The pigpen cipher aka Masonic cipher
January 11th, 2009 | Author: Haider al-Khateeb
Have you seen a code similar to this before?
An interesting example from real life is the stone of James Leeson, who died in 1792. For a long time, the box-and-dot code at the top of the stone (Figure 1) remained a mystery for the public, but the secret was revealed as Meyer Berger explained in his NY Times column in the 1950s, it was finally decrypted. It says: “Remember death”. It was a Masonic cipher.
Figure 1: Stone of James Leeson 1
The pigpen cipher or the Masonic/Freemason’s cipher is a simple encryption scheme used in the 16th century to secure correspondence between the Freemasons members. [2][3]
The cipher is created by replacing each letter of the alphabet with a symbol, therefore it is defined nowadays as a simple substitution cipher.
Symbols used in pigpen are created by drawing a grid like the one in Figure 2.
Figure 2: A typical example for a pigpen cipher key.
Based on the key (grid) in Figure 2
A sentence like “FREE WORLD” can be encrypted to be:
|
Fun exercise: Question: Who was behind the invention of the frequency analysis technique for breaking monoalphabetic substitution ciphers? Answer:
(decrypt to find out) |
To enhance security, let us choose a key such as “PEACE” and put it into the grid, Figure 3:
Figure 3
I excluded the last “E” in “PEACE” because no letter should be written twice. Now let’s fill in the rest of the letters and have our personalized grid
Figure 4
Although we can change the grid every time we use a different keyword, this encryption scheme is not secure as it used to be at its time, because the use of symbols is no impediment to modern cryptanalysis techniques.
At the end of this article, here is a gift for you:
Right Click on Figure 5 and choose Save Target As to download a Masonic Cipher & Symbols Font for your MS Word, so you could write the symbols easily and have fun with your friends.
Figure 5: Masonic Cipher & Symbols Font (4)
To install the font file Right Click on it and select Install or simply move it to your C:\Windows\Fonts folder.
References:
[1] http://www.forgotten-ny.com/forgottentour17/tour17.html
[2] David Kahn, “The Codebreakers. The Story of Secret Writing.” Macmillan, 1967.
[3] David E. Newton, “Freemason’s Cipher” in Encyclopedia of Cryptology, 1998.
[4] FAM-Code© http://www.odr.org/anonymous/fam-code.htm
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nice post
i liked it
I am just curious if there is a way to put a font in word 2007 that would mimic the pigpen cypher when typing
Font works at Windows 7, Word 2007.
@ frank
fam-code.ttf (the font file from the article) works just fine with word 2007. Try to install it in your computer and then check MS Word Theme Fonts (combo box). It should be there, its name is FAM-Code.
Else, if you are trying to find a way to mimic the exact letters distribution among symbols as it is in the above examples or any other, then you need a font editor. Try to google ‘ttf editor’ or ‘ttf creator’.
Interesting, easy and fun I should say.
Just thought i would comment and say neat theme, did you code it yourself? Looks great.
Note The ttf font provided here is not that same as shown above, it is infact a slightly differnt pigpen cypher (even in masonry there are many ways of arranging the alphabet in the same grids) I belive the font is the royal arch cypher but not being a mason myself i cannot say for sure (and would not say for sure if i was!)
Do you know where this gravestone is from?
check the references I used or else you may google ‘James Leeson gravestone’.