Cryptograms.

New Zealand Tablet, Volume XXX, Issue 16, 17 April 1902, Page 18

Cryptograms.

There are few ciphers so ' refractory,' to use a mining term that they will not yield to the efforts of the cryptologist to solve them, and yet a good many people still use them in the 'agony column of the newspaper, in the belief that their communications are hidden from prying eyes. If they only knew that inquirers of even ordinary intelligence can penetrate the mystery they suppose so deeply hidden, they would probably feel slightly uncomfortable. For example, a writer in a contemporary has amused himself by deciphering the following message, which appeared on a recent Saturday in the Melbourne Argus :—: —

' Osmy sdse ' dpyx dvap ; ' Pslqdse,' dvll oce ; ksmy rlyxcyc, Will write next week.

Kgrpdsccvyw. Love. To the uninitiated no doubt this looks very formidable, but in reality it is a cipher of the simplest kind, consisting merely in a mutual exchange of function between one letter of the alphabet and another, as c for r, and r for c, q for f , and f for q, and so on. Apparently the key to the cipher was arbitrarily fixed, but nevertheless it is quite a common method to employ a cipher in which each letter is represented by another at a given distance from it in the alpha. bet. Thus if two is the interval fixed on, a would be represented by c and so on. In the foregoing example the solution is as follows :

Take away when wish ; ' halfway,' will try ; make clearer Will write next week. Much worried. Love.

There is nothing very serious in it when solved. It is evidently an answer to another message, and might as well have been written in ordinary language. Some people, however, love to make mysteries of ordinary transactions. It will be observed that the writer has made two errors, for which we suppose we must charitably blame the printer. ' Make clearer ' reads ' make clenrer,' and ' much worried ' reads ' much warried.' As our contemporary says :— lf ifc is absolutely necessary to confide an important secret to the advertising columns of the papers, the best thing to do is to make it look as if it were not in cipher. If you can shun the ' agony column ' and make your communication seem to be a subscription list for a football club presentation, or a testimonial to the virtues of Somebody's Soap as a combined clothes washer, hair dye, and baking powder, you may by that device possibly evade the curiosity of the inquisitive expert. If you can't do that, your next best plan is either to say your say in plain English in the ' Government Gazette,' or else to leave it unsaid, which is perhaps the safest plan of all.