The rails of a split-rail fence are the long pieces that run parallel to the ground and the posts run straight up and down. Have your child follow these instructions to master the Rail Fence Cipher. In the Rail Fence Cipher, your child uses a format that resembles an old-fashioned split rail fence to encode and decode his message. After decoding the letters, the solver then has to rearrange the deciphered letters back into words – making it a second puzzle to solve. Writing the letters in small, equally-sized groups will make it impossible to tell where each word begins and ends. If the person looking at his encoded message sees the same word in several places, she might be able to figure out that it means "the" or "and" or another common word. Make your child's cipher even more difficult to solve by having him change the spacing of the letters. Flip the entire cardboard-and-puzzle sandwich over to reveal the message on the back! When you're finished, cover the whole thing with another flat piece. To flip it over without losing pieces, assemble the puzzle on top of something flat and easy to move, like a piece of cardboard. But it then has to be flipped over to see, and solve, the encrypted message. Hint: Assembling a puzzle picture-side up is much easier than assembling it message-side up. Why not make your child's cipher even more secretive by writing it on the pieces of a real jigsaw puzzle? Whoever solves it has to assemble the puzzle to see the entire encrypted message and then dig into solving it. When your child solves a cipher, he is solving a kind of puzzle. This can be confusing at first! It takes practice to be a fast decoder.
#HOW TO ENCODE A MESSAGE CODE#
Find it in the bottom row of your code sheet, then find the letter it corresponds to in the top row of your code sheet and write it above the encoded letter. Look at the first letter in the coded message. To decode a message, you do the process in reverse. In this example the first letter is "I," and the one below it is "B." Continue encoding the rest of the letters in the message. Then look for the letter on the line in the bottom row of your code and write it on a new piece of paper. Now you're ready to encode it! Look at the first letter in your message, and find it in the top row of your code sheet. Decide what your message is going to say and write it on a piece of paper. Using different colors for the regular and "rotated" alphabet can help you remember which is which.
Hint: Drawing vertical lines between each letter pair can help you see which letters are paired together. When you get to "Z," go to the beginning of the alphabet line above this one and continue filling in letters until you've rewritten the entire alphabet.
Under your first line, starting at the letter you "rotated" to, rewrite the alphabet. Count this many letters into the alphabet. Choose a number to be your "rotation" amount. Have your child follow these easy steps to use the Caesar Cipher. Every letter in your child's message is replaced with the letter that comes a certain number of places later in the alphabet. Will he write his message on normal paper or across pieces of a puzzle? Is his message going to be put in a normal envelope and mailed or does it need to fit inside a tiny secret compartment?Īlso known as the shift cipher, the Caesar Cipher is one of the simplest and most widely known encryption techniques. For example, writing with a big black marker is not as secretive as invisible ink. When your child is gathering his tools and materials, ask him to think about how secretive he wants his message to be. Encourage your child to become a cipher with these steps and materials.
#HOW TO ENCODE A MESSAGE SERIES#
"Ciphers" are ways of encoding and decoding information that use a series of very precise instructions.
#HOW TO ENCODE A MESSAGE HOW TO#
Cryptography is the name for encoding and decoding information – that is, changing it somehow, to prevent others from reading it, and figuring out how to change it back into a message you can understand. Whether your child is a spy-in-training - trying to keep his or her journal from falling into the wrong hands, or wanting to keep a surprise a surprise - cryptography is a useful skill to have.
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