• The Babington Plot
  Babington Plot
  The Babington Plot was a Catholic plot in 1586 to assassinate Queen Elizabeth, a Protestant, and put Mary, Queen of Scots, a Catholic, on the English throne. It led to the execution of Mary. The long-term goal was an invasion by the Spanish forces of King Philip II and the Catholic league in...
  
   ciphers
• The Shugborough inscription
  Shugborough inscription
  The Shugborough inscription is a sequence of letters - O U O S V A V V, between the letters D M - carved on the 18th-century Shepherd's Monument in the grounds of Shugborough Hall in Staffordshire, England, below a mirror image of Nicolas Poussin's painting, the Shepherds of Arcadia...
  
  
• The Zimmermann Telegram
  Zimmermann Telegram
  The Zimmermann Telegram was a 1917 diplomatic proposal from the German Empire to Mexico to make war against the United States. The proposal was caught by the British before it could get to Mexico. The revelation angered the Americans and led in part to a U.S...
  
  
• The Magic Words are Squeamish Ossifrage
  The Magic Words are Squeamish Ossifrage
  The text "The Magic Words are Squeamish Ossifrage" was the solution to a challenge ciphertext posed by the inventors of the RSA cipher in 1977. The problem appeared in Martin Gardner's Mathematical Games column in Scientific American. It was solved in 1993–1994 by a large joint computer...
  
  
• The cryptogram
  Cryptogram
  A cryptogram is a type of puzzle which consists of a short piece of encrypted text. Generally the cipher used to encrypt the text is simple enough that cryptogram can be solved by hand. Frequently used are substitution ciphers where each letter is replaced by a different letter or number. To solve...
  
   in "The Gold-Bug
  The Gold-Bug
  "The Gold-Bug" is a short story by Edgar Allan Poe. Set on Sullivan's Island, South Carolina, the plot follows William Legrand, who was recently bitten by a gold-colored bug. His servant Jupiter fears him to be going insane and goes to Legrand's friend, an unnamed narrator who agrees to visit his...
  
  "
• Beale ciphers
  Beale ciphers
  The Beale ciphers are a set of three ciphertexts, one of which allegedly states the location of a buried treasure of gold, silver and jewels estimated to be worth over USD$63 million as of September, 2011. The other two ciphertexts allegedly describe the content of the treasure, and list the names...
  
  
• Voynich Manuscript
  Voynich manuscript
  The Voynich manuscript, described as "the world's most mysterious manuscript", is a work which dates to the early 15th century, possibly from northern Italy. It is named after the book dealer Wilfrid Voynich, who purchased it in 1912....
  
  
• Dorabella Cipher
  Dorabella Cipher
  The Dorabella Cipher is an enciphered letter written by Edward Elgar to Miss Dora Penny, which was accompanied by another dated July 14, 1897. Penny was never able to decipher it and its meaning remains unknown to this day....
  
  
• Quipu
  Quipu
  Quipus or khipus were recording devices used in the Inca Empire and its predecessor societies in the Andean region. A quipu usually consisted of colored, spun, and plied thread or strings from llama or alpaca hair. It could also be made of cotton cords...
  
  
• Kryptos
  Kryptos
  Kryptos is an encrypted sculpture by American artist Jim Sanborn located on the grounds of the Central Intelligence Agency in Langley, Virginia. Since its dedication on November 3, 1990, there has been much speculation about the meaning of the encrypted messages it bears...
  
  
• Zodiac Killer
  Zodiac Killer
  The Zodiac Killer was a serial killer who operated in Northern California in the late 1960s and early 1970s. The killer's identity remains unknown. The Zodiac murdered victims in Benicia, Vallejo, Lake Berryessa and San Francisco between December 1968 and October 1969. Four men and three women...
  
   ciphers
• D'Agapeyeff cipher
  D'Agapeyeff cipher
  The D'Agapeyeff cipher is an as-yet unbroken cipher that appears in the first edition of Codes and Ciphers, an elementary book on cryptography published by the Russian-born English cartographer Alexander D'Agapeyeff in 1939....
  
  
• Chaocipher
  Chaocipher
  The Chaocipher is a cipher method invented by J. F. Byrne in 1918 and described in his 1953 autobiographical Silent Years. He believed Chaocipher was simple, yet unbreakable. Byrne stated that the machine he used to encipher his messages could be fitted into a cigar box...
  
  
• Copiale cipher
  Copiale cipher
  The Copiale cipher is an encrypted manuscript consisting of 75,000 handwritten characters filling 105 pages in a bound volume. It is thought to date to between 1760 and 1780. It was first examined at the German Academy of Sciences at Berlin in the 1970s but did not come to public attention until...
  
  
• Ricky McCormick's encrypted notes
  Ricky McCormick's encrypted notes
  Ricky McCormick's encrypted notes are two hand-written documents found in the pockets of murder victim Ricky McCormick when his body was discovered in a field in St. Charles County, Missouri, on June 30, 1999...
  
  
• The message breaking off negotiations, sent by Japan
  Japan
  Japan is an island nation in East Asia. Located in the Pacific Ocean, it lies to the east of the Sea of Japan, China, North Korea, South Korea and Russia, stretching from the Sea of Okhotsk in the north to the East China Sea and Taiwan in the south...
  
   just prior to the attack on Pearl Harbor
• Smithy code
  Smithy code
  The Smithy code is series of letters embedded, as a private amusement,within the April 2006 approved judgement of Mr Justice Peter Smith on the The Da Vinci Code copyright case...
  
  , embedded within the 2006 judgement on The Da Vinci Code case

See also

• Topics in cryptography

External links

• Elonka
  Elonka Dunin
  Elonka Dunin is an American game developer at Simutronics Corp. in St. Louis, Missouri, where she has worked since 1990. She is Chairperson Emerita and one of the founders of the International Game Developers Association's Online Games group, has contributed or been editor in chief on multiple...
  
  's List of Famous Unsolved Codes and Ciphers
• Zodiologists.com - Zodiak Killer Ciphers & Solutions
• Ciphers of the Zodiac Killer - Information about ongoing research on the Zodiac ciphers.