Re: Re: VMs: Cardan grille

["jan" <hurychj@xxxxxxxxx>]

Hello  
  
  
=======  You wrote:  
>> Take another handwritten page. Look at the letters 
>> positioned at those same 20 coordinates. You will
>> see sometimes an entire letter, sometimes part of
>> a letter.
>> 
>
>Oh... ah... now it makes much more sense.
>
 --------------

Yes, it does, but it is not the case of the VM  - the lines are sagging towards right so direct use of 
the grill is out of question and the disadvantage of geometrical irregularities can be easily  
overcome by writing draft first and rewriting it the way we see it in the VM. 

I think they knew about that problem already in their time and would not take such obvious risk. 
Still, even after rewriting, the irregularities in the sense of the whole text (that is the effort to force 
some word in the sentence) could be spotted and the partial solution would follow.  And if 
everything fails, just shuffle all words in the page and you may get interesting connections, even if 
 at first rather vague.  So such Cardan grille is a  poor cryptography and not so  perfect 
steganography either.

I cannot believe that Cardan  - who lived  practically in the same time as Bacon  (1501-1576) - 
would come with the cipher with such clear giveaway without  pointing  out the obvious 
problems. Especially when Bacon's cipher is already so sophisticated and elegant.  And even if 
he did not think about using slots for individual letters, it was for him the next logical step to 
follow.  He might not follow it, but the author of the VM could. The use of individual letters and 
random - or quasi random filling would be the excellent cryptography.

Jan
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