone kept from his shorthand lessons with Dickens. Find out more about the source texts and download a line-by-line transcript here.
Continuing Notebook D: Solutions
The Dickens Decoders have continued to make progress on Notebook D from Arthur Stone’s shorthand lessons with Dickens! Find out more here.
Beginning Notebook D Challenge: Solutions
This autumn, the Dickens Decoders started to transcribe Notebook D – one of the notebooks that Arthur Stone kept from his lessons learning shorthand with Charles Dickens. In the process they discovered two new source texts from the works of Sydney Smith. Find out more and download a transcript here.
Who wrote the Dickens Code stories? A forensic investigation
How can we tell whether Dickens is the author of the stories we have transcribed? Dr Andrea Nini is a forensic linguist who has been working with us on your transcriptions from Arthur Stone’s notebooks. In this guest blog, he explains the methods he uses to identify authorship and the results he has obtained so far.
How we teach shorthand today
Frances Tew is a Dickens Decoder. She has taught Teeline shorthand for twenty years to students on journalism courses. In the second of two blogs she explains how we teach shorthand today and reflects on Dickens as a shorthand teacher.