Speaker 1: Have you ever stumbled upon something and felt like, I
Speaker 1: don't know, like it was whispering a secret, maybe an
Speaker 1: old journal up in the attic, or a weird symbol
Speaker 1: carved on some furniture at a flea market. Yea, even
Speaker 1: like a cryptic message on a tombstone.
Speaker 2: Absolutely, that feeling that urged to figure it out. It
Speaker 2: taps into something really fundamental, doesn't it our drive to understand,
Speaker 2: to solve puzzles. It's just satisfying.
Speaker 1: It really is seeking patterns, finding meaning where others just
Speaker 1: see well junk.
Speaker 2: Maybe exactly, And that's exactly.
Speaker 1: What we're diving into today, the world of code breaking.
Speaker 1: It's fascinating stuff. Is this whole deep dive actually came
Speaker 1: from one of you, a listener who's really intrigued by
Speaker 1: hidden messages just like us. Ah, excellent, And our main
Speaker 1: guide for this is going to be the book Code Breaking,
Speaker 1: A Practical Guide by Ilonka Dunnin and Close schmah.
Speaker 2: Oh, that's a great choice, really accessible dun In and Schmid.
Speaker 2: They know their stuff, but they make it engaging, not
Speaker 2: too dry.
Speaker 1: Totally agree. I'm here, you know, always curious about intriguing subjects.
Speaker 2: And I'm here happy to delve into the history and
Speaker 2: the actual practice of encryption. It's a field I find
Speaker 2: endlessly fascinating.
Speaker 1: Great, so between us, hopefully we can unravel some of
Speaker 1: this for you. Let's give it a shot now. Our
Speaker 1: goal today. Look, we're not going to turn you into
Speaker 1: a master code breaker in what the next.
Speaker 2: Hour slight juckle, probably.
Speaker 1: Not no, but we want to give you a really
Speaker 1: solid grasp of the basic ideas. You know, what a codes?
Speaker 1: What are ciphers? Look at different types?
Speaker 2: You share some really cool stories, success stories, failures sometimes too,
Speaker 2: just to give you a real taste of it exactly.
Speaker 1: We want you to walk away appreciating the cleverness involved
Speaker 1: both in making the codes and breaking them.
Speaker 2: And maybe just maybe inspire you to try a simple
Speaker 2: puzzle yourself. It can be quite addictive, definitely, and.
Speaker 1: We should mention the authors again, Elanka Dunn and Cheese,
Speaker 1: known for working on huge unsolved codes like cryptos.
Speaker 2: Right, the CIA sculpture one.
Speaker 1: Yeah and she pops up in Dan Brown's the Last Symbol.
Speaker 1: And Klaus Schmah He's written loads, very respective and apparently
Speaker 1: quite entertaining in his presentations.
Speaker 2: They're a good team for this kind of practical guide
Speaker 2: deep knowledge, but they make it approachable.
Speaker 1: Okay, let's get started. Then, At its most basic level,
Speaker 1: what is encryption? Why do we even bother hiding messages?
Speaker 2: Well, fundamentally, it's about secrecy, concealing the meaning of a
Speaker 2: message so only the intended recipient can actually understand it.
Speaker 1: Privacy security exactly.
Speaker 2: Keeping information safe from prying eyes, whether that's military secrets,
Speaker 2: diplomatic messages, or you know, just a private note.
Speaker 1: Got it now. The book draws a distinction right away
Speaker 1: between two main things, cipher's and codes. What's the difference there.
Speaker 2: Right, that's a key distinction. So think of it like this.
Speaker 2: Ciphers generally work on the letters of a message. You're
Speaker 2: substituting or rearranging individual letters according.
Speaker 1: To some rule, okay, letter by letter, yeah.
Speaker 2: Whereas codes they work on whole words or phrases. You
Speaker 2: have a pre agreed list like a dictionary, where specific
Speaker 2: words or phrases are replaced by a symbol or another.
Speaker 1: Word, like a secret dictionary.
Speaker 2: Almost exactly. And the book uses the analogy that codebooks
Speaker 2: can get really huge and unwieldy. If you want to
Speaker 2: cover lots of words, I.
Speaker 1: Can imagine you'd need a massive book for every possible
Speaker 1: thing you might want.
Speaker 2: To say precisely, Cipher's because they work on the letters.
Speaker 2: The building blocks are often more flexible, more compact. You
Speaker 2: just need the method.
Speaker 1: The key makes sense, and the book mainly focuses on
Speaker 1: Cypher's right.
