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Nyctography: A substituton cypher by Lewis Carroll

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Re: Nyctography: A substituton cypher by Lewis Carroll

#11
post #3

This reminds me that as a child I taught myself Tolkien's runes from The Hobbit, which is mostly another substitution of the modern English alphabet: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cirth#Runes_from_The_Hobbit I got to the point I could read and write without a reference. Not as fast as English but not slow either. Many years later I found a notebook with many pages of things I'd written but had since lost the ability…

I have a very similar story, except I taught myself and a friend to write using "daedric" from Morrowind. I don't know if it was the actual daedric letters from the game, I think I just found a font that claimed to be daedric from a website and thought it was really cool. My friend and I would write notes to each other in this little secret chicken scratch-looking alphabet, it was fun. I sometimes try to remember how…

I learned the Daedric letters from the physical map that came with the game, which had the place names in both Daedric script and English.

Re: Nyctography: A substituton cypher by Lewis Carroll

#12
post #7
post #3

This reminds me that as a child I taught myself Tolkien's runes from The Hobbit, which is mostly another substitution of the modern English alphabet: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cirth#Runes_from_The_Hobbit I got to the point I could read and write without a reference. Not as fast as English but not slow either. Many years later I found a notebook with many pages of things I'd written but had since lost the ability…

I learned very similar runes for the Ultima games.

Those are the ones that I learned, from the magic system in Ultima Underworld. I think that H and W are swapped, and that Tolkien's alphabet includes a few more letters. They're both similar to the Elder Futhark runes, if I'm remembering correctly.

Re: Nyctography: A substituton cypher by Lewis Carroll

#13
post #3

This reminds me that as a child I taught myself Tolkien's runes from The Hobbit, which is mostly another substitution of the modern English alphabet: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cirth#Runes_from_The_Hobbit I got to the point I could read and write without a reference. Not as fast as English but not slow either. Many years later I found a notebook with many pages of things I'd written but had since lost the ability…

I remember writing to friends using a Pigpen Cipher [0], which I probably first encountered in some sort of Super-Mario themed workbook or magazine page.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pigpen_cipher

Re: Nyctography: A substituton cypher by Lewis Carroll

#14
post #5
post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Or just cut a piece of cardboard. That's what I did for my kid who loves secret codes and languages.

As a child I made several crypto disks out of cardboard, draw a 3 inch circle, give it enough segments to fit your alphabet, 32 is easy and gives you room for the capitals and some punctuation, draw the letters twice on each segment inside and outside of the circle, then cut out the circle, glue the outer part to a backing sheet and glue a tab/handle to the inner part to make it easy to spin. Used statically it works…

[deleted]

Re: Nyctography: A substituton cypher by Lewis Carroll

#16
post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I learned very similar runes for the Ultima games.

Those are the ones that I learned, from the magic system in Ultima Underworld. I think that H and W are swapped, and that Tolkien's alphabet includes a few more letters. They're both similar to the Elder Futhark runes, if I'm remembering correctly.

Ultima Underworld runes also had a word associated with them, and the words had meaning, which was both amusing when you used them for spells, and iirc could result in experimentation to find new or undocumented spells.

https://www.wiki.ultimacodex.com/wiki/Runic_magic/Ultima_Und...

https://www.wiki.ultimacodex.com/wiki/Rune_stones#Meanings

I remember an undocumented spell "Vas Kal Corp" which meant "Great Summon Death" and indeed it does. It ends the entire world and results in a game over.

Re: Nyctography: A substituton cypher by Lewis Carroll

#17
post #13
post #3

This reminds me that as a child I taught myself Tolkien's runes from The Hobbit, which is mostly another substitution of the modern English alphabet: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cirth#Runes_from_The_Hobbit I got to the point I could read and write without a reference. Not as fast as English but not slow either. Many years later I found a notebook with many pages of things I'd written but had since lost the ability…

I remember writing to friends using a Pigpen Cipher [0], which I probably first encountered in some sort of Super-Mario themed workbook or magazine page. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pigpen_cipher

I learned the pig pen cipher from a library book in maybe 4th grade. My friends had fun with if off and on through high school.
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