Controls: Double-click to clone a symbol, then drag-and-drop symbols from the top portion of the screen to the lower stage. Click the pig to cycle through the plaintext and ciphertext displays. Press <space> bar to change the stage background color. Press <s> to turn the introductory music off. Reset using the stop sign and green flag to begin a new message. If you have a message to encipher, select "plaintext" and drag and drop your message letter by letter onto the stage, then click the pig to change the display to "ciphertext." You can then screen capture or transcribe the message you want to share. If you have a message to decipher, select "ciphertext" and drag matching symbols from your message to the stage, then click the pig to change the display to "plaintext." The hidden content of the message will be revealed. Pig Pen ciphers substitute letters for pre-arranged symbols in a grid pattern. The grids are modeled after the shapes of pig pens separated by rail fences. The order of letters (cipher key) in the pig pens can be changed so long as the sender and receiver agree on the cipher key. In contrast to most applications of the pig pen cipher, this model includes numbers. Including number symbols allows the message to be enciphered more quickly. Spelling out numbers, while more time-consuming, often helps slow an adversary's attempt to find patterns in the cipher by looking for frequent groupings that represent dates, times, measurements, or amounts. Spelling out numbers may help an adversary using frequency analysis (tallying the number of times certain symbols are used and comparing them to the frequency letters appear in a target language). Mixing the two methods (sometimes using number symbols and other times using spelled-out number words), deliberately misspelling words (substituting homophones), and creating uniform groups (5 characters in a set, rather than strings of symbols matching lengths of words in the plaintext) can also slow adversary analysis.
Thanks to the cipher display and tutorial from the Pig Pen Cipher! Made by @jsheng. Music "Pig in a Pen," by the Wayfarers, Fire on the Hillside, 2012.
