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is opposite the H of the outer alphabet, so that for cipher purposes these letters are interchangeable. The F and M, the P, and Y, the W and D, in fact all the letters, may be transposed as shown by the two circles. The nine letters extracted by the biliteral cipher may thus be exchanged for nine others by the wheel cipher. The nine letters are considered as being on the inner circle of the wheel and are exchanged for the nine letters on the outer circle which are opposite the inner letters. By this process the T becomes A; the two E’s become two L’s; the B becomes I, the L becomes S; the P becomes W; the X becomes E; and the two E’s become two L’s. The result is ALLISWELL, which, broken up into words, reads: “All is well.”

Of course, by moving the inner disc of the wheel cipher, many different combinations in addition to the one given above can be made of the letters, but this is the only one which will produce sense, and the cryptogrammatist must keep on experimenting until he discovers a logical and intelligible message. He may then feel reasonably sure that he has deciphered the system. Lord Bacon involved the biliteral cipher in many different ways. There are probably a score of different systems used in the “Shakespeare” folio alone, some so intricate that they may forever baffle all attempts at their decipherment. In those susceptible of solution, sometimes the a‘s and b‘s have to be exchanged; at other times the concealed message is written backwards; again only every other letter is counted; and so on.

There are several other forms of the literal cipher in which letters are substituted for each other by a prearranged sequence. The simplest form is that in which two alphabets are written thus:

A B C D E F G H I K L M N
Z Y X W U T S R Q P O N M
O P Q R S T U W X Y Z
L K I H G F E D C B A

By substituting the letters of the lower alphabet for their equivalents in the upper one, a meaningless conglomeration results, the hidden message being decoded by reversing the process. There is also a form of the literal cipher in which the actual cryptogram is written in the body of the document, but unimportant words are inserted between important ones according to a prearranged order. The literal cipher also includes what are called acrostic signatures–that is, words written down the column by the use of the first letter of each line and also more complicated acrostics in which the important letters are scattered through entire paragraphs or chapters. The two accompanying alchemical cryptograms illustrate another form of the literal cipher involving the first letter of each word. Every cryptogram based upon the arrangement or combination of the letters of the alphabet is called a literal cipher.

2. The pictorial cipher. Any picture or drawing with other than its obvious meaning may be considered a pictorial cryptogram. Instances of pictorial cipher are frequently found in Egyptian symbolism and early religious art. The diagrams of alchemists and Hermetic philosophers are invariably pictorial ciphers. In addition to the simple pictorial cipher, there is a more technical form in which words or letters are concealed by the number of stones in a wall, by the spread of birds’ wings in flight, by ripples on the surface of water, or by the length and order of lines used in shading. Such cryptograms are not obvious, and must be decoded with the aid of an arbitrary measuring scale, the length of the lines determining the letter or word concealed. The shape and proportion of a building, the height of a tower, the number of bars in a window, the folds of a man’s garments–even the proportions or attitude of the human body–were used to conceal definite figures or characters which could be exchanged for letters or words by a person acquainted with the code.

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