An Italian computer engineer has solved the riddle of some mysterious handwritten notations found in the margins of 1504 Venetian edition of Homer’s Odyssey. Daniele Metilli has won a $1,000 prize offered through the University of Chicago Library by collector M.C. Lang, who had donated the book to the University of Chicago Library in 2007! The engineer who identified the mystery script as a system of shorthand invented by Frenchman Jean Coulon de Thévénot in the late 18th century, said that “We spent days and nights trying to solve difficult word puzzles. We read Greek, we wrote French. We rediscovered the beauty of the Odyssey. We approached the contest looking for an adventure, and we got it. It was a wonderful experience and we could not be more happy!”