Part of a trail — built to be solved, not to stump you. The reward is a scene.

The first sign was between the places. The second was the shape of an absence. The third is a weight.

Keyed Vigenère. The key is a single word: the word the second sign ends on. (Those who solved the second already hold it.)

TIWHB YWESC RRNXW IWVRV LEGDS BTAAT OLBNI AOVJR NXTIW THNPO GSVBQ QTISX JCWNP LXUGV EOGGE CGKOG LBNPO XKSHP HOODC UKWHB FHFJI AWAIE QZESF SGJMN HLLRV LISVW VIRIT SARKK HULLR GCEDS RAQXF JFH

158 letters. Standard tabula recta. English plaintext.

Previous sign → [INCOLLA QUI IL LINK DEL TUO POST N.2 SU r/ciphers]

i've been messing around with classical cryptography and ended up making a two-page puzzle called nachtlorn.

i initially made it for some friends, then tried throwing it at a few AI models, including local qwen models. none of them managed to recover the intended answer. some picked up on interesting patterns, though whether those actually led anywhere is another question.

i'm curious how people here would approach it, and whether the construction holds up to someone who actually knows their cryptanalysis.

a few things worth mentioning:

• it's a reversible cipher, not a hash.
• underlying plaintext is in english.
• there's a definite answer, although i'd consider an explanation of how you recovered it more important than simply guessing the right word.
• formatting is intentional.

i'm deliberately leaving out the mechanism for now. if people get stuck, i'll add progressively more revealing hints in spoilertext, so anyone who wants to attempt it blind still can.

i'd also appreciate criticism of the design itself. particularly whether it's genuinely difficult, unnecessarily convoluted, or simply missing information a solver would reasonably need.

i also have an exact TXT transcription, including the original spacing and indentation, if anyone wants to work with the ciphertext programmatically. just ask and i'll drop it in the comments.

code, external references, and collaborative attempts are all welcome.

please spoilertext any potential solutions.

Jack.B

Here is the cipher typed out:

VSWIW PGT HVS DCT WYLUGCW JBWZ IWPI OVSK HMTHTQFYJ AWZY

IH EGZPMKE ATS WNENA CB GIHXUSM HPGPW IHWY BWTL NF NBUN

VJAVWBZLZ VD GDRZ GPMQFMRK OH WRPQC CLYF MFBZMUMTG AYHNFS

135 125

For context, this is a favicon for my website, from far off it looks like a B and kind of like a D. Inside the image is a hidden message, and i want to see if anyone can actually figure it out, its very easy.

5670646F6F20756C73736F68207772207A647570207873206272787520697272672028776B7568682920474554204F4E204D592057415645204C454E475448
(the answer, requires some research but will become a number)

[Challenge] Can you crack this keyed 6×6 Polybius cipher?

I've encrypted a short English sentence using a keyed 6×6 Polybius square. Can you recover the original plaintext without any hints?

Ciphertext

q 9fo zrhv tx8

How it works

The square contains all 26 English letters (A–Z) and the 10 digits (0–9).

1. I constructed a keyed 6×6 square using a secret keyword. The keyword determines the arrangement of the symbols.
2. I encrypted each plaintext character by finding its row and column in the keyed square.
3. Instead of keeping the coordinates as coordinate pairs, I mapped each pair back to the character occupying the same position in the standard square.
4. I preserved the original spaces.

The standard square uses the symbols in sequential order, filled row by row:

A B C D E F
G H I J K L
M N O P Q R
S T U V W X
Y Z 0 1 2 3
4 5 6 7 8 9

There is no transposition step involved.

Your challenge

• Recover the original English sentence.
• If possible, explain how you derived it.

I'm interested in how far you can get using cryptanalysis alone, without hints from me.

Good luck!

P.D.: this should be unsolvable, if it wasn't for the spaces, idk

The first sign was between the places. The second isn't a line — it's a small story. Solve it and you get a moment, not a motto.

Keyed Vigenère. The key is a single word: what the bell leaves behind.

SBOYF MXZMM IYNVS VRSAE ISVOW GQTHM OXBQW GWYSA VLWZZ SSUXZ MMSLJ ISZOX UGWAT PRPGM LTPJG VLWAP GBPHK QRRJC WFWEX UGWGC YHOWX LPPWU CTWWQ MGUET APRPG

125 letters. Standard tabula recta. The third sign follows this one.

First sign → https://www.reddit.com/r/codes/s/3KpkjcXo8N

The Sator Square doesn't change when you transpose it — I think it's a working cipher. Verifiable demo inside

I reverse-engineered a mechanism out of the Sator Square's structure, and I want people to stress-test it.

The square (SATOR / AREPO / TENET / OPERA / ROTAS) is invariant under transposition: swap its rows and columns and you get the identical square. My claim: the square embodies that operation, and the operation is a transposition cipher.

