Encode Secrets with the Pigpen Cipher
History of the Pigpen Cipher
The Pigpen cipher is sometimes called the Freemasons cipher. This is because it was apparently used by a secret fraternity called the Freemasons in the 18th Century to keep all their records and secrets private from anyone who wasn’t part of their club.
The Pigpen cipher is a substitution cipher just like the Caesar cipher meaning that the secret message is made from substituting the letters from the original message with something else. Unlike the Caeser cipher, this cipher doesn’t substitute letters with other letters. It replaces them with symbols, pictures or drawings!
Encoding and Decoding with the Pigpen Cipher
Encoding a message with the Pigpen Cipher is super simple! As mentioned above, the Pigpen cipher is a geometric substitution cipher, which is just a fancy way of saying that we will be replacing our letters with images or symbols. This specific cipher uses the following symbols below to translate their secrets between the encoded message and decoded message.
How do these grids become our secret message? Let us show you by translating our secret message ‘girls code too‘. Check out how we encode this below (our new encoded message is in blue):
The shape around each letter becomes the symbol we use for our message.
To decrypt a message we use the exact same grid, this time by taking each symbol and finding the matching one on the grid. The letter in the middle was our original one!
Additional Work
1. Practice decryption
Try decrypting the message below:
2. Discuss whether this is a better or worse cipher than the Caesar Cipher
Is the Pigpen more secure than the Caesar Cipher? Or do you think people will find it easier to read your secret? Why do you think that?
3. Create your own geometric substitution cipher
Try to create your own cipher by assigning pictures or symbols to letters of the alphabet. We have created our very own Girls Code Too cipher below:
= ???
Share your new cipher with friends and family to pass each other messages!
