Basic Ciphers
A cipher is any form of encryption/decryption to "disguise" a message or more commonly in geocaching a set of coordinates. Each cipher has a set of rules or steps that must be followed in order to encrypt or decrypt the message.
Basic ciphers as their name suggests are those that follow simple rules, for example the letter A in the encoded message (cipher text) will always map to letter X in the decoded message (plain text). The ROT13 cipher used to disguise hints on cache pages is an example of such a cipher, where all characters are shifted by 13 so A becomes N, B becomes O etc. This is one scenario of the Caesar Cipher which additionally has as its input the "Shift" value, this value remain constant throughout the message. So ROT13 is a Caesar Cipher with a "Shift" value of 13. A Caesar Cipher with a "Shift" value of 2 would give A -> C and B -> D etc. These are usually identifiable by repeating "sections" as a TWO at the start of the text will look the same as a TWO at the end of the text when encoded.
Transposition Ciphers are another form of fairly basic ciphers. Rather than substituting letters for symbols or other letter they keep the "message" the same but rearrange its order. A Route cipher works by writing out the individual letters and then following the prescribed route to decode/encode the message.
So GEOCACHINGPUZZLES101 could be written into a 4 by 5 grid and the "Route" be specified as a spiral:
Giving a cipher text of GANZS101EUICOECGZLPH
To decode you need to reverse the steps.
Your turn :)
North: ADAOTORJYZBMZZNUZMJKJDIOORJADQZIDIZHDIPOZN
East: ZDEIETNUUVIEEOEREFFYIHPITOROREEMNTSRGSTGOFFSNU
*** Congratulations to SoniaHarry on their FTF ***