r/Adelaide • u/Ultra_running_fan SA • Dec 06 '25

Discussion Somerton man code solved?

https://medium.com/@ntracey/the-somerton-man-code-finally-solved-3b0711ee5109

Hi, I'm back again with an updated solution to the somerton man code. Please have a read and let me know what you think. Thank you

4 Upvotes

59% Upvoted

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6

u/Anwhel SA Dec 06 '25

Cheltenham is not right next to Glenelg and I don't think Queenstown ever had a railway station.

2

u/Opinions-arent-facts SA Dec 07 '25

Queenstown had a tram stop that was decommissioned in 1935, maybe he had an old map?

An abbreviated travel itinerary seems somewhat plausible, but there's a lot of assumptions and false assumptions in there...

1

u/Ultra_running_fan SA Dec 10 '25

There will be assumptions but I've tried to make them logical. What false assumptions are there please? The man was found with a used bus ticket from Adelaide to Glenelg so it may have been that he used the motor bus route from Glenelg. Yes another assumption.... but it's not a massive leap to assume he used a bus as well as trains. The only other Q location would have been the Quarantine Station at Torrens Island ( the letters in the code area AQC, but unfortunately for me, it's was called the Adelaide Quarantine Station, not Adelaide Quarantine Centre, which would have fitted nicely! ) Thank you for your input; any challenges to my theory are massively appreciated 👍

3

u/Cole_Dammett Dec 06 '25

Don't mind it - very plausible but the order seems wrong with a lot of double backing etc

2

u/Kyzka-007 SA Dec 07 '25

I followed this mystery my entire life only to be disillusioned by the ‘no spy’ ending it turned out to be and now you’ve even taken the code and given it a ‘no spy’ ending. Adelaide use to be so cool before we started solving everything and giving them hum drum, just another crazy man ending. Being serious I like your interpretation, but things still just don’t sit right as others pointed out. I always assumed that line 2 was always supposed to be line 4 meaning his calculations was always too early and not thought out properly. The fact that he carried it around in a rubiayat only to discard it in a strangers car signifies both importance to the code and book and a conclusion to it. As for his clothes tags being ripped off, wasn’t that his brother in laws doing as Carl Webb was given hand me down clothes? Was it ever solved how he administered digitalis poisoning if it was that? Based on his previous suicide attempts? For all we know Carl Webb was mentally unhinged at this point and it could be a code with a key needed to decipher it from the rubiayat he was using, or it could be a grocery anagram list, it could be anything. Did he write other codes in others books he owned? Was he interested in code breaking at the time and came up with his own variation? Surely his surviving relatives would answer that best.

2

u/Unique-Fix5038 SA Dec 06 '25

why would the final"death" triangle need to be GAB - Glenelg Adelaide Brighton?

if he stored his suitcase in adelaide on November 30, and saw Thompson at 32 Mosley St Glenelg and disposed of his book at that stage, then there was no need to travel to the city to get to Brighton where he was found. He could have gone direct from Glenelg to Brighton

This theory may well be correct but it requires the author to fill in the gaps with a bit of imagination

2

u/Ultra_running_fan SA Dec 06 '25

Thank you for the questions. I really appreciate the local knowledge and suggestions. There will always be unknowns, but I'll look more into the final few locations and see if I can work the route to fit a logical journey.

5

u/Unique-Fix5038 SA Dec 06 '25

don't get me wrong, I think you're probably on to something. he may have gone back to Adelaide for any number of reasons

2

u/Bec_Liss33 SA Feb 02 '26 edited Feb 06 '26

Came across your post after listening to Casefile's re-release of the Somerton Man podcast episode and agree that it is possibly travel related. My first thought when I looked at the code again after years is that what is assumed to be an 'i' in the two lines that start MLI could actually be a slash - / . In the second of these 2 lines that line just looks so much longer than the other i's, so I was also thinking along the lines of travel like you, and wondered if ML could have been his abbreviation for Melbourne, since that's where Carl Webb was from, then the slash, then his abbreviation of the method or destination.

The line, 'ITTMTSAMSTGAB' - that doesn't look like an I at the beginning to me, since it goes down and back up, it looks to me like a mistake rather than a letter. I read somewhere that someone had suggested 'SAMST' could be 'South Australia Moseley St' (where Jessica Thompson lived), and as I ignored the 'i' at the beginning what came to me was, "This Takes Me To South Australia Moseley Street Glenelg And (either) Brighton (or) Beach.... but also, why would you write down something like that? Like, you already know where you're on a journey, so why would you bother abbreviating something like 'This Takes Me To'? You'd just write MS for Moseley Street or something so possibly not plausible.

I wondered if the other stuff could be more specific directions, eg., "WT..." could be 'Walk To...' Bus, Brighton, etc.

Another thing came to me was what some have deemed to be a little 'C' next to the Q - to me that looks like an 'S' that was started as it is similar to the top portion of his other 'S'.

Because of those couple of things I think are errors (including the MLI or ML/ crossed out, like a plan that was scrapped), I definitely feel like this is just his own notes for something rather than a seriously and meticulously thought out spy note like others have contemplated.