I haven’t met a kid who doesn’t love cracking codes. Storytime. My dad was a crypto-analyst during the Vietnam War. He worked on cracking codes & for my entire life I tried to pry information out of him about what super secret information he had discovered. He never once broke his silence, but he did teach me a lot about breaking codes. He created cryptograms and taught me about the Navajo Code Talkers. These were some of my favorite memories with my dad.
One of the first ciphers I was taught was The Pigpen Cipher. It is an easy to learn substitution cipher that kids love to use! I remember writing coded messages back and forth with friends at school. It was a fun twist on the traditional note passing, and if your note happened to be intercepted by a nosy classmate, or worse yet by the teacher, they had no idea what they were looking at!
How It Works:
The “pens” in the pigpen cipher are the shapes surrounding the letters. As you can see, the letter E is fully enclosed in a box. The letter T has a > shape around it. Encoding and decoding messages using this cipher is quick and easy. Students can use it to create messages for each other, or you can incorporate this cipher into an educational escape room or other puzzle.
You can download pigpen cipher fonts from sites such as dafont. I’ve also got a free Pigpen Cipher Key available to download and use for both personal and commercial/educational use (please read the terms of service).
Incorporating ciphers into educational escape rooms brings an element of fun and helps students to get engaged in the breakout instead of feeling like they are completing yet another worksheet. Using codes is a great way to encourage collaboration as students team up to decipher secret messages. In spy themed escape rooms, the Pigpen Cipher can really help kids get into the role and become part of the backstory.
See if you can decipher this message:
Put your answer in the comments! Hint: the first three letters are CIP.
