Archive: Business & Technology

Admittedly I am not good at puzzles.  But who isn't fascinated by encryption?  Since decoder rings were introduced in the 1930s, children and adults alike have toiled to decode secret messages.  The James bond craze only served to intensify interest, and in the computer age encryption has increased in importance as a way of trying to prevent identity theft, making online sales safe, as well as mundane usage like keeping government transmissions and -- we'd have to be killed if we were told for sure -- messages between spies.

Quiptics is a full featured cryptogram program for computers running Windows or Macs running Virtual PC.  The $19.95 program is by Crossdown 's Sam Bellotto, Jr., a professional puzzle writer, author, and software developer who also developed the professional crossword puzzle development program Crossdown, and Enigmacross for professional acrostics development.


Quiptics provides an easy way to create cryptograms, and multiple ways to distribute them to players.  Creating one is easy -- either type in the text that you want encrypted, or choose a quotation from the included 'Quote Bank.'  A few quotes are included from Albert Einstein, Jay Leno, Ray Charles, Lyndon Johnson, and Judith Hayes, and you can add your own. 

The puzzle development  program generates a relatively easy cipher based on simple alphabet substitution, or more complex railfair, playfair, quagmire, and vignere ciphers.  You simply type or paste your quote, set an option or two, and click a button.  You save puzzles to be edited later, or distribute them by printing, copy/pasting, exporting to a variety of file types including TXT, RTF, and PDF.  Or you can export a cipher to a version that can be played on your Web site, or by giving players the puzzle along with a freely-distributable program for interactively playing it.

If you have encrypted your text for all five types of cipher, you can play them all in that program, and it can display hint windows showing the cipher alphabet playfair square, or quagmire, and vignere tables -- the keys to unlocking the ciphers.

None of these features make me any better at solving the puzzles.  But the interactive versions do offer hints and can even solve the ciphers for you.  As for generating the puzzles, it's a snap.  And that leaves a lot more time for solving them!

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