The time has come to issue a warning: this entire series of caches will be archived between May 1st and October 31st, 2022.
A Cipher Series
Jabberwocky is the tenth in a series created for those interested in some degree in cryptology. It is recommended that one do these in alphabetical order, the entire series being Alberti (GC3TAT5), Babbage (GC3V0GV), Colossus (GC3VAFW), Doyle (GC3WTWC), Enigma (GC3X6T8), Flowers (GC41DHR), Gifford (GC6B6HE), Hammer (GC6BR6X), Information (GC6CAXY), Jabberwocky (GC6CY2J), Koblitz (GC6DFP0), Lewis (GC6DMYB), Michie (GC6E4GP), Newman (GC6ENZC), Oded (GC6FNDV), Painvin (GC6G245) and Quits (GC6GN8R). Some can be done independent of the others but, in general, information given and skills acquired in one cache will not be repeated in subsequent caches and so we suggest that they be done in order. We hasten to add that there is not necessarily any connection between the name of the cache and the type of cipher used therein.
Jabberwocky - the Name of the Cache
"Jabberwocky" is probably the most famous nonsense poem ever written in the English language and appears in Through the Looking Glass, and What Alice Found There, the second of the two "Alice books" published by Lewis Carroll, this one in 1872. Many of the words in the poem are creations of the author and one can understand Alice's saying with reference to the poem that "somehow it seems to fill my head with ideas - only I don't exactly know what they are!"
Charles Lutwidge Dodgson (1832 - 1898), the real name of Lewis Carroll, was the son of a clergyman who had a large family. Carroll spent a relatively quiet childhood before attending Rugby and then Oxford, earning an MA in 1856 and being appointed a tutor in 1857. He was ordained a clergyman but did not feel suited to the profession and settled into a life of lecturing, studying and writing, largely in mathematics.
We feel comfortable naming our cache Jabberwocky because the enigmatic Lewis Carroll was quite at home with logic and mathematics and his children’s poems are certainly puzzles! His writings included such titles as The Fifth Book of Euclid (1858), The Formulae of Plane Trigonometry (1861) and An Elementary Treatise on Determinants (1867). But he is most famous because of Alice in Wonderland - perhaps the most influential classic in Victorian children's literature - and Through the Looking Glass . . . . While his more serious works may have made a mark in their day, our own well-known humorist, Stephen Leacock, has written that he "would sooner have written Alice in Wonderland than the whole Encyclopedia Britannica."
Let us complete this section with the poem itself.
"Jabberwocky" - by Lewis Carroll
(It's fun to read aloud!! Take the time to try it!)
'Twas brillig, and the slithy toves
Did gyre and gimble in the wabe:
All mimsy were the borogoves,
And the mome raths outgrabe.
“Beware the Jabberwock, my son!
The jaws that bite, the claws that catch!
Beware the Jubjub bird, and shun
The frumious Bandersnatch!
He took his vorpal sword in hand;
Long time the manxome foe he sought -
So rested he by the Tumtum tree
And stood awhile in thought
And, as in uffish thought he stood,
The Jabberwock, with eyes of flame,
Came whiffling through the tulgey wood,
And burbled as it came!
One, two! One, two! And through and through
The vorpal blade went snicker-snack!
He left it dead, and with its head
He went galumphing back.
“And hast thou slain the Jabberwock?
Come to my arms, my beamish boy!
O frabjous day! Callooh! Callay!”
He chortled in his joy.
’Twas brillig, and the slithy toves
Did gyre and gimble in the wabe:
All mimsy were the borogoves,
And the mome raths outgrabe.
Jabberwocky, the Cache
The Encryption Process
The Grid
For this cache, you will need three grids akin to that for Gifford, Hammer and Information. This time, however, they are smaller.
1. In principle we make three four by four grids and place nine letters in each: A to I, J to R and S to Z respectively. (Compare to Gifford and, accordingly, leave one space blank, put numbers in six spaces and letters in the rest.) In the blank space left at the end of the third grid, we will put a $. (We say “in principle” because we will be using a key word as in Information.)
2. Then, we visualize the grids stacked in layers, with the first grid on the top and the third on the bottom.
3. Each letter can then be identified with three numbers - row, column and layer. For example “A” would be 111 - first row, first column, first (top) layer; “P” would be 312 - third row, first column and second (middle) layer; “T” would be 123 - first row, second column, third (bottom) layer. (This is if there is no key word, of course.)
4. The “key word” is applied just as it was in Information (with the $ being added after all the other letters) and the encryption carried out by the same process too.
Your job is to discover the “key word,” to create the grids - placing the $ in the space that remains after all the other letters have been inserted - and to reverse the encryption process.
The “Key Word”
The key word is one of the many words in the poem “Jabberwocky” (above) and is a first-order isogram of at least seven letters (review Information if necessary) in which such vowels that exist are in alphabetical order.
The Cryptogram
Please assume North 44° and West 078°.
MHZV DWT PSNWI PAN HSNY UKAUA PJ$N XGMAQ
GGEO $AZQL NRZPR JFOK SFEQ ATR$M OXA MGPU ECUE.
Comments
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