Ingenuity, Charm, and Mystery: The Greatest Codes in History

The history of codebreaking isn’t just filled with mathematics and ciphers. And neither is it populated only by spies in trenchcoats and trilby hats. It also involves a whole lot of ingenuity, charm, and surprise—and even a whole bunch of regular, non-spy folks, who just happen to have a thing for brainy puzzles (much like us here at Krakit Vancouver Escape Game!).

Below we look at some of the most fascinating codes in human history, whether they have been long solved or are still keeping us guessing.

Edward Elgar's Dorabella Cipher

The Enigma

The reason that the Enigma code from World War II—recently recounted in the movie The Imitation Game (2014)—is such a famous cipher is not because it is unbroken, but because it has been solved. And by no easy means. The amount of ingenuity required by Alan Turing and his Bletchley Park team to crack the code was astounding, with the very real goal of saving human lives and ending the war.

The Dorabella Cipher

The stakes of cracking the Dorabella Cipher are nowhere near as high as they were for the Enigma team. In fact, by comparison, the story of the Dorabella Cipher is positively charming.

English composer and code-enthusiastic Edward Elgar is the cryptographer behind this 87-character message, written for his friend Dora Penny (who he called Dorabella). Penny claimed never to have been able to solve the message, and its contents remain a mystery to this day. However, some codebreakers say the reason for this is because it’s not a message at all, but a coded composition. (Makes sense!)

Cicada 3301

Not strictly a code, the mystery of Cicada 3301 instead involves a set of puzzles that have been unleashed upon the public once per year since 2012 (or, almost once per year: there was no puzzle in 2015). According to Cicada 3301, the reason for the puzzles—which heavily feature cryptography and computer programming—is to recruit codebreakers from the general public. Recruit them for what, exactly, is not clear.

For more codebreaking hijinks, check out our posts on the Kryptos Sculpture at the CIA, the mysterious Voynich Manuscript, and the ciphers of the Zodiac Killer.

Or, even better, get your very own brain in code-cracking mode at one of our four escape rooms by booking here: http://bookeo.com/krakit

Crack Team Assemble! Corporate Team Building in Vancouver

With the huge number of hours we spend with our workmates, it makes sense that a lot of workplaces are putting tons of energy into creating good environments for their staff. Sure, we can’t all offer the perks of the Google campus, but there are plenty of ways of perking up a team that all businesses and workplaces can engage in.

Getting groups of co-workers to bond over an interactive activity is something we’re highly familiar with here at Krakit Escape Game. Below we share our top places for team building in Vancouver that are both fun and effective.

Krakit Escape Game

We are have no doubts about the fun factor at our four Vancouver escape games, and we’re also have no doubts about the bonds solving an escape room builds among team members. When you’ve only got 45 minutes to save you and your officemates from lobotomization, people quickly put on their cooperation hats.

Grouse Mountain Zipline

Heading out for a day on the mountain’s zipline is definitely high on the fun factor. But not only does it get everyone’s adrenaline pumping and allow workers to interact offsite, it also offers opportunity for any scaredy cats to step up to the plate and any hidden leaders to shine.

Sunshine Coast Rafting

We live in one of the most beautiful places on the planet, so why not take advantage of it and head out into nature on the Sunshine Coast. Nothing spells teamwork like trying to keep your boat afloat, right? There are plenty of companies that cater to groups, including training for any novices.

City Scavenger Hunt

If you’ve got a crack HR team, then perhaps a self-devised scavenger hunt is what the team-building doctor ordered. Splitting co-workers into small teams and then having them race to win is a great way to see how your company’s workers both cooperate and compete.

6Pack Archery Tag

Forget paintball or laser tag—times have moved on to archery tag. 6Pack Indoor Beach in Richmond will let you rent out their whole space, and then you just have to let organized chaos ensue as the entire office takes out their frustrations by launching foam-tipped arrows at one another.

The Voynich Manuscript: A 600-Year-Old Mystery

In the Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library at Yale University lives a mysterious and ancient book, catalogued as MS 408 and known more commonly as the Voynich Manuscript.