Speaker 2: Yes, for the most part. Codes and related systems like
Speaker 2: nomenclators come up later, but the bulk is on cipher techniques.
Speaker 1: Okay, so Cipher's it is mostly. Now, imagine you find
Speaker 1: this jumbled mess of letters. Where do you even start?
Speaker 1: What's the first thing a codebreaker does well.
Speaker 2: One of the absolute fundamental techniques, and the book introduces
Speaker 2: it early is frequency analysis.
Speaker 1: Ah, I've heard of that.
Speaker 2: Counting letters basically, yes, you literally count how many times
Speaker 2: each different letter or symbol appears in the ciphertext the
Speaker 2: encrypted message.
Speaker 1: Why what does that tell you?
Speaker 2: Because languages have characteristic frequencies. In English, for example, E
Speaker 2: is by far the most common letter, then TAOI, N,
Speaker 2: and so on. So the idea is, even when the
Speaker 2: letters are scrambled or substituted, those underlying frequencies might still
Speaker 2: show through in the ciphertext. If one symbol appears way
Speaker 2: more often than others, it might be the encrypted E exactly.
Speaker 2: It's an educated guess a starting point. The book gives
Speaker 2: an example ciphertext to show just this. You look for
Speaker 2: patterns and apparent chaos.
Speaker 1: Okay, so frequency analysis is your foot in the door
Speaker 1: looking for that disguised E.
Speaker 2: Makes sense, It's a cornerstone. Doesn't always work, especially with
Speaker 2: more complex ciphers, but for many classical ones it's vital.
Speaker 1: Right now, the book dies into a whole bunch of
Speaker 1: different cipher types. This is where it gets really interesting.
Speaker 1: Let's start with substitution ciphers. What's the basic idea.
Speaker 2: Substitution is pretty much what it sounds like. You substitute
Speaker 2: each letter in your original message the plaintext, with a
Speaker 2: different letter or symbol based on a fixed system.
Speaker 1: And the simplest version is just swapping one letter for
Speaker 1: another consistently, like every A becomes a Q, every B
Speaker 1: becomes an X.
Speaker 2: Precisely, that's a simple substitution cipher, or sometimes called a
Speaker 2: mono alphabetic cipher one to one mapping. The book mentions
Speaker 2: a fun example from Klaus's blog Oh Yeah, a challenge
Speaker 2: cipher from twenty fifteen. Someone cracked it really quickly using
Speaker 2: frequency analysis and figuring out The keyword used to create
Speaker 2: the substitution alphabet was Gordon Young.
Speaker 1: Wow, so the keyword determine the whole swap. M cool.
Speaker 1: What about the Caesar cipher. That's the famous one, right
Speaker 1: you and I've heard of that.
Speaker 2: Yeah. The Caesar cipher is a type of simple substitution,
Speaker 2: but a very specific one. You just shift every letter
Speaker 2: a fixed number of places down the alphabet, like three places.
Speaker 1: So A becomes dB becomes.
Speaker 2: E exactly, wrap around at the end, so x becomes a,
Speaker 2: hy becomes b, z becomes c if it's a shift
Speaker 2: of three. Super simple. The book mentions Herbert Yardley, an
Speaker 2: early US codebreaker, use it for his first ciphergram.
Speaker 1: Huh. Even the pros started.
Speaker 2: Simple, they did. And there's that funny newspaper example do Lo,
Speaker 2: which decrypts with a shift, but the result is still
Speaker 2: partly gibberish.
Speaker 1: Right April third, if you work here, it doesn't always
Speaker 1: pay perfect sense exactly.
Speaker 2: And the mug the inscription that decrypts to National Security Agency.
Speaker 1: With the typo. That's brilliant. Even spies make.
Speaker 2: Typos, apparently, so shows it happened.
Speaker 1: Okay, so simple substitution Caesar shifts, but they can get trickier. Right,
Speaker 1: What about homophonic ciphers. It sounds complicated.
Speaker 2: They are a step up. Homophonic means same sound, but
Speaker 2: here it means multiple Ciphertext symbols can stand for the
Speaker 2: same plaintext letter.
Speaker 1: Wait, so E might be represented by a seven, or
Speaker 1: a percent or.
Speaker 2: A k precisely. Especially for common letters like E or T,
Speaker 2: you give them multiple substitutes. The goal is to flatten
Speaker 2: out those telltale frequency counts we just talked about.
Speaker 1: Ah, so it makes frequency analysis much harder, much harder.
