In my WIP I have three students trying to figure out a mystery. The setting is something like 16th century France. One of the students talks to an older student, something like a post-doc, and the post-doc finds some mysterious entries in some 500 year old ducal chronicles. (fwiw - I've had her find four chronicle entries that were made up of ten-word sentences, distributed in an intriguing way in the months of one year.) The post-doc is going to propose they breakup the task of trying to figure out what the code is. One of the three is good at classic languages, the other two are not good with the languages, but they are merchants and are good at calculations. I want to have the post-doc split up the work of solving the code. (I am open to changing the 'ten-word sentences')
I don't know much about this kind of code stuff - I have to admit I'm intimidated by it because it always makes me feel dumb when I think about it.
Does anybody have any ideas about how the 'post-doc' might split up such work? And/or any ideas about how people might hide/encode things in a pre-modern setting?
I don't know much about this kind of code stuff - I have to admit I'm intimidated by it because it always makes me feel dumb when I think about it.
Does anybody have any ideas about how the 'post-doc' might split up such work? And/or any ideas about how people might hide/encode things in a pre-modern setting?