Tag Archives: cipher

Puzzly Tombstones for October 1st!

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[Image courtesy of How To With Kristin.]

It’s October 1st, and for many folks, it’s the official start of the spookiest of seasons, aka the lead-up to Halloween.

One of the things I really enjoy about the weeks before Halloween is seeing the decorations go up, and wondering just how elaborate they’re going to get. One house near me does a big fake spider web every year that’s made out of rope and dominates half of their yard!

But it’s the little fake tombstones that get me. It’s a simple thing, but I quite enjoy how people always put something interesting on them. Sometimes it’s funny inside jokes, or silly punny names like Bart Simpson would use to prank Moe the bartender on The Simpsons.

And it occurs to me that we as puzzlers could get in on this. Puzzly tombstone decorations! Why not?

Here are a few real-world examples to spark some ideas for you.

This gorgeous design adorns the gravestone of Michael and Elisabeth Ayrton. He was a painter and sculptor, and she was a writer.

It’s simple, but quite lovely.

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If you wanted, you could recreate this puzzly tribute that took passersby a century to finally unravel.

In a similar vein, this tombstone hides a simple message in thousands of different ways, if you know where to get started.

You could hide a coded message on them, like James Leeson did with his own tombstone in the Trinity Churchyard in Manhattan.

You could even offer a riddle or puzzly epitaph for people to solve, like this one found on the gravestone of Henry Rogers in Christchurch Priory in Dorset.

So what do you think, fellow PuzzleNationers? Will you be decorating with any puzzle-inspired tombstones? Or maybe you have something else that’s puzzle-inspired in store for Halloween.

Let us know in the comments section below! We’d love to hear from you.

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The D’Agapeyeff Cipher, Unsolved for 80 Years!

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[Image courtesy of Derek Bruff.org.]

One of my all-time favorite cryptography stories comes from the book The Spy That Couldn’t Spell, a true-life espionage story about a dyslexic man who hid, then encrypted the locations of, thousands of pages of sensitive documents he had stolen from the U.S government.

Why is it one of my favorite stories? Well, because the man in question FORGOT one of the cipher words he used to encrypt the location of his caches.

And it sort of unravels your master plan when you can’t remember a key element of it.

Amazingly enough, this isn’t the only example of a self-trained cryptographer who forgot how to solve his own creation. In fact, one example of this very dilemma remains one of the most famous unsolved codes and ciphers in the world:

The D’Agapeyeff Cipher.

daga

This is the D’Agapeyeff Cipher. This seemingly simple list of numbers contains a secret message. The only problem is… the creator, Alexander D’Agapeyeff, can’t remember how to decrypt it.

When he published a starter book on cryptography — Codes and Ciphers, first edition — D’Agapeyeff included this chain of 5-digit number bundles as a final challenge for the readers to unravel.

One of the first steps many aspiring cryptographers take is to break the numbers down into pairs instead of groups of five:

daga 2

One result of this is the pattern that every pair has 6, 7, 8, 9, or 0 in the tens column and 1, 2, 3, 4, or 5 in the ones column, which doesn’t seem like a coincidence.

And see those sequences where the same number appears three times in a row? Some cryptographers believe that is also not a coincidence.

Then, they cut off the two double-zero pairings at the end — because they believe they were nulls, empty space-filling characters simply designed to fit the 5-letter groupings pattern of the original code as a way to throw off codecrackers. (And, to be fair, D’Agapeyeff himself wrote about null entries in the book Codes and Ciphers.)

If you remove those double-zero pairings, you can arrange the numbers into a 14×14 pairing grid, like so:

daga 3

See those sequences where the same number appears three times in a row? More of them now.

Many cryptographers consider this to be the true starting point of cracking the D’Agapeyeff Cipher.

But then what?

Some believe that the key to solving the grid lies in the Polybius Square, another encryption device mentioned by D’Agapeyeff.

Essentially, you place the alphabet into a 5×5 grid, and use those numbers to encrypt the letters. Here’s a straightforward example:

daga 4

In this case, the word PUZZLE would be 35 45 55 55 31 15.

