So, in May 2018, a friend and I were sitting in study hall, bored. Both of us had finished our homework early, and we were trading ciphers over email. I sent something that I had encoded, and neither she nor I could decode it (the rest of the email chain is her discussing my attempts at decoding it). From this email thread, I know it’s not:
- a cipher involving moving one key to the right on a keyboard
- something involving underlined vowels which was related to binary.
- rot13.
The whole conversation: (names and stuff obviously redacted)
BW: Happy theee rythm alt'ae chill queue that's taeip queau Sadie thiss !!!!!
Other: I hate people!!!!!
Other: fpm'y er s;;
Other: yjr lrunpstf upi ofopy
BW: ???
Other: keyboard
BW: Don’t we all.
BW: The keyboard you idiot.
BW: Ztzlcg, lae L rlydsmv Xers wbqdmh fyzmy dgz.
Other: what?? There’s nothing to the right of z
BW: link to a Bifid cipher solver
2 hours later
Other: thanks, Bifid cipher. You suck. BW, you can’t decipher your own message?
BW: maybe, maybe, it might have been a different cipher. maybe playfair?
Other: several comments about my inability to remember a single cipher and key removed
I apparently believed it was the Bifid cipher, Playfair cipher, or something with a key. The message is below, in its entirety. The previous cipher translated to “don’t we all the keyboard you idiot” so I assume this might be a response.
Can you help me recover it? (This is to prove a point to a different friend.)
Ztzlcg, lae L rlydsmv Xers wbqdmh fyzmy dgz.
What I have so far is that maybe L translates to I, and Xers might be her name (Ella). I’m just guessing.
