John Gordon’s After Dinner Speech with Alice and Bob as guests given at the Zurich Seminar on Telecommunications in April 1984 is probably one of the most well known stories about our lovely couple.

It’s not only a wonderful story about the private lives of Alice and bob, but also goes on other fascinating topics as one of the best versions of the phonetic alphabet now existing.

A for ‘Orses
B for Mutton
C for Yourself
D for Mation
E for Brick
F for Vescence
G for Police
H for Consent

….

If you can’t find the coding theory behind it, you may find the answer in the The definitive Cockney Alphabet  

And if you want to read the complete John Gordon’s After Dinner Speech go to the great “The downlode Etext Library“, here’s an excerpt

…

So you see Alice has a whole bunch of problems to face. Oh yes, and there is one more thing I forgot so say - Alice doesn’t trust Bob. We don’t know why she doesn’t trust him, but at some time in the past there has been an incident.

Now most people in Alice’s position would give up. Not Alice. She has courage which can only be described as awesome. Against all odds, over a noisy telephone line, tapped by the tax authorities and the secret police, Alice will happily attempt, with someone she doesn’t trust, whom she cannot hear clearly, and who is probably someone else, to fiddle her tax returns and to organize a coup d’etat, while at the same time minimizing the cost of the phone call.

A coding theorist is someone who doesn’t think Alice is crazy.

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