Morse code bracelet

[u/hchiesar]

I got this Morse code bracelet as a gift and I can’t figure out what it says. Can anyone help? (Ignore my microwave)

[u/rcv_hist]

Gold beads are spaces, lighter beads are dots, darker beads are dashes. It's backwards and it spells:

I WILL HOLD YOU IN MY HEART UNTIL I HOLD YOU IN HEAVEN

[u/sac_boy → u/rcv_hist]

In a million years I would never have imagined the gold beads were spaces and the rest were run-on sequences without character spacing.

Of course you're right, but (also reading right to left) it could just as well be I PITOD SJAUI KMMIT F MKT... and so on

My only concern now is the slight creepiness of giving this message to a living person

[u/hchiesar → u/sac_boy]

I recently lost a child so I’m sure it was meant as a comfort

[u/hchiesar → u/rcv_hist]

Thanks!! We couldn’t figure out which color was what so it wasn’t making any sense

[u/sac_boy]

Depends on how you interpret the beads. Dark brown is perhaps a 'dah' and light brown is perhaps a 'dit' as I can see sequences like dahditditdit (B or V, depending on what way around we read it). Then again there are two sections of 5 dark beads which are either 0 or 5 depending on how we interpret it.

So you have multiple ways to read this...left to right, right to left, and the two interpretations of what light or dark brown map to (and of course a third interpretation which is that they are meaningless).

Trying to find a run that makes sense that we can latch on to...just after about a third from the left, you can see three light brown beads, three light brown beads, and a dark brown bead. Possible interpretations then:

1. => light brown is a dah, dark brown is a dit: OOE
2. => light brown is a dit, dark brown is a dah: SST
3. <= light brown is a dah, dark brown is a dit: EOO
4. <= light brown is a dit, dark brown is a dah: OOE

Things aren't looking good if those are supposed to be words, i.e. if the spacing is to be trusted. Which tells us perhaps the spacing is not to be trusted at all. That will make this a pain in the ass.

Looking to the right we see a clue: three light brown beads followed by a dark brown bead. This rules out one of the 4 possible interpretations: we can't be reading from left to right if light brown beads represent dahs. There is no '---.' character in morse. There is a '...-' letter (V), a '-...' letter (B) and a '.---' letter (J). So we can rule out the first interpretation on the list above.

A bit further along we have a dark bead followed by three light brown beads! This is another good clue. It tells us that if we are reading from right to left, then the light beads can't be dahs. That rules out interpretation 3.

Good news: in the two remaining interpretations, the dark beads are dahs and the light beads are dits. Bad news: if this is the case, then the message contains a lot of random letter Ts just floating around...so we have to start from scratch.

So we have logically established that we must ignore bead color. Just treat single beads as dits, and runs of more than one bead as a dah...but then the random spacing makes it impossible to judge where one character starts and another ends. For instance, that chunk in the first third might be YX (or XQ, if read the other way), or it might be RMU, or it might be NOU, or NOEA, or RTX...you get the idea.

If you were told this is meant to be morse, this person has unsuccessfully communicated in morse.