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ABSTRACT: Codes, ciphers, puzzles, and steganography have played major roles in many works of fiction. This article discusses how each of these forms of problem solving is integrated into fiction and provides an annotated bibliography of stories where the solution of codes and ciphers is a major plot element.
KEYWORDS: Cryptography, cryptanalysis, codes, mystery stories, detective fiction, spy fiction.
1 INTRODUCTION
"Few persons can be made to believe that it is not quite an easy thing to invent a method of secret writing which shall baffle investigation. Yet it may be roundly asserted that human ingenuity cannot concoct a cipher which human ingenuity cannot resolve."
(Edgar Allan Poe, "A Few Words on Secret Writing," Graham's Magazine, July 1841.)
Codes and ciphers have a long history in fiction. From the first publication of Edgar Allen Poe's The Gold-Bug in 1843 [79] through Neal Stephenson's Cryptonomicon in 1999 [97] and The Rule of Four in 2004 [27], cryptology has played a key role in many works of mystery, suspense, and science fiction. Whether it's a simple monoalphabetic substitution cipher - the most common cipher found in these stories - or a Play fair, or a book code, or the Enigma, or lately public-key systems, using cryptography and especially cryptanalysis, adds an extra flair to many stories.
Mystery stories always require the solution of a problem. The problem usually requires the uncovering of evidence to identify a series of suspects and ultimately using deduction to finger the culprit. These literary puzzles keep readers interested and engaged in the story. There is a subgenre of mysteries that require the solution of one or more puzzles as part of the problem. The puzzles can take the form of language or mathematical puzzles. Examples of this type of story include The Puzzle Lock by Austin Freeman [40] and 1 to 999 by Isaac Asimov [9]. Many of the puzzles involve steganography; see The Great Cipher by Post [80], and Code No. 2 by Edgar Wallace [107]. Plots using codes or ciphers also appear quite frequently in mystery and detective fiction. Edgar Allen Poe's The Gold-Bug [79] is the seminal example in this genre.
These stories use the solution of a cryptogram as a key to the solution of the mystery....