- Encrypt: write a 25-letter text across the rows of a 5×5 grid, read the ciphertext out down the columns.

- Decrypt: write the ciphertext down the columns, read the plaintext across the rows.

Demonstration — the opening of Genesis 1:3 in the Latin Vulgate, first 25 letters, spaces removed:

DIXITQUEDEUSFIATLUXETFACT

Written across the rows, read down the columns, the ciphertext is:

DQUTTIUSLFXEFUAIDIXCTEAET

Run it backward and the verse comes back letter-for-letter. No substitutions, nothing added, nothing left over. You can verify the whole thing by hand in two minutes — please do.

Full write-up with the grids and an interactive version you can run yourself:

https://muse.ai/s/the-jessim-theory-xnxm6xnxyxapinth/uRqAXorK715J9-J90a-OJOY62xngl91oMNn8zVjv_mQ

What I'm claiming: the mechanism is real and reproducible. What I'm not claiming: that this proves anyone in antiquity actually used it — that would need historical evidence I don't have.

Two questions for this sub:

1. Has anyone seen this specific formulation before — the square as the fixed point of the transpose, used as a cipher for outside texts? I know the Pater Noster anagram literature; this is a different operation.

2. Where does the mechanism break? Edge cases, longer texts, chaining grids — push on it.

The claim statement and paper were timestamped (OpenTimestamps, Bitcoin-anchored) on October 27, 2026, before posting this.

— Jessica J. Trofholz

Thank you King David, 16:33 😎 Thank you Samara Morgan, 96:01 ☝️🧐

I'm at a computing event called SEMAC, and we have to decrypt this string. The decrypted result is 13 characters long and can contain letters, digits from 0 to 9, and superscript digits from 1 to 9, such as ² and ³.

We have a hint: "The answer is found by zigzagging."

Additionally, there are two decryption stages. This is the first one, called "Partial Stage 1." After this, there will be another stage, which I believe will come with a different hint.

So far, we've tried several Caesar cipher variations, alternating shifts of -4 and -3, +4 and +3, and -4 and +3 between even and odd positions. All of them failed.

We have a limited number of attempts.

Hey guys. I've been working on a new way to permute numbers to achieve cryptographically secure random numbers.

I've called it MARX because it basically adds Multiplication to the ARX scheme.

I have run some statistical analysis and it's just too perfect. it's much stronger (in statistical terms and entropy diffusion) than ChaCha. but I know it needs way too much cryptanalysis before we can actually use it.

So I'm very grateful if anyone wants to help me with this, or test and study it by themselves.

You can visit my implementation (in Golang) here:

GitHub page - Twister

Good day, ive been working on a cipher faster than RC4 and ChaCha. I think you'll find the design original.

Substitution Permutation Iterative Key Encryption

Open for discussion.

https://github.com/utepshaadm/SPIKE

So for the new cipher it’s like if nihilist k1 aristocrat and Caesar had a baby I know this isn’t r/scioly , but any tips on how to do it faster

​

Hello everyone I just wanted to share this simple cipher I made which I find really cool, but it's extremely easy to solve if anyone wants to give it a try. 🙃

□rxxi!ox2

arxi2!7103

xx34x2/a4

7axzxrx22

Hope you guys enjoy it as much as I do!

​

I was given this code and passcode by a friend, along with some hints. The answer may be in English, Hindi or Bengali. The sender can't give more hints right now.

CODE (labelled "code statement"):

BGUJP-6JTHZ-6SVWE-5EIG7-WLJZH-5SSG2-GRERJ-4HY

PASSCODE:

77G2-4TO3-HYOO-Y4EE

HINTS (in the order given):

1. no. of letters

2. python

3. coding

4. arrangements

5. 10 layers

WHAT I'VE ALREADY TRIED (no readable output):

\- Code uses only the Base32 alphabet (A-Z, 2-7) but is 38 chars, which is not a valid Base32 length

\- Passcode is valid Base32 and decodes to 10 raw bytes (ff cd ae 4d db 3e 1c ec 70 84), so it looks like a key

\- Base32 / Base64 / hex / Base85 / zlib / ROT13 / reverse chains up to 10 layers

\- XOR, RC4, add/subtract and Vigenere-style shifts using the passcode (as text, decoded bytes, and MD5/SHA hashes)

\- Mod-32 Vigenere with 0-32 stacked layers, forwards and backwards

\- Single-character insert/delete and look-alike swaps (I/L, W/VV)

Any ideas for what scheme this could be? Thanks!

ao3x□yb/!y3

If you give it a try I greatly appreciate you. :)

Have fun!

