My kids had a blast, and it kept them busy and excited the entire morning. You can find out how make your own clues (and go the extra mile) or use my clues to recreate my treasure hunt. This definitely takes a little more preparation, but worry not! Check out the article I made about my epic Caesar Cipher Treasure Hunt for all the details. Then I dropped the first clue and cipher wheel in an out-of-the-way spot that I knew my kids will discover. (Weathering the paper is not necessary, but I was having fun! Check out How to Weather Paper to Make it Look Old (The Ultimate Guide)). Just print it out and enjoy.įirst I placed some cleverly written clues around the house on what looks like really old paper. I promise it’s not clickbait and I won’t make you sign up for my email list (I hate that). Here’s a free downloadable cipher wheel pdf. There are a number of free printable disks online, but most are missing the ROT number on the wheel. How to Use a Caesar Disk (ROT-n Cipher Disk)Ī really simple way to encode and decode your messages is using a cipher disk. If you’re interested in more secret codes, check out The Rail Fence Cipher (Fun Secret Code to Teach Your Kids). I almost messed up an awesome treasure hunt I made for my kids by explaining it to them backwards. While all of this is pretty straightforward, remember not to mix up your plaintext and ciphertext rows when encoding and decoding. Take the corresponding letters of your coded message from the bottom row (ciphertext) and replace them with the letters of the top (plaintext) Plaintext: dad jokes are how i keep from cryingĬiphertext: gdg mrnhv duh krz l nhhs iurp fublqj The second letter A will be replaced with D, and so on. ![]() Using the diagram with a key number rotation of 3 (or ROT3), we can encode the following message:įirst, find the letter D in the top row and replace it with the letter G in the second row. To encode-that is, to convert the plaintext message into ciphertext-take the corresponding letters of your message from the top row (plaintext) and replace them with the letters of the bottom (ciphertext). (This will make more sense when we talk about the cipher wheel). It is called a ROT3 cipher because the alphabet rotates 3 spaces. In the example below, the top alphabet shifts 3 spaces to the right. ![]() You then shift one alphabet over a predetermined number of spaces. The basic premise of a Caesar Cipher is to take two alphabets, one written above the other. How to Encode and Decode Messages Using a Caesar Cipher If you want to learn about another cipher used in history, check out The Ottendorf Cipher (What it Is and How to Teach Your Kids). ![]() While not used in professional cryptography anymore, Caesar Ciphers are fun to do and super easy to teach your kids Therefore, Caesar Ciphers are easy to break. The Caesar Cipher is “monoalphabetic” in that each letter is replaced by one and only one letter or symbol. While easy to decode by today’s standards, it was reasonably secure in his time because many of Caesar’s enemies were illiterate. Caesar used it to disguise his personal correspondence and to protect sensitive military messages. The Caesar cipher gets its name from the Roman Emperor Julius Caesar.
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