Speaker 2: If E can be five different things, Just counting symbols
Speaker 2: doesn't tell you as much.
Speaker 1: So how do you break those? Well?
Speaker 2: Today computers are the best bet, using techniques like hill climbing,
Speaker 2: basically trying small changes to a possible key and seeing
Speaker 2: if the output looks more like English.
Speaker 1: Okay, computer power, but manually.
Speaker 2: The book gives a geocaching example. If you have spaces
Speaker 2: between words, that helps enormously. You can still do some
Speaker 2: frequency counts on the symbols. Guess short words like at
Speaker 2: or the he, look for common pairs like thh. It's
Speaker 2: painstaking work.
Speaker 1: Geocaching makes sense they'd use tricky codes, okay. Another one
Speaker 1: that sounds weird.
Speaker 2: The pig pen cipher chuckles slightly. Yeah, the name's descriptive.
Speaker 2: It's geometric cipher. You use grids like a tic tac
Speaker 2: toe board, maybe with dots in some sections. Each letter
Speaker 2: is replaced by the shape of the pen or grids
Speaker 2: segment it sits in.
Speaker 1: Okay, so shapes instead of letters, right.
Speaker 2: The book shows that tombstone from seventeen ninety six. It
Speaker 2: uses pigpen and reads dia. Another typo should be deck.
Speaker 1: They were having trouble with spelling back then. Even in code.
Speaker 2: Seems like it. And there's the pirate Olivier Lavaser's cryptogram
Speaker 2: from the seventeen thirties. Many think of his pig pen
Speaker 2: possibly cracked using frequency analysis on the symbols.
Speaker 1: Pirate treasure maps with geometric codes. Yeah, fantastic. Okay. Playfair
Speaker 1: cipher sounds more serious.
Speaker 2: It is. Playfair is a step up again. It's a
Speaker 2: digraph cipher, meaning it encrypts letters in pairs, not one
Speaker 2: by one. It uses a five x five grid, usually
Speaker 2: filled with a keyword first than the rest of the alphabet,
Speaker 2: combining I and J. Then there are rules based on
Speaker 2: whether the pair of letters are in the same row,
Speaker 2: same column or form a rectangle in the grid.
Speaker 1: Wow, Okay, that sounds much more involved rules and a
Speaker 1: grid based.
Speaker 2: On a keyword, it is much harder to break than
Speaker 2: simple substitution. The book mentions Robert Thelis's nineteen forty eight cryptogram.
Speaker 2: Modern breaks often involve computers trying lots of potential keywords
Speaker 2: to generate the grid. The book gives an example using
Speaker 2: black and beauty as keywords in the analysis.
Speaker 1: So computers crunching keywords, got it? And general digraph substitution
Speaker 1: is at just any pair for pair swap.
Speaker 2: Pretty much Playfair has its specific rid rules. General digraph
Speaker 2: substitution just means swapping pairs of letters for other pairs,
Speaker 2: but without those specific Playfair constraints, potentially many more possibilities.
Speaker 2: Klaus apparently set a challenge on his blog with one
Speaker 2: of those.
Speaker 1: Okay, So substitution covers a lot, from simple shifts to
Speaker 1: complex paired letters. But the book also talks about transposition ciphers.
Speaker 1: How are they different?
Speaker 2: Totally different approach. Substitution changes what the letters are. Transposition
Speaker 2: just changes.
Speaker 1: Their order, like shuffling a deck of cards.
Speaker 2: Exactly all the original letters are still there, just jumbled
Speaker 2: up according to a specific secret rule or pattern.
Speaker 1: So it's like a complex anagram. The book mentions complete
Speaker 1: columnar transposition. How's that work?
Speaker 2: Right? You take your message, write it out in a grid,
Speaker 2: say row by row. The number of columns is usually
Speaker 2: based on the length of a keyword. Okay, then you
Speaker 2: read the letters out column by column to get the ciphertext.
Speaker 2: But here's the key The order you read the columns
Speaker 2: in depends on the alphabetical order of the letters in
Speaker 2: your keyword.
Speaker 1: Ah, so the keyword tells you the shuffled column order. Clever.
Speaker 1: The book uses Swiss cheesecake as an example.
Speaker 2: Yeah. With the keyword table, it lays it out clearly.
Speaker 2: A is the first letter and table. So you read
Speaker 2: the A column first, then the B column and so on.
Speaker 1: Got it? And incomplete Columner transposition is that just when
Speaker 1: the grid isn't.