The translation is:

Jatha tambhatthu mahlapar. Nabhagathaha pralajam jug. Ekathara krijathwam dwiip. Akhantu shilvarkatha shilvarkatha. Rahasjamaji pradipa. Prachin drishtjartham samjukta. Naacal bhasajam likhita. Srishti sanghatanam prarambh mahan arambha shakti labh. Shilvarkatha kanma jatra. Deva asura sangram jug.

Anant kalajug vrindavan. Shilvar moola prakatja. Samaj samarpit mahatmja. Samarthjam pakashana gati. Shilvar moola divja prakasha. Dhatu rakatam gunasamjos. Prapti labh. Samjak sujog jathartha shilvarkatha. Arohanam bhaumik sthiti. Vimuktah loka samjuktah. Sarvatra prakatja shakti.

Srishti sanghatanam rachana. Granth. Naacal bhasajam likhita. Rakbtam

Hello everyone!

I've recently been examining the so-called Naacal script featured in the Necronomicon Black Letter Edition, which is presented on the Miskatonic Education website.

I found a page containing text written in unusual, cuneiform-like symbols. The website provides a symbol-to-letter alphabet, so I used it to transliterate several pages by hand, symbol by symbol.

The resulting text contains words such as Shilvarkatha, Prakatja, Srishti, Sadhana, and Naacal bhasajam likhita. Some terms appear repeatedly, and certain phrases recur almost identically across the passages I transcribed.

What caught my attention was not just the visual appearance of the script, but the apparent repetition and structure of the resulting text.

This made me think of the Voynich Manuscript, which also exhibits recurring words, patterns in character combinations, and other statistical regularities.

To be clear, I am not claiming that the Naacal script is ancient, that the text is a genuine historical language, or that it has any historical connection to the Voynich Manuscript. I understand that the Necronomicon material is associated with the fictional universe of H. P. Lovecraft.

However, I would like to understand whether the structure itself is worth investigating.

I'd particularly appreciate opinions on these questions:

Does the text resemble a constructed language, a substitution-based encoding, or something designed primarily to imitate an ancient script?

Could the repeated words and phrases indicate consistent internal rules, or are they more likely to be recurring formulas?

What statistical tests would be useful for comparing its structure with the Voynich Manuscript?

Are there any known examples of fictional scripts that exhibit similarly repetitive linguistic patterns?

I have manually transliterated several passages and can share more of the text, along with photographs of the original pages, if anyone would like to examine them.

I am interested in hearing your opinions. and I'm perfectly open to the possibility that the patterns have a straightforward explanation.

Thanks!

A small two-layer cipher. Part 1 hands you the key to Part 2.

Part 1 — classic letter↔number (A=1, B=2 … Z=26). Decode it to a single word:

19 20 15 14 5

Part 2 — Vigenère, using the word from Part 1 as its key:

AIOFW WWHUV GNUUL WKS

What does it say?

I made this for a fan group. Figured someone here might have a little fun with it.

edit: Original post

Dear Fellow Gen Con Attendees,

We know we said we weren't going to post anything until a few months before next year's Gen Con. But after some discussion, we've realized that not everyone likes our usual offerings. IYKYK

So we want to pilot a new substitute item, though we aren't sure anyone will actually like it.

Since we can't offer you FREE TERRIBLE ADVICE in person, and our family and friends are sick of hearing it, we offer a substitution: a ratiocination, of the sort once featured in Alexander's Weekly Messenger, defining the taxonomy of the Scarabaeus caput hominis, which will guide you to receiving said item.

We look forward to seeing you at Gen Con 60.

Sincerely,

The Midwestern Terrible Advice Wizards

Lore game Dweller script is cypher I have found in one roblox game "Lore Game". This is cypher for english and mostly for world building as developer says.
On the picture 6000p X 4000p all of the cypher symbols I have found in the game. Symbols on White background are redrawn by me, to not misinterpret pixelated screenshots from the game (Most of them are right, Developer helped me many times to redraw them correctly).

The Red text are to tell where symbols came from:
Lung Pick - From Eroded Ruins Billhook weapon skin (Writen down on a cylinder shape, you can start/end reading it from any red line.)
L4 - From Layer 4/Deep's Stomach Description pop-up
L5 - From Layer 5/Perpetual Caverns Description pop-up
CM. - From Concieved Manor
MR. - From Memory restored
Whale Decals - From Concieved Manor HP Decals
M. - From Merchant's clothing
Pot Decals - From Pot decal
Speedrun.com - From Lore game speedrun.com site

I've go those Vague rules of the cypher:
Uses English grammar and conjugation.
Bigger elements of symbols are to be said dominant (At the bottom right on the picture, *example* of Dominant and Recessive elements).
Every Symbol/Word Has at least one Dominant element.
Symbols are read from top to bottom (Most likely)
Read from Left to right (Most likely)
Cipher allows to create cool looking and informative phrases without hurting the information.

Posting this because I want to bring attention to this complicated cypher, since Lore game community doesn't have a lot of people to discuss it.