Cryptologic Bytes

Famous Unsolved Codes and Ciphers

Elonka Dunin's Codes & Ciphers Web site provides an unofficial list of well-known unsolved codes and ciphers, such as the Beale Ciphers, Dorabella Cipher, Phaistos Disc, and more. A couple of the better-known unsolved ancient historical scripts are also thrown in, since they tend to come up during any discussion of unsolved codes. There has also been an attempt to sort this list by "fame," as defined by a loose formula involving the number of times that a particular cipher has been written about, and/or how many hits it pulls up on a moderately-sorted Web search.

ON THIS DATE IN HISTORY

Visit the "On this Date in History" calendar to learn about important events in cryptology and other related fields.