[Bookfinder filter] Trying to find a book I read at school, in the UK, in about 1987. It was a book for teenagers, with two interweaving stories across different times: one thread involved a teenage couple in modern times, and the other thread was about some Norse warriors, including a berserker, in ancient England. The two threads were tied together by an ancient axe head. The final section of the book was written in a cipher. [more inside]
posted by memebake on Nov 20, 2009 - 6 answers

MANF ANGWA RDASM ORT. What does it mean? [more inside]
posted by 0xFCAF on May 16, 2009 - 15 answers

Tell me what cipher I need for my daily commute. [more inside]
posted by Countess Elena on Feb 19, 2008 - 29 answers

Cryptofilter: My daughter is at summer camp and I can snail mail her or I can send email that will be printed out and delivered. The email is fast but readable by whoever prints/delivers the paper etc. Looking for a cipher that would be easy to learn and use... [more inside]
posted by kaytrem on Aug 8, 2006 - 21 answers

Is Scientific American's spell-checker broken? (via justkevin) [more inside]
posted by Blazecock Pileon on Aug 4, 2006 - 9 answers

Does anyone know of any famous codes or ciphers that have gone unsolved for lengthy periods of time or remain unsolved? I am thinking specifically of things like The May Day Mystery and the Voynich Manuscript (also here). So things more like those and generally less like the Beale Cipher. Maybe something to do with Art Brut or Outsider art or perhaps Kabbalic systems like Gematria. Or, if all else fails maybe something by the Rosicrucians or Freemasons?

Put another way, I am looking for cryptic and complex visual systems that maintain an internal logic (however faulty or suspect) and ESPECIALLY anything having to do with the interpretation and/or decipherment of such systems.
posted by mokujin on May 7, 2004 - 2 answers

In Nabokov's autobiography, "Speak Memory," there is a puzzle of sorts. It goes like this (from pg. 70): "We subjected [Uncle Ruka] to a test one day, and in a twinkle he turned the sequence '5.13 24.11 13.16 9.13.5 5.13 24.11' into the opening words of a famous monologue in Shakespeare." I'm stuck, can anyone help?
posted by adrober on Apr 3, 2004 - 16 answers