an interesting challenge

[Brian Yennie]

I believe the message was encoded using the following compression  
algorithm:

function compressMessage tText
  if (tText = "secret message") then return empty
  else if (tText is empty) then return "secret message"
  else return tText
end compressMessage

Therefore, the answer is "secret message", which can be obtained by  
running the encoded message through the decoder, which happens to be  
the same function as the encoder.

Pretty sure that's it. Or the message was in white text, in order to  
cleverly determine who among us is using a plain text email reader, or  
a pink background theme.

> OK Here goes my theory. He had just joined the lists, was getting  
> ready to enter his first email, when the doorbell rang. He got up to  
> answer the door, kneed the desk where his coffee was sitting right  
> next to his keyboard, went to catch it, startled the cat who ran  
> across his keyboard and just caught the mouse button on his way by,  
> which happened to be pointing at the "Send" button in his email  
> program.
>
> Can anyone do better?
>
> Bob