Though it has been around for six centuries, it remains one of the human world’s greatest mysteries. Written in an as-yet-unknown language (plus a few lines in Latin script), it contains 240 pages that include both text and illustrations. Many amateur and expert codebreakers have taken a stab at it—including some famous codebreakers from the First and Second World Wars—but it has yet to be cracked.

However, we do have some hints as to what the Voynich Manuscript contains.

The illustrations reveal the book is largely about the natural world, with images of plants and animals as well as astronomical and cosmological diagrams. Some pages even appear to contain recipes.

The manuscript’s name comes from one of its more recent owners, a Polish antiquarian book dealer by the name of Wilfrid Voynich, who acquired it in 1912 and who attempted to decipher its pages and determine its mysterious origins for the better part of a decade.

He had no better luck than anyone else who has attempted to crack it. The Voynich Manuscript has, in fact, been a mystery since the 16th century, with one of its early owners, Georg Baresch, describing it as a “Sphynx.”

Some think the manuscript is a complete fake, and that Voynich created it himself to guarantee himself (or at least his name) a spot in history. As a rare book dealer, Voynich would’ve had the knowledge and means to fake such a document, wouldn’t he?

However, thanks to advances in science, this possibility has been all but eliminated, since the carbon dating shows the materials to be from between 1404 and 1438 CE.

Some think the book is not in an unknown language at all, but is actually written in cipher, a code meant to obscure the book’s contents. Perhaps it contains alchemical recipes that the author wanted to keep secret? However, other experts suggest the writing doesn’t appear be coded at all, as it flows smoothly and there are no corrections.

Whatever the case may be, we know one thing for certain: we don’t know much. Whether in an unknown language or a complicated cipher, the process of determining the key to the Voynich Manuscript is ultimately the same.

However, 600 years on, it is a code we still have yet to crack.

If you, like us at Krakit Vancouver Escape Room, love a good old-fashioned mystery, then book a game in one of four themed escape game here: http://bookeo.com/krakit.

Tips for Solving Escape Room Puzzles

Whether it’s your very first time or your sixth visit, the moment the timer starts to tick down on an escape room is an exhilarating feeling. You’ve got 45 minutes to solve a series of puzzles set up to tantalize your brain—and maybe the future of the human race or the safety of yours and your friends’ brains is on the line.

It’s easy to get off to an energized start, with everyone pumped and ready to outsmart the escape room designer! But sometimes your team can hit a lull. That next clue or puzzle just isn’t materializing—and you start to feel at a loss.

You can always ask for a hint (more often than not, one is needed!), but what if you’ve run out?

If you find yourself in that situation next time you’re playing one of Krakit’s four Vancouver escape rooms, just take into consideration some of the tips below.

1. Scour your environment for hints

This is the most basic step when it comes to an escape game. Not just a Sudoku puzzle on a sheet of paper or a Rubik’s Cube you can hold in your hand, the entire room is a piece of the puzzle.

Remember that even if an element isn’t an actual clue, it still might be subtlety pointing you in the right direction. It’s easy to focus intently on the details and miss the big picture. So slop, slow down, and take another scan of the room, looking for larger patterns and anomalies in those patterns.

2. Gather all of the clues in one spot

Whether you do this physically or on a piece of paper, keeping all of the clues you find in one spot is helpful. Even if you don’t know how an element fits just quite yet, by having everything side by side, you’ll be able to piece it together when the time comes.

Plus, when you’re playing on a larger team, you want to make sure everyone has a chance to investigate each clue, so that no one is missing out on a vital element.

3. Take a second look

Maybe you found one of the later clues very early on in your game, and you didn’t even realize it. In the hustle and bustle, it can be easy to forget about such clues. And after just a few more minutes of gameplay, you may view that original clue entirely differently. Don’t forget to periodically turn your attention back to unsolved clues, reshuffle and review them, and see if they are now fitting differently into the puzzle narrative.