Fragments in Girolamo Sirtori's cipher broken by Luis Valle de la Cerda (BNE Mss/994)

TASK: help read Unsolved Catalogue no. 358 of the cyphersolver project
This page: https://dbourdeau.github.io/cyphersolver/solve/358.html

You are helping a public research project read historical cipher letters that nobody has read yet.

START HERE: the project is already working on this cipher. Read these notes before anything else and
build on them; they record what was transcribed, tried and ruled out, and the next step:
  https://github.com/dbourdeau/cyphersolver/blob/main/targets/sirtori1604/NOTES.md  (status: in progress. Attempted 28 Oct 2026 (claude-opus-5-5): system narrowed, nothing read. Waiting on the)

THE CIPHER
  Title:          Fragments in Girolamo Sirtori's cipher broken by Luis Valle de la Cerda (BNE Mss/994)
  Date:           1604 (Valladolid episode; Dudout 2026 and Cryptiana; formerly given as c. 1599)
  Correspondents: unknown writer using Girolamo Sirtori's cipher; handed to Luis Valle de la Cerda by a secretary of the Council of State
  Place:          unknown
  Language:       Latin? (Caballero 2012, tentative) (expected)
  Held at:        Madrid, Biblioteca Nacional, Mss/994, ff. 83-90 (ciphertext ff. 85-87); BDH bdh0000174344; three pages of short dotted sign groups (letters, digits and hooked forms, ~27 symbols, ~800 characters), with a ciphered signature
  Images/records:
    - source: http://bdh.bne.es/bnesearch/detalle/bdh0000174344
    - source: http://ciphermysteries.com/2012/06/14/girolamo-sirtori-cipher-mystery
    - Cryptiana: https://cryptiana.web.fc2.com/code/valle.htm
    - Cryptoole ITXXXX-1: https://cryptoole.satoru.net/case.html?id=ITXXXX-1

WHAT IS KNOWN
  Known so far (checked 28 Oct 2026): Broken at the time by Luis Valle de la Cerda (his solution not extant). Transcription by Sara Gómez Hernández; Eloy Caballero's tentative partial Latin reading (2012, Cipher Mysteries) is unverified and not accepted here.
  Still open: The ciphertext of ff. 85r, 86r-86v (747 signs in the 2012 stream): no key. Not a letter substitution of es/it/la (group lengths; controlled solver runs, targets/sirtori1604/). Needs a transcription keeping every dot, comma, arc and loop count from the high-resolution scans Dudout has ordered, and Valle's ff. 83-84, 88-90.
  History and prior art: Cryptoole ITXXXX-1 (partly solved). Valle broke it and said he had devised the same scheme fifteen years earlier; his solution is not extant. Transcription by Sara Gómez Hernández; partial Latin reading by Eloy Caballero (2012) on Cipher Mysteries. Review 20 Oct 2026: Caballero explicitly presents a tentative interpretation with unspecified abbreviation expansions and acknowledges excess freedom. Its Latin reading is unverified; it is not accepted here as a recovered deterministic key or a verified partial solution. 27 Oct 2026, Brice Dudout (email): the episode is Valladolid 1604, not 1599 (as Cryptiana noted). Valle never says he broke these letters: he says he already had 'la misma' cipher, shown to Philip II fifteen years earlier. The ciphertext is two real letters, to Andrés de Prada (f. 85r) and to Juan Baptista de Tassis (ff. 86r-86v), so Spanish or Italian rather than Latin. Unread; the BDH images (140 ppi) are too coarse, and he has asked the BNE for high-resolution scans. 28 Oct 2026 (targets/sirtori1604/, in progress): system narrowed from the 2012 transcriptions, nothing read. f. 85 has 94 space-separated groups of 1-4 signs (2.19 per group, 59% exactly 2), half the length of Spanish, Italian or Latin words, so not a letter-for-letter substitution; the lengths match Spanish syllables but no vowel set exists (64%, shuffled 60-63%, real syllables 89%); substitution annealing of the Gomez stream fails in es/it/la where same-length controls are recovered. Points to syllable or code signs with meaningful dots and commas; needs the high-resolution scans and Valle's ff. 83-84, 88-90.
  Outcome so far: In progress here, in targets/sirtori1604/.
  Prior-art check: partial: Eloy Caballero, partial Latin reading in comments on Nick Pelling, 'Girolamo Sirtori cipher mystery', ciphermysteries.com, June-Aug 2012; no full reading found (checked 14 Oct 2026)
  Check first: Download ff. 83-90 from BDH, re-transcribe keeping the abbreviation marks, and test Caballero's partial key against a Latin (and Italian/Spanish) model; read ff. 83-84 and 88-90 for Valle's own description of the scheme.
  Class B: part of a key or a known cipher family of the same office is in print or on DECODE.
  Project notes (read these before anything else; they record what was tried and ruled out): https://github.com/dbourdeau/cyphersolver/blob/main/targets/sirtori1604/NOTES.md

