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Cryptogram
A cryptogram is a type of puzzle that consists of a short piece of encrypted text. Generally the cipher used to encrypt the text is simple enough that the cryptogram can be solved by hand. Substitution ciphers where each letter is replaced by a different letter or number are frequently used. To solve the puzzle, one must recover the original lettering. Though once used in more serious applications, they are now mainly printed for entertainment in newspapers and magazines. Other types of classical ciphers are sometimes used to create cryptograms. An example is the book cipher where a book or article is used to encrypt a message. History of cryptograms The ciphers used in cryptograms were not originally created for entertainment purposes, but for real encryption of military or personal secrets. The first use of the cryptogram for entertainment purposes occurred during the Middle Ages by monks who had spare time for intellectual games. A manuscript found at Bamberg states tha ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Musical Cryptogram
A musical cryptogram is a cryptogrammatic sequence of musical symbols, a sequence which can be taken to refer to an extra-musical text by some 'logical' relationship, usually between note names and letters. The most common and best known examples result from composers using ciphered versions of their own or their friends' names as themes or motifs in their compositions. Much rarer is the use of music notation to encode messages for reasons of espionage or personal security called steganography. Because of the multitudinous ways in which notes and letters can be related, detecting hidden ciphers and proving accurate decipherment is difficult. History From the initial assignment by Western music theorists of letter names to notes in the 9th century it became possible to reverse the procedure and assign notes to the letters of names. However, this does not seem to have become a recognized technique until the Romantic period. From the mid-19th century it has become quite common. Spo ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Zodiac Killer
The Zodiac Killer is the pseudonym of an unidentified serial killer who operated in Northern California in the late 1960s. The case has been described as the most famous unsolved murder case in American history. It became a fixture of popular culture and inspired amateur detectives to attempt to solve it. The Zodiac murdered five known victims in the San Francisco Bay Area between December 1968 and October 1969, operating in rural, urban and suburban settings. He targeted young couples and a lone male cab driver. His known attacks took place in Benicia, Vallejo, unincorporated Napa County, and the city of San Francisco proper. Two of his wounded victims survived. The Zodiac claimed to have murdered 37 victims. He has been linked to several other cold cases, some in Southern California or outside the state. The Zodiac coined this name in a series of taunting letters and cards that he mailed to regional newspapers, in which he threatened killing sprees and bombings if they were ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
American Cryptogram Association
The American Cryptogram Association (ACA) is an American non-profit organization devoted to the hobby of cryptography, with an emphasis on types of codes, ciphers, and cryptograms that can be solved either with pencil and paper, or with computers, but not computer-only systems. History The ACA was formed on September 1, 1930. Initially the primary interest was in monoalphabetic substitution ciphers (also known as "single alphabet" or "Aristocrat" puzzles), but this has since extended to dozens of different systems, such as Playfair, autokey, transposition, and Vigenère ciphers. Since some of its members had belonged to the “ National Puzzlers' League”, some of the NPL terminology ("nom," "Krewe," etc.) is also used in the ACA. Publications and activities The association has a collection of books and artic ...[...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Frequency Analysis
In cryptanalysis, frequency analysis (also known as counting letters) is the study of the frequency of letters or groups of letters in a ciphertext. The method is used as an aid to breaking classical ciphers. Frequency analysis is based on the fact that, in any given stretch of written language, certain letters and combinations of letters occur with varying frequencies. Moreover, there is a characteristic distribution of letters that is roughly the same for almost all samples of that language. For instance, given a section of English language, , , and are the most common, while , , and are rare. Likewise, , , , and are the most common pairs of letters (termed '' bigrams'' or ''digraphs''), and , , , and are the most common repeats. The nonsense phrase " ETAOIN SHRDLU" represents the 12 most frequent letters in typical English language text. In some ciphers, such properties of the natural language plaintext are preserved in the ciphertext, and these patterns have the po ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
List Of Famous Ciphertexts
Some famous ciphertexts (or cryptograms), in chronological order by date, are: See also * Undeciphered writing systems (cleartext, natural-language writing of unknown meaning) External links * Elonka Dunin Elonka Dunin (; born December 29, 1958) is an American video game developer and cryptologist. Dunin worked at Simutronics Corp. in St. Louis, Missouri from 1990–2014, and in 2015 was Senior Producer at Black Gate Games in Nashville, Tenne ...'list of famous unsolved codes and ciphers {{DEFAULTSORT:Ciphertexts Cryptography lists and comparisons History of cryptography Undeciphered historical codes and ciphers ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Edgar Allan Poe
Edgar Allan Poe (; Edgar Poe; January 19, 1809 – October 7, 1849) was an American writer, poet, editor, and literary critic. Poe is best known for his poetry and short stories, particularly his tales of mystery and the macabre. He is widely regarded as a central figure of Romanticism in the United States, and of American literature. Poe was one of the country's earliest practitioners of the short story, and considered to be the inventor of the detective fiction genre, as well as a significant contributor to the emerging genre of science fiction. Poe is the first well-known American writer to earn a living through writing alone, resulting in a financially difficult life and career. Poe was born in Boston, the second child of actors David and Elizabeth "Eliza" Poe. His father abandoned the family in 1810, and when his mother died the following year, Poe was taken in by John and Frances Allan of Richmond, Virginia. They never formally adopted him, but he was with them ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Cryptogam
