Codes, Ciphers and Secret Writing

✍ Scribed by Martin Gardner

• Publisher: Dover Publications
• Year: 2013
• Tongue: English
• Leaves: 50
• Series: Dover Children’s Activity Books
• Category: Library

✦ Synopsis

""A fascinating, challenging book.""--A.L.A. Booklist . Experiment with cryptography - the science of secret writing. Cipher and decipher codes: transposition and polyalphabetical ciphers, famous codes, typewriter and telephone codes, codes that use playing cards, knots, and swizzle sticks ... even invisible writing and sending messages through outer space. Hours of intrigue and challenge. 45 diagrams.

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Abstract:

""A fascinating, challenging book.""--A.L.A. Booklist . Experiment with cryptography - the science of secret writing. Cipher and decipher codes: transposition and polyalphabetical ciphers, famous codes, typewriter and telephone codes, codes that use playing cards, knots, and swizzle sticks ... even invisible writing and sending messages through outer space. Hours of intrigue and challenge. 45 diagrams.

✦ Table of Contents

Content: Cover Page
Title Page
Copyright Page
Contents
Introduction
1 Easy Transposition Ciphers
The Rail Fence Cipher
The Twisted Path Cipher
Scrambling with a Key Word
2 Easy Substitution Ciphers
Shift Ciphers
Date Shift Ciphers
Key Word Ciphers
The Pigpen Cipher
The Polybius Checkerboard
Random Substitution Ciphers
The Shadow's Code
3 How to Break Substitution Ciphers
4 Hard-to-break Polyalphabetic Ciphers
Porta's Digraphic Cipher
The Playfair Cipher
Lewis Carroll's Vigenère Cipher
5 Simple Code Machines
Typewriter Codes
A Telephone Dial Code
The Scytale
The Alberti Disk. Thomas Jefferson's Wheel CipherGrilles
The Triangle Code
6 Invisible Writing
Inks That Develop When Heated
An Ink That Turns Red
Inks That Glow in Blacklight
Inks That Appear When Powdered
Writing That Becomes Visible When the Sheet Is Wet
Writing That Can Be Seen in Slanting Light
Typing That Can Be Seen in Raking Light
7 Bizarre Methods of Message Sending
The Dot Code
The Knot Code
The Playing Card Code
The Red-Blue Code
The Crayon Cover
The Crease Code
The Swizzle Stick Code
8 Codes for Other Worlds
References for Further Reading
Historical
Methods
Codebreaking. Cipher CranksInterplanetary Communication
Back Cover.

✦ Subjects

Ciphers -- History.;Ciphers -- Juvenile literature.;Ciphers.