Catherine Salatandol

Let’s mix up the Code Column for this edition and go big. Look out mobile users! This is a step up from the more basic substitution ciphers we’ve looked at over the past year. Blaise de Vigenère developed this table (or square) using alternate alphabets to create coordinates for shifting letters into a code, one … Read more

This edition we are looking at another type of grille, following on from our earlier article on the grilles developed by Richelieu and Cardano. Our variant this time was made by an Austrian cavalry officer back in 1880: Edouard Fleissner von Wostrowitz. Fortunately for us, this one has become known more simply as the ‘turning … Read more

At first this might seem a simple cipher, but taramnntigsiteogetidohniltl (14/13). Our rail fence system is one of the earliest methods of transposition, based on placing letters in a series of levels, or, imagining that they have been written up and down the rails on a fence. Let’s have a look at a few quotes … Read more

Who’s This Square? Old mate Polybius was a Greek born about 200BC, but the method he made famous has influenced more sophisticated systems to this day. Originally, old mate Polybius had intended this code to be used in conveying messages long distance by moving a flaming torch up and down in sequence, with the message … Read more

This episode’s man with the plan is philosopher, statesman and “father of empiricism”, Sir Francis Bacon. While most of our ciphers and codes (Morse, Pigpen, etc) are fairly secure, they are pretty obvious as being secret messages. Steganography seeks to hide the fact that a coded message exists, and our mate Bacon used a concealment … Read more

The cipher system we are looking at now was developed in the 16th Century by Mary Stuart in captivity. The then Scottish Queen was trying to contact her supporters. The young royal was found to have used 100 iterations of her cipher, which used a series of symbols in a direct substitution for the alphabet, … Read more

Grille A grille, also known as a cutout, is a great way to hide your message away in text that you know will be seen no matter what. We aren’t going to try and hide this text, only our intended message. Prepare for arts and crafty codes! Our old French mate Cardinal Richelieu, is credited … Read more

Here’s a code that will put a spot of colour into your Escape Room experience! The Colour Dot cipher is a way to substitute letters of the alphabet for splashes of colour, via numbers used in easy sums that are then swapped out. It might not be a code that you have encountered before, but … Read more