Code Buffs Devour Substitutions

Substitutions were not merely allowed on this menu--they were required. American Cryptogram Assn. members had to decode their banquet menus before they could order, substituting letters until they spelled the right food. No answer, no “iuxlw fxs,” the first course. “Actually, we’re a pack of lunatics,” said Richard Mesirov of the 1,000 fans of code-busting and puzzle-solving who gathered this weekend in Philadelphia for talks, demonstrations and contests. As a cryptogram example, Mesirov said, “s xpr xsxn xwn” can be decoded as “a big baby boy.” A more difficult form is the patristocrats, in which all letters come in groups of five, eliminating normal word separation. And don’t even ask about solving the bifids. “I would have to sit down with you for a long time before you would even begin to understand,” Mesirov said. Association members “tend to be very bright, very individual,” Mesirov said, with many retired or homebound by disability. “Others, like me, are just deranged.”

--The only thing exercised by the 40 entrants in Oregon’s first “Short Fat Guys Road Race” was their license to cheat. Every racer who made it 1.1 miles--downhill all the way--to the Sandbagger Saloon at Crooked River Ranch resort got at least one free beer and a Twinkie. Several competitors had seconds, and then some. “You’d look at the profile of that starting line--it was scary,” said Bob Ward, the resort’s publicity agent. “The Twinkies disappeared at an alarming rate.” The rules said to “cheat vigorously,” Ward said, and everyone’s time was 27 minutes, 33 seconds. Stan Stevenson, public works director for the nearby city of Redmond, was the biggest competitor at 460 pounds and a 66-inch waist, and he finished the course on the tailgate of a station wagon, Ward said.

--The remains of a World War II private were buried Saturday in Nashua, N.H., his hometown, more than 42 years after he was killed in a foxhole in France during the Battle of the Bulge. Members of Pfc. Roger Caron’s family stood beside his flag-draped coffin, while in the distance seven soldiers fired three times into a wind-driven rain, and a bugler then played taps. “He is where he belongs, but it opens up old wounds,” said Romeo Caron, a brother who regretted that their mother was not alive to see the ceremony. “She waited 30 years.” Roger Caron’s family had been notified that he was missing in action in January, 1945. His remains were found a year ago, but a positive identification was not made until this month.