Another way to use the cipher is to pick a keyword to start it. For instance, if you chose POLYBIUS as the key word, then you go across, then down, writing POLYBIUS and then the rest of the unused letters of the alphabet in order, like so:

daga 5

Instead of 1-5 both across and down, you could do 1-5 across the top and 6-0 across the side, reflecting the pairings in the D’Agapeyeff Cipher.

Or, as someone pointed out, perhaps we’re thinking in the wrong language. Triple-letters are uncommon in English words, but more common in Russian words, and D’Agapeyeff was Russian born.

Overlooking simple things like that can make you miss crucial ways into an encrypted message.

So, do you have any thoughts on how to solve this 80-year-old encrypted challenge, fellow puzzlers? Let us know in the comments section below! We’d love to hear from you.

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Puzzles in Plain Sight: Spinning Yellow Circles edition

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Adobe_Semaphore_Wide_768x512.0

About six months ago, I shared the story of a secret code lurking in plain sight, sitting atop the Capitol Records Building in Los Angeles. It’s not the only time that buildings have made their way into the blog; in previous posts, we’ve discussed the giant crossword adorning the side of an apartment building in Lvov, Ukraine, as well as the optical illusion awaiting art lovers in a Roman palace.

But it was the only time we’ve discussed a secret code being shared on the side of a building.

Until today, that is.

Yes, my friends and fellow puzzlers, there’s another building out there broadcasting secret messages for all to see. It’s also in California. And this one is more devious than the blinking light on the Capitol Records Building.

adobe semaphore 1

Say hello to Almaden Tower, the San Jose headquarters of Adobe, the software company behind Acrobat, Illustrator, and numerous other editing programs.

As you can see, there are four bright yellow circles beside the Adobe logo. These 10-foot-high digital lights all rotate. And if you pay enough attention, you might discover the secret message being broadcast.

The messages began transmitting in 2006. The code was cracked for the first time in 2007, and it wasn’t a brief message either. The lights were secretly transmitting the entire text of the Thomas Pynchon novel The Crying of Lot 49.

You see, the rotating circles allow for a form of semaphore alphabet, a way of secretly forming letters or symbols based on the position of each of the circles. They can be horizontal, vertical, a left-leaning diagonal, or a right-leaning diagonal. The various combinations of these positions create a semaphore alphabet of 256 possible characters.

adobe semaphore 2

But this was only the first part of the encryption. Even if you uncovered and charted this pattern, you still had to decode the secret messages detailing specific key words that would help you break the Vigenere encryption of the actual text.

It took MONTHS for two tech workers to figure out the semaphore language, decipher the code, and uncover the final message.

So naturally, just like the hidden alien language in the animated sci-fi comedy Futurama, it was replaced with a second, more complex code to be unraveled.

That code, which started transmitting in 2012, wasn’t broken until 2017 when a math professor started streaming footage of the Adobe building and charting the various positions of the circles.

But his examination led him to believe that it wasn’t just text being broadcast this time… it was an audio message. After discovering a chain of symbols that he believed was a space or bit of silence in an audio broadcast, he graphed the results, which resembled an audio wave.

It turns out, his suspicions were correct, and further analysis resulted in the true audio being uncovered: Neil Armstrong’s famous message from the moon landing.

Apparently, a new code and message are currently being brainstormed for Adobe’s devious puzzle monument. Who knows what Ben Rubin, the designer, has in store for solvers this time?

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Musical Cryptography: Hiding Messages in the Music!

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In previous posts, we’ve explored many ways that messages can be encrypted or hidden. We’ve talked about legendary encryption methods like Caesar ciphers and Vigenere ciphers, as well as simpler auditory ones like Morse code and tap codes. We’ve seen encryptions through blinking lights, woven through crossword grids, and even knitted into scarves.

But did you know that composers can encode messages in their music, and have done so for centuries?

