Original Code:
Zhoo grqh, brx'yh fudfnhg wklv frgh! Kdyh brx zrunhg rxw krz wklv phvvdjh kdv ehhq hqflskhuhg? Wkh ohwwhu 'd' zdv pdsshg wr 'g', 'e' wr 'h' hwf. Wklv lv fdoohg d Fdhvdu vkliw, zlwk d vkliw ri wkuhh ohwwhuv lq wklv fdvh. Zh dovr pdgh wklqjv d elw hdvlhu eb ohdylqj sxqfwxdwlrq dqg wkh vsdfhv ehwzhhq wkh zrugv lq. Krz glg brx ghflskhu wklv? Brx pdb kdyh wulhg orrnlqj iru uhshdwhg wkuhh ohwwhu zrugv vxfk dv 'wkh', ru frxqwhg krz pdqb ri hdfk ohwwhu dsshduhg lq wkh flskhuwhaw dqg jxhvvhg wkdw wkh prvw frpprq ohwwhu fruuhvsrqgv wr 'h'. Wklv vhfrqg phwkrg lv wkh edvlv ri d phwkrg fdoohg iuhtxhqfb dqdobvlv dqg lv yhub xvhixo iru prqrdoskdehwlf flskhuv. Li brx nqrz krz wr surjudp, brx fdq vdyh brxuvhoi d orw ri wlph eb zulwlqj vrph frgh wr gr lw iru brx! Grq'w zruub li brx grq'w wkrxjk, wkhuh duh orwv ri zdbv brx fdq gr lw. Wkh 'ilqg dqg uhsodfh' wrro lq d zrug surfhvvlqj surjudp fdq eh yhub xvhixo, mxvw pdnh vxuh brx grq'w fkdqjh djdlq wkh ohwwhuv brx'yh douhdgb uhsodfhg! Rqh zdb durxqg wklv lv wr wxuq wkh zkroh phvvdjh lqwr orzhu fdvh, dqg wkhq xvh fdslwdov iru wkh ghfusbwhg phvvdjh. Wkh qhaw phvvdjh zloo eh voljkwob kdughu, jrrg oxfn!
Deciphered Message:
Well done, you've cracked this code! Have you worked out how this message has been enciphered? The letter 'a' was mapped to 'd', 'b' to 'e' etc. This is called a Caesar shift, with a shift of three letters in this case. We also made things a bit easier by leaving punctuation and the spaces between the words in. How did you decipher this? You may have tried looking for repeated three letter words such as 'the', or counted how many of each letter appeared in the ciphertext and guessed that the most common letter corresponds to 'e'. This second method is the basis of a method called frequency analysis and is very useful for monoalphabetic ciphers. If you know how to program, you can save yourself a lot of time by writing some code to do it for you! Don't worry if you don't though, there are lots of ways you can do it. The 'find and replace' tool in a word processing program can be very useful, just make sure you don't change again the letters you've already replaced! One way around this is to turn the whole message into lower case, and then use capitals for the decrpyted message. The next message will be slightly harder, good luck!
The first thing that helped me was looking at the coded word "brx'yh". At first I thought this was "you're" but after working out a few more words by laying out two alphabets on top of eachother. I noticed a shift of three letters, checked it to see if I was right, and then filled out the rest of the alphabet.
With this new knowledge solving it was a piece of cake.
abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz <- Coded alphabet
XYZABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVW <- Deciphered alphabet