Word: cryptanalysts
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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...Caesar employed a cipher in which each character was replaced by one standing three places down the alphabet-thus D stood for a, E for b, F for c, etc. Mary Queen of Scots wrote conspiratory messages in cipher; when intercepted and interpreted by England's first great cryptanalyst, Thomas Phelippes, they helped bring Mary to the chopping block. In the U.S., Benedict Arnold employed several codes, including one that was keyed to Volume I of the fifth Oxford edition of Blackstone's Commentaries...
...expert cryptanalyst and the Sunday-puzzle expert alike rely on the fact that letters have their own personalities. As David Kahn writes: "To the casual observer, they may look as alike as troops lined up for inspection, but just as the sergeant knows his men as 'the gold-brick,' 'the kid,' 'the reliable soldier,' so the cryptanalyst knows the letters of the alphabet...
...cryptanalyst, ciphertext Y is also significant. In the cryptogram, it runs before N and never follows it; at the same time, it always follows H and never precedes it. This is the usual behavior of plaintext h: the diagraph he is commonplace, but eh is unusual; th is the most frequent diagraph of all, but ht less so. Therefore, in the cryptogram, Y=h and H should equal...