No, we’re not talking about subliminal messaging or tales of backwards messages hidden in metal songs. We’re talking about musical cryptography, and it turns out there’s not just music between the notes, but messages among them as well.

haydn

Now, to be fair, there is no evidence that musical encryption has ever been used for spycraft. (Sorry, Outlander fans.) Most of the time, composers simply entertained themselves by hiding the letters of their name or the names of others into compositions just because they could.

This sort of musical wordplay appears in compositions by Ravel, Debussy, and Shostakovich among others. Johann Sebastian Bach did this often enough that the succession of notes B-A-C-H is now called a Bach motif.

According to Western Michigan University Music Professor David Loberg Code:

Sometimes a musical version of a name is a subtle reference in the piece of music… Often it is very prominent; it is the main theme of the piece and is heard over and over. In that case, whether or not you know exactly how the composer translated the name into musical pitches, it is obvious that it is meant to be heard… They were not secretive about it.

It even proved therapeutic for some composers.

Johannes Brahms incorporated the notes A-G-A-H-E in bars 162 to 168 of the first movement in his 1868 piece “String Sextet No. 2 in G major.” By doing so, he included the name of Agathe von Siebold, a young woman he had fallen in love with. He and Agathe made plans to wed, but he later broke off the engagement to focus on his musical career.

But, by encoding her name into one of his works, he both honored her and gave himself closure on a relationship that would never be.

notes

The musical nature of this encryption technique makes it effective — because casual listeners wouldn’t notice anything hidden — but it also means that longer messages are harder to include naturally.

You see, the “spelling” can affect the music. Obviously, the more complex the message, the more it interferes with the actual musical composition and flow of the piece. To the untrained ear, this wouldn’t necessarily jump out, but to a trained ear, or at least a person experienced in reading music, it would be fairly obvious that something was amiss.

Musical ciphers are attributed to various composers (like Haydn) and even to writers like Francis Bacon, but arguably the greatest success story in musical cryptography goes to French composer Olivier Messiaen.

messiaen

His cipher matched a different note to each of the 26 letters in the alphabet. Unlike many other composers, he managed to develop a cipher that closely mirrored his own compositional style. Because of the similarities between his cipher and his traditional musical works, there was less of a chance that listeners would detect anything was off.

He managed to translate the words of philosopher Thomas Aquinas into an organ piece called “Méditations sur le mystère de la Sainte Trinité,” and cryptographers and musical historians alike praise him for doing so with complex rhythms and rich tones without spoiling his own works.

It’s clear that it takes both an artistic flair and a puzzler’s mind to make the most of musical cryptography. But then again, those two pursuits have crossed paths many times before, as evidenced by musically minded solvers like Dan Feyer, Patrick Blindauer, Jon Delfin, and friend of the blog Keith Yarbrough.

Perhaps the best of musical cryptography is yet to come.

[For more details on musical cryptography, check out this brilliant Atlas Obscura article by Christina Ayele Djossa.]

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Kickstarter Roundup!

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Oh yes, it’s that time again.

For years now, crowdfunding platforms like Kickstarter and Indiegogo have been hotbeds of innovative puzzle and game design, and I’m always happy to spread the word about worthy projects that I think will delight and intrigue my fellow PuzzleNationers.

So let’s take a look at some projects that are currently seeking funding and see if any pique your interest! (This time around, we’ve got twice as many recommendations as usual! So much puzzly potential!)

atoz crossword

The first is a project by Fireball Crosswords and Fireball Newsflash Crosswords constructor Peter Gordon, entitled A-to-Z Crosswords Volume 2: More Petite Pangram Puzzles.

The project is easy to explain, but mindblowing to think about. Every single day for 24 WEEKS, you get a 9×11 crossword puzzle that contains all 26 letters. The puzzles range from easy to medium in difficulty, arrive by email, and are constructed by Gordon and professional puzzler Frank Longo.

This is a very cool project that deserves your support — they’re a little more than a third of the way there, with 9 days to go — and you should definitely check it out!

puzzle postcard

The next project is Puzzle Postcards: Season Two by the Enigma Emporium.

