Decoding the "copybook headings"

The author Rudyard Kipling wrote a poem about the "gods of the copybook headings." That clue led me to work on decoding the chapter headings/photo captions/FYI side paragraphs/etc. in scriptures (yes, the 1980s version of the Book of Mormon has encoded messages in its chapter headings...sigh...no wonder publishing has a reputation as a "cut throat" industry...they're full of unpleasantries) and science textbooks.

Here's the algorithm that I've been using with a lot of success on copybook headings to find references to nutritional (and other types of) secrets that have become less secret since the books were written:

1) Count the numbers of digits in each word.

2) Pair the digits to get a larger number (not addition...just stick them next to each other.

Example: "The slow, pink elephant" is "34, 48."

3) Divide the results by 12. Add the result and its remainder.

Example: "34, 48" becomes "2 remainder 10" and "4 remainder 0." That then becomes "12, 4."

4) Further add digits together for results that were larger than 12.

Example: No change needed to "12, 4."  ("13, 4" would have become "4, 4.")

5) Use the Hawaiian 12-letter alphabet (A,E,I,O,U,H,K,L,M,N,P,W) on the numbers.

Example: "12, 4" becomes "W O." (You might have to shift the decoding by +/- 1, 2, 3, 4, or even 5.

6) Use a "clock" cipher (A-N, B-O, C-P, D-Q, E-R, F-S, G-T, H-U, I-V, J-W, K-X, L-Y, M-Z) to change doubled letters. 

For example: "4, 4" becomes "O O," which then becomes "B."

Have fun looking for significant words and hidden references to people who the author knows! If using the Hawaiian alphabet doesn't work, feel free to try Greek, Tongan, etc. alphabets. Just be sure to change the number you divide by in step 3 to fit the alphabet. Also remember that frequently H=A, W=O, and V=U (I guess it's hard to have enough vowels otherwise).

[Update 10/22/2024: X's, V's, and Z's get used sometimes to change up the letter order. V pairs letters in a zipper-like fashion going from inside to out, while Z does the same thing but going from outside to inside. X bifurcates the message into two possibilities where one possibility has a reversal of letter order in the letters before the X and the other possibility has a reversal of the letter order in the letters after X.

Also, I think I found an updated way of encoding messages that, instead of relying on "O" rings, uses "N" zigzags, with only 24 letters (no J or F). Here's an example of its use:

A          R S

B        Q  T

C       P    U

D      O    V

E     N      W

G   M      X

H  L         Y

I K           Z

Say I do double cancellation and get "DWXHLUTNRA." I would look at where letter pairs next to each other are in the same horizontal line and replace them with the third letter. That would be "DWX HL UTN RA" --> "DWX Y UTN S." Then I can apply the X, V, and Z order changes if needed. By starting the alphabet zigzag with different letters, I get different possibilities for encoding. (This is still a fairly new method to me, but it seems to work on recent news headlines. I got the idea from looking at Lois Lerner's name; she is the IRS employee who in 2013 was caught wrongly using the power of the IRS for political reasons and somehow escaped prosecution despite a lot of inappropriate political targeting. Since the names of people who make the news headlines for extended periods of time sometimes have interesting correlations with the subject matter they are famous for (apparently there was some selectiveness in choosing the plaintiff for Roe v. Wade, and roe means fish eggs), I applied double cancellation to Lois Lerner's name and got "O is N.")]