0
$\begingroup$

Having some trouble cracking this cipher (this is part of a homework assignment for a cryptology class) I've looked at letter frequencies but I'm not sure what else there is to help me.

Given the encrypted string, TNFOS FOZSW PZLOC GQAOZ WAGQR PJZPN ABCZP QDOGR AMTHA RAXTB AGZJO GMTHA RAVAP ZW, the word LIBERTY is encrypted somewhere in the ciphertext.

From that, I find A and Z line up almost perfectly to E and T given a frequency chart and based off of that, I can pinpoint possible locations of the word LIBERTY (blue text). But after that, I don't really see anything to do to further decrypt it. With no spacing I cant really make out any words problem attempt

Improve this question
$\endgroup$
3
  • 2
    $\begingroup$ Hints: How many positions of LIBERTY relative to the start of the plaintext are possible for a 67-character plaintext? Can you exclude some of these given the particular ciphertext and knowing it's monoalphabetic substitution)? Would your eye+brain be enough to find the plaintext among what remains, if you wrote a program that displays the candidate plaintexts with . for characters where there's a remaining ambiguity? For short plaintext that approach has lower probability to miis than pure frequency distribution. $\endgroup$
    – fgrieu ♦
    Sep 13, 2021 at 6:03
  • 1
    $\begingroup$ HInt: you might like to think of famous quotes involving the word "liberty"and compare them to the two possibilities. $\endgroup$
    – Daniel S
    Sep 13, 2021 at 6:27
  • 1
    $\begingroup$ Also: after a guess of the position of liberty, it's likely that S stands for one of the characters among the most frequent that remain. A program could also show that guess. $\endgroup$
    – fgrieu ♦
    Sep 13, 2021 at 11:51

0

Reset to default

Your Answer

By clicking “Post Your Answer”, you agree to our terms of service, privacy policy and cookie policy

Browse other questions tagged or ask your own question.