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Crack the Vigenère note a courier left on the ferry
A medium Vigenère cipher. One courier note, one eight-letter keyword you have to work out from a clue, and a plain instruction underneath.
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Ciphers desk
Cipher sets the puzzles on the Ciphers page, with 47 so far. They range from classic codes like Playfair, Vigenère and Pigpen to logic puzzles, word searches, mini crosswords and quick quizzes, and many are themed on the news, from Starship's chopsticks to Cold War spies. The answers sit at the end of each puzzle, held back until you want them.
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Seven quick questions on spies, satellites and Australia
A medium quick-fire quiz with seven questions on Australian intelligence, spy satellites and computing, from Pine Gap to CSIRAC.
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Entry exam on the night desk
Five locks at the raised bar: tradecraft logic, a crossword, a find-a-word, Playfair, and a Cardano grille. Answers folded. They stay on the paper.
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Tumblers on gold
Four short locks for Wednesday on The Gold Standard. ROT13, a two-word cross, Morse, and a hex dump.
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Four new locks
A rail fence, a tiny cross, Morse, and A-is-1. A fresh set.
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Four for the first night
A cryptogram, a mini crossword, a letter matrix, and a hex dump. None of them long.
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Fraction on the pad
Medium–hard. ADFGX. Five-by-five fractionated Morse-style grid, then the pairs as letters A D F G X.
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Nihilist on the rail
Hard. Nihilist: Polybius numbers plus a repeating key. Key RAIL. I/J share.
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Porta, star key
Medium. Porta cipher. Keyword STAR. Reciprocal alphabets, so encode equals decode.
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Running key, Standard
Hard. Running-key Vigenère. The key is THESTANDARD, letters only, no spaces in the key stream.
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Trifid, good news
Hard. Trifid. 27-character alphabet A–Z plus a full stop, period 5.