Caesar Cipher
The Caesar cipher is one of the earliest known and simplest ciphers. It is a type of substitution cipher in which each letter in the plaintext is 'shifted' a certain number of places down the alphabet.
For instance, here is a Caesar cipher using a right shift rotation of three places:
_Plain: ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ
Cipher: DEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZABC
When encrypting, a person looks up each letter of the message in the "plain" line and writes down the corresponding letter in the "cipher" line.
_Plaintext: THE QUICK BROWN FOX JUMPS OVER THE LAZY DOG
Ciphertext: WKH TXLFN EURZQ IRA MXPSV RYHU WKH ODCB GRJ
Deciphering is done in reverse, with a right shift of 3.
ROT13, which is used for encrypting the Hints on geocaching.com, is a special case of the Caesar cipher.
Keyword Cipher:
One variation to the standard Caesar cipher is when the alphabet is "keyed" by using a word. In the traditional variety, one could write the alphabet on two strips and just match up the strips after sliding the bottom strip to the left or right. To encode, you would find a letter in the top row and substitute it for the letter in the bottom row. For a keyed version, one would not use a standard alphabet, but would first write a word (omitting duplicated letters) and then write the remaining letters of the alphabet.
_Plain: ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ
Cipher: GEOCAHBDFIJKLMNPQRSTUVWXYZ
Some variations of the Keyword use the first appearance of a letter, while others use the last appearance of a letter that repeats. So it could also be:
_Plain: ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ
Cipher: GOACHEBDFIJKLMNPQRSTUVWXYZ
When encrypting, a person looks up each letter of the message in the "plain" line and writes down the corresponding letter in the "cipher" line.
_Plaintext: THE QUICK BROWN FOX JUMPS OVER THE LAZY DOG
Ciphertext: TDA QUFOJ ERNWM HNX IULPS NVAR TDA KGZY CNB
Deciphering is done in reverse
The Puzzle
I am sure a keyword variation based on the use of numbers could be used as a substitution cipher, with the keyword being something like... the year a cache was hidden, as an example.
Decrypt the following to locate the cache: N39° 38.080 W226° 91.702
You can check your answers for this puzzle on GeoChecker.com.
Remember to bring a writing stick.
Congratulations to hunthikers for the FTF!