Read Online Trifariam, The Lost Codex (2012) by Diego Rodriguez - Free Book Online
Authors: Diego Rodriguez
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to his room, picked up the book off the bedside table and returned to the bathroom to open it in front of the mirror. He was unable to suppress a cry of joy when he realized that he recognized the characters which appeared before him, although he still didn’t understand the meaning.
Maybe I could get something out of trying different combinations of letters, rearranging them in a certain order…, or by substituting some letters for others.
But every one of these procedures would involve a great deal of time that he didn’t have to spare right now. He remembered the grid which looked like a word search and which was drawn on one of the last pages of the book. He had had it clear right from the start that this was the Holy Grail as far as decipher it was concerned, and perhaps he could use it now. The page displayed the following array of letters:
This time, no sooner had he seen it than he knew what he had to do. “Oh my god! I’ve got it!”
James shouted so loudly and started laughing so hard that Mary got out of bed and burst into the bathroom, panicking. She thought that something had happened. “What’s the matter? Is something is wrong?”
“Come here! Look at the mirror! Do you know the alphabet it uses?”
Mary got so close that her nose bumped into the glass, hurting her a little. The woman’s face turned white as she saw how the characters, before indecipherable, were now revealing their true nature before the mirror. However, she still didn’t understand the words which were appearing. “James,” said Mary in a faltering and shaky voice. “Tell me that you understand what it says.”
The young man nodded. “The message is encrypted and the key to deciphering it lies in the grid which appears on the last page of the book. I studied the rows first of all and I came to the conclusion that each contains the twenty-three letters of the Latin alphabet, in their respective order and without repetition. If you think about it, the same thing happens with the columns. Suddenly, everything became clear. It is the famous Trithemius cipher which has given cryptanalysts headaches to this day.”
“The Trithemius cipher?”
“Yes. Trithemius was a German Benedictine monk who was famous for his books on cryptographic techniques disguised as an esoteric treatise. His most important technique, the so-called ‘Trithemius cipher’ or ‘tabula recta’, kept cryptanalysts busy for nearly half a millennium. The table is made by choosing an alphabet, such as Latin, and writing it along the top row. The second row is formed from the one above, but the first letter is removed and the others are all shifted one position to the left. Finally, you place the letter you removed at the end of them all and you follow the same procedure for the other row.”
James noticed that Mary wasn’t following him at all, so he gave her an example. “Say we wanted to encode a five-letter word, such as PAPER . The first letter would correspond to the one which occupies the position of the letter P , but on the alphabet in the first row. In this case, that would still be P . The second letter would correspond to the position of A but on the second row, in other words B , and so on. Eventually, the word PAPER would be encoded as ‘PBRHX’.”
“Impressive!”
“Definitely. We’re looking at a true cryptographic masterpiece. If you look carefully, you see that the author would have to have spent a lot of time writing the book, because not only are the characters back-to-front, but also encoded. Another feature which makes it impressive from an artistic point of view is that it is not only written in Latin, but also using a certain kind of script - Visigothic.”
Mary looked him in disbelief.
“Don’t get scared,” he laughed. “I know because a month ago, I had to supervise an exam for paleography professors. It consisted of translating an ancient text about the sale and exchange of monasteries and kings’ orders. The
Maybe I could get something out of trying different combinations of letters, rearranging them in a certain order…, or by substituting some letters for others.
But every one of these procedures would involve a great deal of time that he didn’t have to spare right now. He remembered the grid which looked like a word search and which was drawn on one of the last pages of the book. He had had it clear right from the start that this was the Holy Grail as far as decipher it was concerned, and perhaps he could use it now. The page displayed the following array of letters:
This time, no sooner had he seen it than he knew what he had to do. “Oh my god! I’ve got it!”
James shouted so loudly and started laughing so hard that Mary got out of bed and burst into the bathroom, panicking. She thought that something had happened. “What’s the matter? Is something is wrong?”
“Come here! Look at the mirror! Do you know the alphabet it uses?”
Mary got so close that her nose bumped into the glass, hurting her a little. The woman’s face turned white as she saw how the characters, before indecipherable, were now revealing their true nature before the mirror. However, she still didn’t understand the words which were appearing. “James,” said Mary in a faltering and shaky voice. “Tell me that you understand what it says.”
The young man nodded. “The message is encrypted and the key to deciphering it lies in the grid which appears on the last page of the book. I studied the rows first of all and I came to the conclusion that each contains the twenty-three letters of the Latin alphabet, in their respective order and without repetition. If you think about it, the same thing happens with the columns. Suddenly, everything became clear. It is the famous Trithemius cipher which has given cryptanalysts headaches to this day.”
“The Trithemius cipher?”
“Yes. Trithemius was a German Benedictine monk who was famous for his books on cryptographic techniques disguised as an esoteric treatise. His most important technique, the so-called ‘Trithemius cipher’ or ‘tabula recta’, kept cryptanalysts busy for nearly half a millennium. The table is made by choosing an alphabet, such as Latin, and writing it along the top row. The second row is formed from the one above, but the first letter is removed and the others are all shifted one position to the left. Finally, you place the letter you removed at the end of them all and you follow the same procedure for the other row.”
James noticed that Mary wasn’t following him at all, so he gave her an example. “Say we wanted to encode a five-letter word, such as PAPER . The first letter would correspond to the one which occupies the position of the letter P , but on the alphabet in the first row. In this case, that would still be P . The second letter would correspond to the position of A but on the second row, in other words B , and so on. Eventually, the word PAPER would be encoded as ‘PBRHX’.”
“Impressive!”
“Definitely. We’re looking at a true cryptographic masterpiece. If you look carefully, you see that the author would have to have spent a lot of time writing the book, because not only are the characters back-to-front, but also encoded. Another feature which makes it impressive from an artistic point of view is that it is not only written in Latin, but also using a certain kind of script - Visigothic.”
Mary looked him in disbelief.
“Don’t get scared,” he laughed. “I know because a month ago, I had to supervise an exam for paleography professors. It consisted of translating an ancient text about the sale and exchange of monasteries and kings’ orders. The
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