Just for curiosity’s sake, I came up with a simple but effective grid cipher (or, basically, secret code) to test out.
It’s called AESOP, a reference to both the famous fables, and more truthfully just what the first 5 letters of Set B happened to be in the first grid. This cipher, also known as a Polybius Square is a simple encryption technique dating back to ancient greece.
- A grid of the alphabet, numbers, punctuation and characters is layed out, each represented by two characters. The characters represent each letter’s place on the grid.
- For better security, false and blank characters are spaced out between the characters on the grid
- For confusion, some commonly used characters have duplicates on the grid so different letter combos can be used for vowels, etc.
- for less translating, common words and adjectives can be included
- blank spaces are to be ignored. For confusion, you can throw these randomly in the mix once you’re done translating.
- For best results, use the space characters and don’t use spaces in the final code. However, to add confusion, you can add false punctuation throughout.
INSTRUCTIONS
For each letter you’d like to translate, find the letter/number at the top of the column (SET A), then find the letter/number to the left of the row (SET B). For instance, on this graph the letter “P” translates to “TA”.
Try This Demonstration.
If you want to sneak a peak at the answer, roll over the image below with your mouse.
YK TL YL 
8L QK TS hK TE TO TS hK hL YL TK Q5 QK Qz QP VO QZ QK T7
Download a Blank AESOP template to try your own code- AESOP Grid Template
Tags: Confusion and diffusion