Cryptanalysts wanted

July 25, 2008 11:59 AM

Cryptanalysts wanted
A long time ago I came up with this idea for a code. A recent post about cryptology inspired me to encrypt a short text with it and you are invited to try to solve it. I don't believe I've made an unbreakable code, what I'd like to see is how you solve it, as I find it interesting to read about ciphertexts being solved. There seems to be enough people interested in cryptography on MetaFilter to generate an interesting discussion around it and I believe some of you are good enough to crack this message.
posted by Termite (4 comments total)

Cool. I might end up trying it - it's just funny because I do cryptography puzzles all the time and the hardest ones are always groups of four letters. Looks interesting though. I'm going to stare at it a bit.
posted by cashman at 5:01 PM on July 26, 2008

I'm not an expert on cryptography, but it seems like this challenge is too difficult. Most cipher puzzles are some form of substitution cipher, which this doesn't appear to be. They also tend to keep the sentence structure intact, so that spaces and punctuation are included.

The point of having both of those things is that you can guess what certain letters might be, decrypt part of the ciphertext based on that guess, and see if it looks right. Obviously there are more advanced kinds of cryptanalysis, but most of them require more data or information, such as some idea of the algorithm being used, multiple ciphertexts, known or partially known plaintexts, etc.
posted by burnmp3s at 1:52 PM on July 28, 2008

Glad to see someone is interested! All I can say for now is that I made the cipher myself (it doesn't look like anything I've read about, but I'm not even an amateur cryptologist) and it's made without a computer.
posted by Termite at 11:15 PM on July 29, 2008

dyaM,syaCero da snnoxeohstJa,dr de.tem ta
posted by dmd at 7:03 AM on August 19, 2008