A cryptogam (scientific name Cryptogamae) is a plant (in the wide sense of the word) or a plant-like organism that reproduces by spores, without flowers or seeds. The name ''Cryptogamae'' () means "hidden reproduction", referring to the fact that no seed is produced, thus cryptogams represent the non-seed bearing plants. Other names, such as " thallophytes", "lower plants", and "spore plants" are also occasionally used. As a group, Cryptogamae are the opposite of the Phanerogamae () or Spermatophyta (), the seed plants. The best-known groups of cryptogams are algae, lichens, mosses, and ferns, but it also includes non-photosynthetic organisms traditionally classified as plants, such as fungi, slime molds, and bacteria. The classification is now deprecated in Linnaean taxonomy. At one time, the cryptogams were formally recognised as a group within the plant kingdom. In his system for classification of all known plants and animals, Carl Linnaeus (1707–1778) divided the plant ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Merfyn Frych Ap Gwriad
Merfyn Frych ('Merfyn the Freckled'; Old Welsh ''Mermin''), also known as Merfyn ap Gwriad ('Merfyn son of Gwriad') and Merfyn Camwri ('Merfyn the Oppressor'), was King of Gwynedd from around 825 to 844, the first of its kings known not to have descended from the male line of King Cunedda. Little is known of his reign, and his primary notability is as the father of Rhodri the Great and founder of his dynasty, which was sometimes called the Merfynion after him. Merfyn came to the throne in the aftermath of a bloody dynastic struggle between two rivals named Cynan and Hywel generally identified with the sons of Rhodri Molwynog. The ''Annales Cambriae'' say Merfyn died around 844, the same year in which a battle occurred at Cetyll, but it is unclear whether those were two unrelated events or he fell in battle. Political background The times leading up to Merfyn's reign were unsettled for both Gwynedd and neighbouring Powys. Both kingdoms were beset by internal dynastic strife, e ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Roger Bacon
Roger Bacon (; la, Rogerus or ', also '' Rogerus''; ), also known by the scholastic accolade ''Doctor Mirabilis'', was a medieval English philosopher and Franciscan friar who placed considerable emphasis on the study of nature through empiricism. In the early modern era, he was regarded as a wizard and particularly famed for the story of his mechanical or necromantic brazen head. He is sometimes credited (mainly since the 19th century) as one of the earliest European advocates of the modern scientific method, along with his teacher Robert Grosseteste. Bacon applied the empirical method of Ibn al-Haytham (Alhazen) to observations in texts attributed to Aristotle. Bacon discovered the importance of empirical testing when the results he obtained were different from those that would have been predicted by Aristotle. His linguistic work has been heralded for its early exposition of a universal grammar, and 21st-century re-evaluations emphasise that Bacon was essentially a ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Substitution Cipher
In cryptography, a substitution cipher is a method of encrypting in which units of plaintext are replaced with the ciphertext, in a defined manner, with the help of a key; the "units" may be single letters (the most common), pairs of letters, triplets of letters, mixtures of the above, and so forth. The receiver deciphers the text by performing the inverse substitution process to extract the original message. Substitution ciphers can be compared with transposition ciphers. In a transposition cipher, the units of the plaintext are rearranged in a different and usually quite complex order, but the units themselves are left unchanged. By contrast, in a substitution cipher, the units of the plaintext are retained in the same sequence in the ciphertext, but the units themselves are altered. There are a number of different types of substitution cipher. If the cipher operates on single letters, it is termed a simple substitution cipher; a cipher that operates on larger groups of letters ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Verbal Arithmetic
Verbal arithmetic, also known as alphametics, cryptarithmetic, cryptarithm or word addition, is a type of mathematical game consisting of a mathematical equation among unknown numbers, whose digits are represented by letters of the alphabet. The goal is to identify the value of each letter. The name can be extended to puzzles that use non-alphabetic symbols instead of letters. The equation is typically a basic operation of arithmetic, such as addition, multiplication, or division. The classic example, published in the July 1924 issue of Strand Magazine by Henry Dudeney, is: \begin & & \text & \text & \text & \text \\ + & & \text & \text & \text & \text \\ \hline = & \text & \text & \text & \text & \text \\ \end The solution to this puzzle is O = 0, M = 1, Y = 2, E = 5, N = 6, D = 7, R = 8, and S = 9. Traditionally, each letter should represent a different digit, and (as an ordinary arithmetic notation) the leading digit of a multi-digit number must not be zer ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
King Features Syndicate
King Features Syndicate, Inc. is a American content distribution and animation studio, consumer product licensing and print syndication company owned by Hearst Communications that distributes about 150 comic strips, newspaper columns, editorial cartoons, puzzles, and games to nearly 5,000 newspapers worldwide. King Features Syndicate also produces intellectual properties, develops new content and franchises, like ''The Cuphead Show!'', which it produced with Netflix, and licenses its classic characters and properties. King Features Syndicate is a unit of Hearst Holdings, Inc., which combines the Hearst Corporation's cable-network partnerships, television programming and distribution activities, and syndication companies. King Features' affiliate syndicates are North America Syndicate and Cowles Syndicate. History William Randolph Hearst's newspapers began syndicating material in 1895 after receiving requests from other newspapers. The first official Hearst syndicate was ca ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
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