If you want be a cryptanalyst like Alan Turing, a mathematician and pioneer in computer science, this book is perfect for you. Since I read Marcel Danesi’s piece, “Secret Messages, The enduring appeal of codes” on the puzzle page in University of Toronto Magazine Autumn 2006 issue, I have been hooked. I have used the common type of substitution, the “Caesar cipher”, to encode country names. In this letter-to-letter cipher, the alphabet is shifted by a certain number of letters. The letters are replaced by other letters. For example, with a shift of five, A is replaced by F, B by G, C by H, and so on. Here is a coded country name: HFUJ AJWIJ. Can you decode it?
I have brought my puzzles to classrooms in Toronto’s schools. It gives me such a pleasure to watch students solving them. Now I have put my puzzles into this little book. I hope that you will also have loads of fun breaking secret codes.
I have brought my puzzles to classrooms in Toronto’s schools. It gives me such a pleasure to watch students solving them. Now I have put my puzzles into this little book. I hope that you will also have loads of fun breaking secret codes.