Speaker 2: Full exactly, if your message length doesn't perfectly divide by
Speaker 2: the keyword length, the last row won't be full. The
Speaker 2: book mentions an IRA cryptogram one hundred and thirteen letters.
Speaker 2: That's a prime number.
Speaker 1: Oh right, so it can't make a need rectangle except
Speaker 1: one by one thirteen or one thirteen by one.
Speaker 2: Correct. Which makes it trickier. Breaking these sometimes involves multiple anagramming,
Speaker 2: basically trying to rearrange the columns computationally until fragments of
Speaker 2: words start appearing.
Speaker 1: Prime numbers, making life difficult for code breakers. Yeah, and
Speaker 1: then there's double column to transposition. Do it twice pretty much?
Speaker 2: Yeah, You transpose it once with one keyword, then you
Speaker 2: take that jumbled text and transpose it again with a
Speaker 2: second keyword. Makes it much much harder. About the book
Speaker 2: mentions Marzie's report on ciphers using keywords from an Italian poem.
Speaker 2: They were tough nuts to crack until Arman Krauss figured
Speaker 2: something out.
Speaker 1: What was that?
Speaker 2: He realized the first and last blocks of letters in
Speaker 2: the messages weren't part of the main text, but were
Speaker 2: like indicators metadata. Once you remove those, the double transposition
Speaker 2: underneath became solvable.
Speaker 1: Wow. Sometimes the clue isn't even in the main message. Fascinating. Okay,
Speaker 1: one more transposition type. The turning grill sounds very physical.
Speaker 2: It is. It uses a stencil like a piece of
Speaker 2: card stock with holes cut in it. That's the grill.
Speaker 2: You lay it over a grid, write letters through the holes,
Speaker 2: then you turn the grill. Usually ninety degrees, write more
Speaker 2: letters in the newly exposed spots. Repeat for four.
Speaker 1: Turns, so the grill reveals different spots with each turn exactly.
Speaker 2: Then the cipher text is just reading the whole grid
Speaker 2: filled with letters. The book has a Christmas card example,
Speaker 2: and there's a great historical case in eighteenth century German.
Speaker 2: One solved manually because the person writing the message was
Speaker 2: a bit sloppy didn't place the letters precisely in the openings.
Speaker 1: Huh. Human error strikes again even with gadgets. Okay, substitution
Speaker 1: changes letters, transposition shovels them. What about poly alphabetic ciphers?
Speaker 2: Poly alphabetic this is where things get significantly more secure
Speaker 2: classically speeding. Instead of one substitution alphabet, you use multiple.
Speaker 1: Alphabets a multiple alphabets.
Speaker 2: Usually controlled by a qword. Each letter of the keyword
Speaker 2: tells you which substitution alphabet to use for the corresponding
Speaker 2: letter of the plaintext. So the same plaintext letter, say E,
Speaker 2: could be encrypted to X one time and then K
Speaker 2: the next time it appears, depending on the keyword letter.
Speaker 1: Okay, so that really messes up frequency analysis.
Speaker 2: Right absolutely, because E doesn't always encrypted the same thing.
Speaker 2: The most famous poly alphabetic cipher is the Visienner cipher.
Speaker 1: Wait, I heard of that one too.
Speaker 2: The book explains the basics. Ngth really depends on the
Speaker 2: keyword length. Longer more random keywords make it much stronger,
Speaker 2: and the ultimate version is the one time pad. If
Speaker 2: your keyword is truly random, never repeats, and is as
Speaker 2: long as the message itself, theoretically unbreakable the gold standard.
Speaker 1: Wow and cryptos. The first two parts use these polyalphabetic types.
Speaker 2: That's right, K one and K two. The solved sections
Speaker 2: of the cryptos sculpture were polyolphabetic. K one use the
Speaker 2: keyword cryptos. K two use abscissa real world high profile
Speaker 2: examples cryptos.
Speaker 1: Again, that thing is everywhere in code breaking. Okay, we've
Speaker 1: hit cipher's hard letters letters, letters, but you mentioned codes earlier.
Speaker 1: Working on words and nomenclators. What are they?
Speaker 2: Nomenclators were historically super important. Think of them as a
Speaker 2: hybrid system. Hybrid how so they combined a codebook part
Speaker 2: lists of common or important words, names, maybe places with
Speaker 2: their secret code symbols, with a cipher part.
Speaker 1: Oh so code for common stuff, cipher for everything.
