Cryptogram
A cryptogram is a fragment of an encrypted message, the meaning of which is unintelligible until it is decrypted. Generally, the content of the intelligible message is modified following a certain pattern, so that it is only possible to understand the original meaning after knowing or discovering the pattern followed in the encryption.
Usually, the cipher used to encrypt the text is simple enough that the cryptogram can be solved manually. The most widely used encryption in these cases is the so-called substitution encryption, in which each letter is replaced by a different one or by a number. To solve the cryptogram, the original alphabet used must be retrieved. In its beginnings it was conceived for more serious applications, but at present it is used generally as entertainment in magazines and newspapers.
Cryptograms can also be created using other classical encryption methods. For example, the cipher book, where a book or article is used to encrypt a message.
History
Cryptograms were not originally created for entertainment purposes, but for the encryption of military or private secrets.
Cryptograms were first used for entertainment purposes during the Middle Ages by monks who made puzzles. A manuscript found in Bamberg states that Irish visitors to the court of Merfyn Frych ap Gwriad (d. 844), King of Gwynedd in Wales, received cryptograms, which could only be solved by transposing the letters of the Latin alphabet into Greek. Around the thirteenth century the English monk Roger Bacon wrote a book in which he listed seven encryption methods, and stated that
A man is crazy if to write a secret, choose a form that can be known for the vulgo.
In the 19th century, Edgar Allan Poe helped popularize cryptograms, publishing many articles in magazines and diaries.
Resolution
Cryptograms based on substitution ciphers can usually be solved by frequency analysis and by recognizing patterns of letters in the encrypted words.if they are difficult
Famous Cryptograms
A famous cryptogram appears in American writer Edgar Allan Poe's 1843 short story The Golden Bug.
Another named cryptogram is that of the novel Voyage au center de la Terre, by the French writer Jules Verne.
An equally interesting cryptogram appears in the work "The Da Vinci Code" by Dan Brown.