Review of “The Six Unsolved Ciphers”…
…or, in all its prolixitous glory, “The Six Unsolved Ciphers: Inside the Mysterious Codes That Have Confounded the World’s Greatest Cryptographers“, by Richard Belfield (2007). It was previously...
View ArticleThe mystery of Bellaso’s ciphers…
A little while back, I asked Augusto Buonafalce about Renaissance cryptographer Giovan Battista Bellaso’s challenge ciphers, completely unaware that he seems to have published more articles on them...
View ArticleBellaso’s challenge ciphers (updated)…
After I recently mentioned Bellaso’s set of seven challenge ciphers from 1564 on this blog, Augusto Buonafalce very kindly emailed me with scans of Bellaso’s three challenge ciphers from 1555. I’ve now...
View ArticleBellaso’s ciphers, updated…
A huge thanks to the indefatigable Tony Gaffney who very kindly took the time recently to double-check my transcriptions (some of them derived from Augusto Buonafalce’s transcriptions) of Bellaso’s...
View Article450-year-old challenge cipher cracked!
In the 1564 printed edition of his cryptography manual, Giovan Battista Bellaso included seven challenge ciphers for his readers to break, along with a set of clues: these all remained unbroken and in...
View ArticleTwo more Renaissance challenge ciphers cracked!
Once upon a time (twenty years ago, back when I still had hair), I used to play for Hackney Chess Club in the London League: after most matches, the team would decamp to Brick Lane for a late night...
View Article4th Bellaso cipher toppled, Tony Gaffney strikes again!
That man Tony Gaffney has been at it again, shooting yet another cryptographic tin can down off Giovan Battista Bellaso’s fence: this time, it was Bellaso’s 1564 challenge cipher #7’s turn to fall....
View ArticleOnce again, two more Renaissance ciphers yield to Mr Gaffney…
By now I’m sure you’re all thoroughly sick of the way I heap superlatives and laurel wreaths onto Tony Gaffney’s hair-bestrewn head every time he cracks yet another of Bellaso’s ciphers… and now he’s...
View ArticleHelen Fouché Gaines’ challenge cipher…
To add to our list of challenge ciphers (Bellaso’s, d’Agapeyeff’s, Feynman’s, etc), here’s one I hadn’t seen before from Helen Fouché Gaines’ (1956) “Cryptanalysis: A Study of Ciphers and Their...
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