Speaker 2: Else exactly, Maybe a simple substitution alphabet to spell out
Speaker 2: unusual words or names not in the code list, or
Speaker 2: just to add another layer. Before maybe the nineteenth century,
Speaker 2: if you found a secret diplomatic message, chances were high
Speaker 2: it was a nomenclator.
Speaker 1: The standard for a long time. Then why did they
Speaker 1: fall out of favor?
Speaker 2: Well, partly because more complex mathematical ciphers became better understood,
Speaker 2: and then, especially with cipher machines like Enigma machines could
Speaker 2: handle complex polyophabetic stuff way faster and more securely. Right
Speaker 2: technology advanced, plus nomenclators had weaknesses. If someone captured the codebook,
Speaker 2: you were sunk. Or if codebreakers found a crib a
Speaker 2: known piece of plaintext within the message that could help
Speaker 2: unravel it. Or sometimes they were just poorly designed. Any
Speaker 2: famous examples, The book mentions the one used by Mary,
Speaker 2: Queen of Scott's in the sixteenth century. Thomas Philippus is
Speaker 2: thought to have broken it, likely using some frequency analysis
Speaker 2: on the cipher parts and recognizing patterns in the coded way.
Speaker 1: History turning on a broken code. Okay, and dictionary codes
Speaker 1: and book ciphers are they related?
Speaker 2: Yeah, there's specific types of codes that use well. Book
Speaker 2: says the key Dictionary codes use a specific dictionary. The
Speaker 2: code might be like page one, twenty three, word five.
Speaker 1: You need the exact same dictionary edition.
Speaker 2: Absolutely crucial. MI eight, a US code breaking unit, broke
Speaker 2: one by figuring out which dictionary was being used. Book
Speaker 2: ciphers are similar, but often point to individual letters within
Speaker 2: a specific book, like page fifty, line ten, letter three.
Speaker 1: Again, gotta find the book.
Speaker 2: Exactly, Stephen Machis. Finding Nicholas Trist's Key Book to the
Speaker 2: British Nation was a huge breakthrough, and that Hindu conspiracy
Speaker 2: code cracked when a blog reader tracked down the right
Speaker 2: Noah Webster eighteen fifty seven dictionary. Amazing detective work.
Speaker 1: Incredible finding the right book in a million Okay, So
Speaker 1: that covers a lot of the classical ground. But things
Speaker 1: didn't stop there. What about beyond classical methods. Machines come first.
Speaker 2: Enigma Enigma is the big one.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Electro mechanical machines like Enigma were a massive leap the
Speaker 2: use rotors wires creating an incredibly complex, constantly changing polyolphabetic
Speaker 2: cipher for every single letter.
Speaker 1: The WWII German.
Speaker 2: Machine famously used by them, Yes, okay, and breaking it
Speaker 2: was a monumental effort. The polls did crucial early work
Speaker 2: than the French British at Bletchley Park touring and his team.
Speaker 1: The Imitation game story a.
Speaker 2: Big part of it. Yes, and Elizabeth Friedman and the
Speaker 2: US also worked on Enigma variants. The book mentions recent
Speaker 2: successes too, like the M four project breaking original Navy
Speaker 2: messages and ongoing work on others.
Speaker 1: Just amazing the sheer brain power involved. What about encrypting voice?
Speaker 2: That sounds different, very different technical challenge, especially early on
Speaker 2: with analog signals. Early voice scramblers weren't always that secure.
Speaker 1: So how did they manage well?
Speaker 2: One method the book touches on is code talking using
Speaker 2: obscure languages.
Speaker 1: Like the Navajo code talkers exactly.
Speaker 2: The most famous example using the Navajo language as the
Speaker 2: basis for a code that Japanese couldn't break in WWII.
Speaker 2: It's a human form of encryption, incredibly effective.
Speaker 1: Using language itself as the lock. Brilliant. And lastly here
Speaker 1: staganography hiding the message itself right.
Speaker 2: Staganography isn't about making the message unreadable, It's about hiding
Speaker 2: the fact that there even is a secret message.
Speaker 1: How invisible ink.
Speaker 2: That's a classic example. Yeah, sympathetic ink right between the lines,
Speaker 2: but it can be more subtle. The book mentions Elonka
Speaker 2: Dunnan finding a hidden message on the Friedman's tombstone, on.
Speaker 1: Their tombstone, William and Elizabeth Friedman.
Speaker 2: The codebreakers, the very same, a fitting secret tribute and
Speaker 2: way back. Trithemiis's Staganographia book from the fifteen hundreds looked
Speaker 2: like magic but actually contained hidden text revealed centuries later
Speaker 2: by frequency analysis.
