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