SOLVING CIPHER SECRETS Edited by M. E. Ohaver TRY YOUR WITS ON THE GREAT CODES AND CRYPTOGRAMS IN WHICH MEN HAVE MASKED THEIR MESSAGES OF LIFE AND DEATH IS PROUD to add this new department to the notable achievements of FLYNN'S. No man can touch practical detective problems without soon coming in contact with some sort of code or cipher writing. Sometimes it is very simple, a mere trans• position of letters or words of the sort that every schoolboy would soon solve. Frequently, however, the cryptogram is blind and complicated beyond the under• standing of any except the most experienced and ingenious of experts. Here is one phase in which the fiction writer has still to learn from fact. The examples that Mr. Ohaver gives are of ciphers actually used. Many of them are in connection with great historic events. There are few dases in fiction showing greater ingenuity than is exhibited here. Codes play a larger part in the world to-day probably than ever before. The development of commerce, the growth of complex international relationships, the crossing of military and political wires, all have laid greater emphasis on the need of secret writing—of masking the meaning in innocent words that shall be clear only to the one for whom they are intended. The examples given here cover the world, historically and geographically. Here's a chance to try your wits. They have all been solved, and once the key is found the solution is comparatively simple in each case. Work it out and send your solution to the editor of the Cipher Department of FLYNN'S, New York. Perhaps you have a cipher of your own to suggest. The cipher editor will be glad to considier it. This department, with new ciphers to solve and solutions of the old ones, will ppear in FLYNN'S at frequent intervals. N selecting a cipher system cryptographic system ever used, but such a for the first article in our statement is rather broad. It is safer, and new department, probably more correct, to say that it is one of the first none could be more appro• of which we can find any record. priate than the Lacedee- Certain authorities on cryptography have monian Scytale, one of the credited the invention of the scytale to earliest known methods of secret writing. Archimedes. As a matter of history it is Some have claimed that this is the first definitely known to have been used by the 138 SOLVING CIPHER SECRETS 139 Spartans as a means of military communi• case this interval is 3. That is, if the groups cation at least four centuries B.C. be read off from left to right, taking every The old Greek biographer Plutarch de• third group, the message can be readily scribes the use of the scytale in his life of deciphered. Lysander. When the Spartan magistrates The scytale cipher is of the transposition sent an admiral or general on his way, they class. That is, it is a cipher in which the prepared two staffs of wood, called scytales, letters keep their original meanings, merely both of the same length and diameter. having their relative positions changed or They kept one themselves, and the other transposed. they gave to the person sent forth. To read a scytale cipher it is only neces• When they had occasion to communicate sary to find the interval. This may be done any secret or important matter, they wound by trying any letter group with several a narrow strip of white leather or parch• others until one is found with which it forms ment spirally around the staff, so that the a logical sequence. edges came exactly together, forming a Scholars of various times have burned smooth and continuous surface. Then they gallons of midnight oil in delving into the wrote what they desired lengthwise of the mysteries of the scytale, and have formed staff, after which the scroll was unrolled and their own ideas as to how it should be de• sent to its destination. ciphered. We append a few of these meth• The official receiving the message could ods. The learned Julius Caesar Scaliger in read nothing of the writing, because the the sixteenth century, and after him John words and letters were not connected, but Falconer, author of a book on ciphers pub• all broken up. Upon winding the scroll lished in 1685, proposed to join the edges about his own exactly similar staff, however, of the strip together in a serpentine revolu• all the parts were restored to their original tion, and by slipping the strip through the order, thus bringing the whole contents of fingers unite the portions of the divided the message to view. word, and thus find the correct circumfer- I -J P " f I ^ ° It Above is shown a drawing of a scytale ence to make a scytale by on which the mes• bearing the message: This is a very old sage might be read. method of secret writing. The illustration Philip Thicknesse, also author of a book also shows the scroll removed from the on cryptography in 1772, advised a much scytale. The message is broken up into more ready method, that of cutting the stij^ small groups of letters, which, if read off in in short pieces equal to the circumference order, stand as follows: of the staff, and then by joining the edges TH-OL-SEC-IS I-D M-RET-S A-ETH- of these strips together on a flat surface, WR- VE-OD -ITI-RY -OF-NG such as a table, the entire writing would In this cipher arrangement of the scytale be exposed at once. message, it will be seen that each group of Edgar Allan Poe suggested the use of a letters is separated from the group with cone of about six feet length, and of a cir• which it forms sequence in the original mes• cumference at the base equal to the length sage by an " interval " equal to the number of the parchment strips. By adjusting the of lines written on the scytale. In the above strip about the base of the cone with the 140 FLYNN'S edges together, and sliding the same gradu• darus lost his life in this battle, as you will ally toward the apex, a point would be discover in the cipher. reached where the proper connection be• AL-KIL-FOO-HEN-L I-LED-D.VV-CE,-S tween parts of words would be formed. L-.TH-E C-NOR-OST-E S-AN -STA-.MI- Having thus learned the circumference of OLD-NEI-Y LO-NDA-IER-THE-NGE- the staff, Poe advised the making of a RUS-S W-R G-R H- IS- ANT-ET-ERE. special scytale of this size, as did Scaliger The periods and commas are a part of and Falconer. the cifAer, but the dashes only mark the The scytale was, in its time, considered divisions between the groups, as illustrated absolutely secret. Messages are known to above. have been intercepted, but there is no in• stance on record when any were ever de• In the next installment of this department ciphered. So we will now give our readers we will offer for your entertainment an in• an opportunity to match their wits against genious cipher which saved the life of a this clever device of the ancients. prisoner during the administration of Wil• The following cipher is an English trans• liam Pitt as Premier of England about a lation of a genuine scytale message written hundred and fifty years ago. We will also over two thousand years ago. It was sent give the correct interpretation of this week's by the Spartans when they had met the scytale cipher. Don't fail to get a copy of Athenians with disastrous results near Czyi- the issue containing the new cipher and the cus in B.C. 410. The Spartan admiral Min- solution of this. THE HEATHEN CHINEE! OR ways that are dark and tricks Sometimes they cross the border in sealed F that are vain, the heathen Chinee is box cars. On one occasion, an alert immi• peculiar." So sang Bret Harte, many gration official smelled something while years ago. The Chinaman didn't under• passing a box car supposed to contain stand the game, but in his sleeves, " which barbed wire. It did contain barbed wire were long," were twenty-four packs of and also forty Chinese coolies. They were cards! arrested and taken to the nearest jail to John Chinaman, of the coolie class, be deported to China. From this jail they hasn't changed much. He still has ways were taken in regular prison car to San that are dark when he wishes to enter the Francisco and shipped as steerage passen• United States—ostensibly. But one of his gers on the first steamship back to their tricks is out of date and hereafter always native land. Uncle Sam paid their trans• will be along the international borderline portation to be rid of them. that runs between Mexico and the United Immigration officials made a secret inves• States. tigation south of the international boun• Almost any one can cross from Mexico dary line and learned that the Chinese into the United States between El Paso, coolies didn't want to get into the United Texas, and Yuma, California, without be• States to live—but to be caught and sent ing detected, for there are many miles of back to China, free of charge. boundary and only a few " line riders " for " The heathen Chinee" coolie after Uncle Sam.