Last year, Wish You Were Here was part of our Holiday Puzzly Gift Guide, and it’s fantastic to see that the Enigma Emporium is Kickstarting another puzzle postcard mystery this year.

Essentially, an entire mystery is concealed within a handful of postcards, challenging you to mine them for every scrap of information as you uncover a series of coded messages. It’s spycraft in an envelope, very clever stuff.

Already funded with 12 days to go — and carrying a solid track record of previous successful Kickstarter projects behind them — I cannot recommend this one highly enough. I loved Wish You Were Here, as well as the follow-up series.

fuzzies

For a change of pace, our next project is The Fuzzies.

Basically, this is a Jenga-style dexterity game, but made out of little fuzzy balls instead of pieces of wood. And instead of choosing which piece you remove and place on top, that is determined by a deck of cards instead.

I don’t know how it works — actually staying upright in the first place — but apparently it does.

This family-friendly game has already tripled its funding goal with 29 days to go, so it might be right up your alley.

enigmas

The next project we’re sharing today is the ENIGMAS deck of puzzle playing cards.

David Kwong — constructor, magician, and all-around puzzly fellow — has masterminded a puzzle mystery and a series of hidden messages and ciphers, all contained within a deck of cards.

ENIGMAS marries some of the ideas from his Enigmatist show — specifically the historical aspects — with an ingenious puzzle hunt to create an intriguing solving situation. Plus, once you’ve cracked all the puzzly elements, you’ve still got a beautiful deck of cards to enjoy.

This project has blasted well past its funding goal, and with 9 days to go, they’ve added a special limited-run deck of red cards (to compliment the standard blue deck) that will only be offered to Kickstarter backers and never sold in stores. With a pedigree like David’s, you can’t go wrong!

sherlock

Our next project is bigger and no less ambitious. It’s Sherlock’s Mysteries: An Interactive Puzzle Adventure (not to be confused with another Sherlock-based Kickstarter running right now).

Combining board game and escape room elements, this project contains 10 mysteries (described as chapters) that combine into one interwoven narrative where you try to save the life of Sherlock Holmes!

By combining murder mystery-style solving with puzzles like ciphers and deduction puzzles, this project definitely tries to encapsulate the experience of being the Great Detective from the comfort of your own home.

About halfway to its goal with 21 days left, this project isn’t a lock (given the price tag of $135 to experience the entire story), but it’s definitely worth a look. (I’m especially intrigued by the fact that certain levels offer “refill kits” that allow the experience to be played more than once!)

shivers

For something just as puzzly but more immersive from a roleplaying point of view, there’s The Shivers.

In this game, someone has gone missing in the house owned by the Shivers family, and you play one of the family members trying to solve the mystery and defeat dangerous foes at work in various sinister and creepy scenarios.

This gameplay is bolstered by pop-up 3-D models of the various rooms of the house, bringing the setting and different stories to life right before your eyes.

This is a very clever combination of puzzle hunt, roleplaying game, and pop-up book that I’ve never really seen before, and like some of these other projects, it has blown past its funding goal with strong support from interested gamers and puzzlers.

legacy

Following the escape room/puzzle mystery at home template, Legacy: Quest for a Family Treasure is our next project to discuss.

You receive a black box in the mail, and inside, you discover in your estranged father’s will that there is a family treasure hidden somewhere in Europe. And you’ll have to unravel secrets of the past in order to secure your future.

This immersive mystery involves audio and video clues, physical evidence to pore over, and even incorporates Internet searching into the gameplay. I’ve been thoroughly impressed with the level of depth and attention to detail in this one, and clearly I’m not the only one, as the project has already met and surpassed its funding goal with 10 days to go.

The familial element adds a neat twist to the mystery-at-home genre, and I suspect this project will do very well.

labyrinth

The last project we’ll be sharing today is The Labyrinth: An Immersive Multi-Platform Puzzle Challenge.

