Past challenges

‘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

Past challenges

‘Sunday night’ part I

This month our shorthand page has a longhand date, rather than a longhand title. What does this suggest about the type of document we might be dealing with? Download an entry form and have a go!
Deadline: 30 November 2022

Blog

‘You have seen me before tonight’: Transcribing ‘The Two Brothers’ part II

We thought the mystery of ‘The Two Brothers’ was solved when the amazing work of the Dickens Decoders produced a full transcript of part II. But, thanks to two eagle eyed decoders, it soon emerged that it wasn’t just the ghost of the Slough brother that we’d ‘seen […] before tonight’. Find out more and download a full transcript.

A photo of Nelson's Column, Trafalgar Square, London
Past challenges

The ‘Nelson’ challenge

Our first #SolveItDickens challenge of 2022 comes from the notebooks of Dickens’s shorthand pupil, Arthur Stone, at the Free Library of Philadelphia.
Deadline: 31 March 2022