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Construction of Mixed Alphabet CV1

 

The Running Key begins: "Is Mr A nuz ban hearcy o' the daemon Q (hopefully, the homophones 'Mr A', 'nuz', 'hearcy'  are self-evident; daemon is the old word for devil; Q="?", there being no punctuation available). Using this phrase, pass it through the Railfence Transposition (or is it a Checkerboard? Or both?) and use the letters to form a Transposition Key, which in turn is used to shuffle the columns of the cage in forming the Mixed Alphabet - as shown below. The techniques are fairly standard and are described in HFG's section on forming mixed alphabets. What isn't described is using such a deadly combination of homophonic text, the steganographic effect of the Railfence/Checkerboard and the irregular  or asymmetric transposition cage! A real stinker!

For those not familiar with the technique, the numerical Key is derived by simply taking the letters in alphabetical order. So, A=1, B=2, C=3, H=4 etc.

A, the 1st letter of the final version, is referred to as the setting letter and is a single hoop pointing North; the setting letter for Table 2 is S - also single hoop North.

 

 

 

 

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