There’s a lot of stuff included in this one: puzzle boxes, ciphers, maps, tools. They’re sending you a CRATE full of material here. The goal is to move through the various chambers of a labyrinth, solving puzzles as you go.

With 55 puzzles included — and an expected solve time of 8-10 hours — this is a breathtaking amount of puzzly paraphernalia. So there’s cost to consider here. The full puzzle costs $195 (there’s even a more expensive deluxe edition), so although that easily makes it the priciest project we’re discussing today, but also one of the most visually impressive.

And yet, with 14 days to go, they’ve already passed their funding goal nine times over. Check it out and see what you think of the expansive puzzle selection offered here.

Have any of these games or projects hooked you? Tell us which ones you’re supporting in the comments section below! And if there are any campaigns you’re supporting that we missed, let us know!

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The Strange Mystery of Florida’s Coral Castle

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coral castle entrance

[Image courtesy of Bitter Southerner.]

At the center of every great mystery, there is a puzzle. When people look at the pyramids of Egypt or the Moai statues of Easter Island, the puzzle at heart is obvious: how? How were these incredible objects created?

A similar, and no less puzzling mystery, can be found much closer to home for most Americans: the Coral Castle of Florida.

The-Coral-Castle-14

[Image courtesy of The Bohemian Blog.]

Less a castle and more a varied arrangement of stones into walls, shapes, doorways, and more, the Coral Castle is composed not of coral, but of oolite limestone blocks weighing literal tons. More than 1,000 tons of rock are part of the Coral Castle’s elaborate layout, which was assembled and expanded from 1923 to 1951.

Some of those monstrous stones are seamlessly joined into different structures. Others are so perfectly balanced that they can open like a revolving door with the gentlest push.

There is a sundial, a telescope, and even stone rocking chairs carved from single pieces of rock.

coral castle moon

[Image courtesy of Bitter Southerner,]

It’s an engineering marvel, to be sure, but what separates the Coral Castle from some of those other creations we mentioned above is the fact that we know who built the Coral Castle.

One man. Ed Leedskalnin.

coral castle tools

[Image courtesy of LiveScience.]

Using basic tools like picks, winches, ropes, and pulleys, Leedskalnin created the Coral Castle in secret, allowing visitors to ponder just how he was accomplishing this remarkable feat.

It’s particularly remarkable when you consider that Leedskalnin only had a fourth-grade education, having gone to work at a young age.

The-Coral-Castle-3

[Image courtesy of The Bohemian Blog.]

Of course, it’s also worth noting that Leedskalnin was a bit of a kook, claiming he had learned the secrets of the architects of King Solomon’s temples by studying books about the pyramids at the local library.

And yet, he created something amazing. So amazing, in fact, many people attribute the Coral Castle to supernatural efforts, not merely the engineering prowess, cleverness, and determination of a hardworking man.

coral castle stairs

[Image courtesy of LiveScience.]

Over the years, many peculiar theories have circulated surrounding the Coral Castle and Ed Leedskalnin. Unreliable eyewitnesses claimed to see coral blocks floating in the air like balloons while Leedskalnin worked at night.

Some believe Leedskalnin levitated the blocks with telekinesis or psychic powers, or by singing the stones into place. Others attribute the Castle to some sort of strange manipulation of gravity, antigravity, magnetism, ley lines, or earth energies. And, of course, alien technology has been floated as a possibility as well.

(Some people even believe there’s a hidden cipher lurking in several tracts written by Leedskalnin, just waiting to be found to reveal his secrets.)

coral castle chairs

[Image courtesy of Bitter Southerner.]

A friend of Leedskalnin’s wrote a book about the physics and engineering of the Coral Castle, entitled Mr. Can’t Is Dead. It’s one of many books that claims to explain how the Coral Castle came to be.

To me, the Coral Castle seems like one giant mechanical brain teaser, a math problem more about leverage and patience than the paranormal.

And yet, I can’t help but stare at some of these creations with awe. Maybe this one of those puzzles that’s better left unsolved.

The-Coral-Castle-1

[Image courtesy of The Bohemian Blog.]

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