Write your message in a zig-zag, like a fence: first letter high, next letter low, next letter high. Then read all the top letters, then all the bottom letters. Nothing is swapped for anything else â the letters just move house.
The stick that read the message
Spartan commanders carried a wooden rod called a scytale. You wound a strip of leather round it in a spiral, wrote along the length of the rod, then unwound the strip. What was left was a jumble of letters. Only a rod of exactly the same thickness would line them up again. The letters were never changed, only moved — the same idea as the rail fence.
Print this page and you get a worksheet: how the cipher works, where it came from, and the puzzles to crack, with the machine and the menus left off.
Print this page as a worksheet Its sheet in the pack Try the challengesLonger, harder and written for grown-ups. Worth a look when this page runs out.