The Woman Who Smashed Codes

by Jason Fagone

They took these games further by organizing live puzzle-solving events that were famous in their social group throughout the 1930s. Some of these “cipher parties” were scavenger hunts that sent guests winging through the city. Elizebeth handed you a small white envelope. You tore it open to find a cryptogram. The solution was the address of a restaurant. When you arrived, you ate the salad course, then solved a second cryptogram to discover the location of the entrée. Other parties were hosted at the Friedmans’ home with food cooked by Elizebeth. A shy army wife arrived at 3932 Military Road one evening with her husband and panicked when the Friedmans handed her a menu in code. “The first item was a series of dots done with a blue pen,” she later recalled. “The ‘brains’ at the party worked over the number of dots in a group when it occurred to me it had to be ‘blue points’—oysters—and it was! I had done my bit, and from then on I was quiet.”