Speaker 1: Hiding in plain sight. So machines voice hidden messages. But
Speaker 1: computers must have changed everything again.
Speaker 2: Right, oh, completely. The role of computers is immense techniques
Speaker 2: like hill climbing simulated a kneeling. These are out rhythms
Speaker 2: where the computer makes guesses, evaluates how good the result
Speaker 2: looks like, how much it resembles English, adjusts and tries again,
Speaker 2: thousands millions of times a second, So tasks.
Speaker 1: That were impossible manually become.
Speaker 2: Feasible, absolutely breaking complex classical ciphers like homophonic visionnaire, columber transposition,
Speaker 2: even making inroads into things like the Zodiac killer ciphers.
Speaker 2: Computers when in revolutionary they do the heavy.
Speaker 1: Lifting, the ultimate code breaking tool. Now. Yeah, but even
Speaker 1: with computers, some things remain mysteries. The book mentions unsolved mysteries,
Speaker 1: cryptos K four has to be top of the list.
Speaker 2: Still unsolved. Yes, K four, the last part of the
Speaker 2: crypto sculpture remains stubbornly unbroken, despite clees from the sculptor himself.
Speaker 2: It's probably the most famous active puzzle. The book mentions
Speaker 2: others the Beal ciphers supposedly leading to buried treasure, the
Speaker 2: Somerton Man cryptogram found in Australia, the Action Line cryptogram.
Speaker 2: Puzzles that continue to baffle and intrigue.
Speaker 1: It's kind of cool that some secrets hold out, isn't
Speaker 1: It shows it's not just computation exactly.
Speaker 2: It still takes insight, maybe luck the right approach. There's
Speaker 2: still an art to it alongside the science.
Speaker 1: Okay, this has been absolutely fascinating. Let's try and wrap up.
Speaker 1: We've gone from simple letter swaps to enigma machines and
Speaker 1: computer analysis. What are the big takeaways for someone listening.
Speaker 2: Well, I think understanding the why encryption is for secrecy
Speaker 2: and what the difference between cipher's letters and codes words.
Speaker 2: We've seen how methods evolved getting more.
Speaker 1: Complex, substitution transposition, polyalphabetic.
Speaker 2: Right and then the counter effort cryptanalysis using tools like
Speaker 2: frequency analysis, pattern finding, and now massive computing power. It's
Speaker 2: really a story of ingenuity on both sides logic, language, maths,
Speaker 2: and for.
Speaker 1: Me, the aha moment is just seeing how even really
Speaker 1: complex looking jumbles can have an underlying logic that, with
Speaker 1: persistence and the right technique, secrets can be unlocked. It's
Speaker 1: a testament to human cleverness, really.
Speaker 2: It absolutely is. And understanding these older methods it's not
Speaker 2: just history. It helps appreciate modern crypto, the stuff protecting
Speaker 2: our emails and bank details. The principles often build on
Speaker 2: these foundations.
Speaker 1: So if someone's interest is really spark by this, where
Speaker 1: should they go next? What resources does the book suggest?
Speaker 2: Oh plenty along ast Crypto's site, Klauschmez, cipher Brain blog,
Speaker 2: great Reads, the American Cryptogram Association for Puzzles. Mystery Twister
Speaker 2: is an online platform lots of places to learn more
Speaker 2: or even try solving some yourself.
Speaker 1: Great suggestions. Start simple, Maybe try a caesar or a
Speaker 1: simple substitution from a puzzle book.
Speaker 2: Definitely get a feel for it.
Speaker 1: Okay, fantastic. So as we finish this deep dive, maybe
Speaker 1: a final thought for everyone in our world so full
Speaker 1: of digital encryption algorithms, we barely understand. What can we
Speaker 1: still learn from these old school, hands on methods.
Speaker 2: That's a great question to ponder.
Speaker 1: And maybe are there still secrets hidden in plain sight,
Speaker 1: not necessarily encrypted, but just overlooked patterns, hidden meanings in
Speaker 1: the area every day world, waiting for someone to notice.
Speaker 2: I think that's very possible. The human element, the intuition,
Speaker 2: the observation, the aha moment that was so crucial in
Speaker 2: historical code breaking, maybe it's still just as important for
Speaker 2: uncovering all kinds of secrets, not just coded ones. Perhaps
Speaker 2: the biggest secrets aren't always locked behind digital walls.