Matt RuckmanThe Unbroken
The Answer In The Box
The first two pieces in this series were about ciphers nobody can read. This one is about a cipher whose answer we finally have, sitting in a sealed box until 2075, that we still can't read either, and about the century of work that took the lock, printed the design on the outside, and built it so well that knowing the design didn't help.
The Note In The Drawer
Every cipher in the history of cryptography assumes an adversary. The Dorabella doesn't. It's what happens when one specific person writes to one other specific person about something that matters only to them, and the cryptanalyst, a hundred and twenty-eight years later, isn't in the room.
What I Think the Voynich Manuscript Is (and Isn't)
I spent months running computational analysis on the world's most mysterious book. Here's what the data says, and what it doesn't.