[Tutor] Columnar Transposition Cipher question

[Wayne Werner]

On Mon, Nov 8, 2010 at 5:28 PM, Natalie Kristine T. Castillo <
ncastillo at umail.ucsb.edu> wrote:

> Hi, I need help on how exactly to solve this:
>
> To send secret messages you and your partner have decided to use the
> columnar function you have written to perform columnar transposition cipher
> for this course. You have received the ciphertext EXLYHILOSHOOAETU from your
> friend. You two decide to use the keyword MARS. What message did your friend
> send you? Show your steps and do it by hand.


This sounds an awful lot like homework. It's not our policy to solve
homework, but if you get stuck we'll happily give you nudges in the right
direction.

This problem also happens to be language agnostic - meaning it doesn't
matter whether you solve it in Python, Assembly, C++, Ruby, or by hand.

Of course the problem description also says show your steps and do it by
hand, which suggests that the problem is not terribly difficult to solve if
you have some familiarity with the columnar transposition cipher. I've never
heard of it before, but I'm sure www.google.com and
http://en.wikipedia.orghave plenty to say on the subject.

HTH,
Wayne
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://mail.python.org/pipermail/tutor/attachments/20101108/5c6fa980/attachment-0001.html>