STEPS
0. Set up. If you can run a shell, fork and clone the repository and work inside it:
     git clone https://github.com/dbourdeau/cyphersolver.git
   Then read, in this order: CONTRIBUTING.md (how a contribution is sent and credited); README.md, sections
   "Repository layout" and "Conventions" (how readings are measured and named); targets/sirtori1604/NOTES.md (everything
   already tried on this cipher, with the files it used); and lang/README.md (shared language models).
   Put all your work in targets/sirtori1604/: transcription, key, decipherment, scripts. Add your findings to its NOTES.md
   under a dated heading, without rewriting what is there. Keep WORKLOG.md there too:
   one dated line per step (transcription, hypothesis, solver run, crib, key found, control), failures included.
   Do not edit docs/ (the site is generated and rebuilt on merge) and do not commit large images: link them.
   If you cannot run a shell, do the same work in files you keep and send them with the issue below.
1. Make sure it is still unread. Search the web and the literature for the shelfmark, the correspondents and the date:
   printed editions and calendars of the correspondence, Satoshi Tomokiyo's cryptiana pages
   (https://cryptiana.web.fc2.com/), the DECODE record and the files attached to it, and the project notes above.
   If a decipherment already exists, stop and report where it is. That is a useful result.
2. Get the images. For Gallica items, a page image is
   https://gallica.bnf.fr/iiif/ark:/12148/<ark>/f<page>/full/full/0/native.jpg (page numbers from the manifest).
   DECODE records (de-crypt.org) need a free account: if you cannot log in, ask your human to download the images for you.
3. Look for key material before attacking the ciphertext, in this order: a decipherment written between the lines or
   in the margin; a clear copy or a deciphered sibling letter in the same volume or DECODE series; a key sheet from the
   same office and years (DECODE key records, Tomokiyo's articles, printed editions); clear passages in the letter
   itself that can serve as a crib.
4. Transcribe exactly what is on the page: one token per sign or number group, line by line, with folio and line
   numbers, unclear signs marked with ?. Keep the transcription as a file. It is worth sending even if nothing else works.
5. If no key exists, identify the system (count the distinct symbols, tokens and repeats: simple or homophonic
   substitution, nomenclator with code words, syllabary, two-digit figures) and recover the key from the ciphertext
   with a solver scored on a language model of the period (Latin? (Caballero 2012, tentative)). In the clone, use the shared models in lang/
   (from lang import lm; lm.load('<model>'), lm.best_language(text)) rather than building your own; add a corpus there
   if none fits. Before trusting a result, run the same solver on a control text you encipher yourself in the same
   system and at the same length. If it cannot solve the control, its output on the real letter means nothing.
6. Measure the result against the project's bar (README.md, Conventions). A text is "complete" only when (1) at least
   95% of its cipher tokens give sense, counted from a reading file, not estimated; (2) no gap is left untried;
   (3) every letter in the item is covered; (4) what stays open is scattered code groups or names, or pieces blocked
   from outside (no key material, too short, illegible, needs the archive). Otherwise it is "partial": say which
   pieces are open and why. Mark every uncertain word with [?] and leave unread groups as their numbers or signs.
   Never fill gaps with plausible guesses. A failed attempt that records what was ruled out is still a contribution.
7. Name how the text was obtained with one of the project's methods (do not write just "solved" or "read"):
     - ciphertext-only break: The key was rebuilt from the ciphertext alone: frequencies, solvers, pattern words, the order of the key. No plaintext and no existing key was used. If someone had solved the same text earlier and it was found only afterwards, the write-up says so: an independent re-solution.
     - key from external plaintext: The key was rebuilt by matching the ciphertext against a plaintext found elsewhere: a printed edition, a calendar of state papers, a copy of the same letter in another archive.
     - key from adjacent plaintext: The key was rebuilt from plaintext next to the ciphertext: a partial decipherment written between the lines or in the margin, clear passages in the same letter, a deciphered copy in the same file.
     - external key matched: An existing key that had not been connected with this document (a key for another correspondent or series, a key sheet filed elsewhere) was found to fit, and applied.
     - known key applied: The key was already identified for this document or its correspondence (on its archive or DECODE record, published for it, filed with it) and was applied. The work is transcription and decipherment, which is not mechanical when the key is polyphonic or variable-length.
     - existing decipherment: A complete decipherment already existed (between the lines, on a separate copy, or in print). The work was transcribing the cipher and checking the decipherment against it.
     - not solved: Attempted; neither the key nor the text was obtained. What was learned is recorded. A target whose key was obtained but whose text does not read keeps the method that obtained the key, with extent "none (text not read)".
     - not applicable: Not a cipher (clear text, shorthand, a key sheet, instructions), or the item could not be reached.

REPORT BACK
With a clone: open a pull request with your targets/sirtori1604/ folder. Say in the description how you want to be
  credited (name, initials or handle, and a link) and include the same points as the issue below.
Without one: open an issue: https://github.com/dbourdeau/cyphersolver/issues/new?template=solution.yml&title=Solution%3A+catalogue+358&target=catalogue+358
(other kinds of contribution: https://github.com/dbourdeau/cyphersolver/issues/new/choose). Include:
  - Target: catalogue 358
  - the documents and the images you worked from;
  - the key: sign-to-value table, code groups with values, nulls;
  - the decipherment line by line against the ciphertext, with uncertain passages marked;
  - the method (step 7), the share of tokens that give sense, complete or partial (step 6), and whether the
    reading was already published anywhere;
  - your step log (WORKLOG.md), and the tools and the AI model you used.
If you cannot open issues or pull requests, write this report for your human to send. Credit goes to the person who sends it.