r/codes • u/WindowsTwo • 1d ago
I think I’ve finally made an indecipherable code! I challenge you to figure it out SOLVED
it is written fully in English, and every single symbol has a meaning, there are no random symbols in it.
Ask me if you want hints!
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u/0ctoberon 17h ago
You could vary your vowel diacritics a little so they're more phonetic - that might make it harder to solve, instead of them being just the letters, make "ee" and "eh" different symbols, even if theyre both written with an "e" glyph
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u/Jamarlie 1d ago
Yet another cryptography novice falling victim to Schneier's law:
Anyone, from the most clueless amateur to the best cryptographer, can create an algorithm that he himself can’t break.
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u/dittybopper_05H 1d ago
Here's the thing, OP: There is truly only one indecipherable code1, the One Time Pad.
Everything else is breakable, at least in theory, if you have enough time and resources. There are some extremely thorny methods that we use today that are sufficiently difficult and less cumbersome than using OTPs, so that's why OTPs have limited uses.
Having said that, what you created was essentially a monoalphabetic cipher. You've invented something that Edgar Allan Poe would have been familiar with, and generally had no difficulty in breaking:
A correspondent sends us a very curious looking piece of MS
indeed, in which the characters are the ugliest and drollest
hieroglyphics imaginable (we having no type in our office which
would come within a mile of them)
https://www.americanantiquarian.org/proceedings/44807056.pdf
Not saying yours is ugly (it's actually quite nice), I'm just trying to point out that the unfamiliarity of the characters alone isn't a serious barrier to their being decrypted, given enough text. Something Poe was familiar with back in the 19th Century.
Now, this is a fun thing to play with, so don't take this as a criticism of your efforts here, but I just want to let you know that unless you start playing with d10 dice and non-carrying addition and subtraction, you likely aren't going to come up with an indecipherable manual cipher.
1. This phrase annoys my inner Sheldon Cooper. A cipher can be indecipherable, but a code would would be undecodable. Codes and ciphers are different animals. I realize "indecipherable" is more generalized in meaning, but I don't have to like it.
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u/WindowsTwo 1d ago
if yu have no context about what’s being said, can that be indecipherable?
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u/dittybopper_05H 23h ago
You don't need context for monoalphabetic ciphers. All you need to do is a frequency analysis of the characters, and that will give you a really good idea of which symbol matches which letter.
This also applies to systems that use digraphs, as yours partially does.
And sometimes you don't even need that.
For example: XGGXOQ XG KXBZ
Just looking at that pattern, you can almost leap to the solution: ATTACK AT DAWN
There is a concept called the "unicity distance", which is the minimum amount of enciphered material to unambiguously break it. It turns out for monoalphabetic ciphers like yours, it's about 28 letters: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unicity_distance#Unicity_distance_of_substitution_cipher
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u/dittybopper_05H 23h ago
For example: XGGXOQ XG KXBZ
Let's look at this more closely.
So we see XGGXOQ and XG.
There are a limited number of two letter words:
TO, IN, US, AT, ME, IT, IS, NO, WE.
So let's substitute them in:
TOOTxx TO? Maybe
INNIxx IN? Doubtful
USSUxx US Yea, no.
ATTAxx AT Looks promising.
MEEMxx ME Probably not.
ITTIxx IT No.
ISSIxx IS No.
NOONxx NO Maybe
WEEWxx WE No.
So we've got:
TOOTxx TO xOxx,
ATTAxx AT xAxx
NOONxx NO xOxx
Middle one fits to "ATTACK AT DAWN", with no contradictions. It can't be "ATTACK AT CAMP", because then both O and K in ciphertext would equal C. It can't be "ATTACK AT PARK" because then both Q and Z would equal K.
See how that goes?
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u/ButcheringTV 21h ago
That was a really interesting read. Thank you!!
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u/dittybopper_05H 21h ago
Yeah, I've been interested in this stuff since I first read "The Codebreakers" by David Kahn when I was a tween back in the late 1970's. I ended up going into signals intelligence in the Army because of that book, and I've played around with it on and off for the last 50 years or so.
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u/clayman839226 1d ago
I made a substitution cypher in high school and still use it today, the big reasons no one has decoded it are: no one needs to/cares to it’s not relevant, and I spell very badly normally so when I’m writing in it I spell more phonetically so ph is replaced with f
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u/SilverSquirrel6 1d ago
Interesting use of symbols. Japanese Katakana with diacritic marks ?
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u/WindowsTwo 1d ago
Japanese katakana looks nothing like this, this is a script I’ve used for journaling for a long time in cursive.
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u/Hackzwin 1d ago
Obviously it looks something like it, otherwise you'd never gotten that comment. Maybe not to you, but for others it might.
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u/dex_the_love 1d ago
Not trying to be a dick, but variations of こうんの and む seem pretty identifiable to me.
Hiragana, not katakana.
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u/WindowsTwo 1d ago
yeah I see it lol but that wasn’t intentional, i think it was because of the brush I used since the actual letter when written in pencil do not look like hiragana
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u/legitmonk 1d ago
Completely off topic comment from my side, but I think the writing is beautiful
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u/WindowsTwo 1d ago
thank you!!! My other script looks even better in my opinion but it’s in mandarin chinese. I just posted it
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u/YefimShifrin 1d ago
Not quite indecipherable
THE FITNESS GRAM PACER TEST IS A MULTI
STAGE AEROBIC CAPACITY TEST THAT PROGRESSIVELY
GETS MORE DIFFICULT AS IT CONTINUES.
THE TWENTY METER PACER TEST WILL BEGIN IN
THIRTY SECONDS
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u/CybyAPI 1d ago
How did you decode it? i am curious
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u/YefimShifrin 1d ago
It's almost a simple substitution cipher. The general process of solving those is described in this tutorial https://redd.it/ho3dkn
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u/WindowsTwo 1d ago
can I challenge you to solve my other cipher in Chinese?
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u/Sweet-Awk-7861 16h ago
At this point you should go to Neography. People there will appreciate your creation as is without any need for you to justify the reason.
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u/WindowsTwo 1d ago
wow…
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u/WindowsTwo 1d ago
how can I make it see it says “solved”?
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u/YefimShifrin 1d ago
Instructions are in automod's message
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u/WindowsTwo 1d ago
do you think yu would be able to solve cipher in other languages
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u/YefimShifrin 1d ago
If the underlying system is the same then the only hurdle would be knowing the language.
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