The Turk
It was not until Dr. Silas Mitchell's series of articles for The Chess Monthly that the secret was fully revealed. Mitchell, son of the final owner of the Turk, wrote that "no secret was ever kept as the Turk's has been. Guessed at, in part, many times, no one of the several explanations ... ever solved this amusing puzzle". As the Turk had been destroyed, Silas Mitchell felt that there were "no longer any reasons for concealing from the amateurs of chess, the solution to this ancient enigma".