[ACE Tech]

When I was 12 or 13, I developed what I thought was a complex cryptography.  It wasn't a true cipher, nor a true code.  It was somewhere in the middle.

One basic cipher turns letters into numbers, which I'm sure everybody here knows about.  My method has the capability to turn whole words, sentences, paragraphs or, even messages into a single number depending on the number of digits the computer can handle.

I didn't have the math skills for decryption until about two years later.  An encoder/decoder was my final class project in my high school BASIC programming class (on a Commodore Pet, no less).

[Aaron]

It sounds like an efficient compression algorithm to me. I'm a little unsure of what exactly you did to convert a message into a single number, but I'm guessing you converted it into binary (assuming 4 bits if you're only preserving lowercase letters) and squished all the bits together and converted that back into a number.

[ACE Tech]

I developed it before computers became privately available, so it isn't computer-dependent, but a computer sure helps.

When you look at the word "MIX," you don't automatically see a number.  An ancient Roman would see the number we know as 1,009, because their letters functioned as numbers, as well, as did the Greeks' and the Hebrews'.

There is a way to do that for ALL of the alpha characters besides the seven (M, D, C, L, X, V, I) that the Romans used.  That would make any sequence of text translatable into a modern numerical equivalent...!

As a code, there were different ways to include keys so even if someone knew the basic mechanics of the the process, they wouldn't know enough to break it without the appropriate key(s).

[Aaron]

Ah, so you created a custom base for the entire alphabet. Interesting! Probably not space efficient in that case, but certainly tough to reverse without prior knowledge.

[ACE Tech]

So,... it has been done or did you pull that out of my description?

[Aaron]

I pulled it out of your description. I don't personally know whether it's been used for encrypting messages or not, but I do know that plenty of people have made custom bases in general. You could even make a base where each "digit" is a prime instead of n^x.

[ACE Tech]

I envision this method is better defended if the base of choice is a prime number.  If it were base-64, for example, one could spot intelligence in bases 2, 4 & 8.  Finding the correct prime base would be more like looking for "a needle in a haystack."  Unused digits could be used as alternates for e, t, a, o, n, etc., throwing off the whole letter frequency distribution, spaces throwing off word break detection, or both.  There is room for all kinds of anti-analysis techniques.

[ACE Tech]

Ah, so you created a custom base for the entire alphabet. Interesting! Probably not space efficient in that case, but certainly tough to reverse without prior knowledge.

It's only not space efficient if you convert it to decimal.  If you convert it to a similar base or larger, it is quite space efficient.  My signature contains eight characters (before encoding).

In this unscrambled version, no key is necessary.  One just needs to know (or find) the coded base and the uncoded base.  Since my cryptoanalysis skills aren't as advanced as my cryptographic skills, I don't know how easy the unkeyed [straightforward] version of this cipher is to break. I know some of its weaknesses, but I don't know how vulnerable it really is.

[ACE Tech]

Trehe is a phoonnmeen taht has been dcirevesod wrehe, if you lavee the fsrit and lsat lteerts in pclae, yuor biran is albe to umsnclbrae the mseagse awynay.  Wlihe tihs cnoant be uesd as a ppoerr cdoe, due to its cmoomn eecfft, it wluod be ietnsirtneg to see how it mhigt iacpmt chiepr aaysnils, if it was alpeipd to a msgaese bofree it was eihrnpecd, scine gdraen vieatry ayslians epxcets crecort sllpineg.  It wluod plabbroy ruirqee hamun iptnriteotearn.  Hmmm...

[Aaron]

It could certainly make things more difficult, but I think some indication of spaces would have to be used so it's not nigh impossible.

[tonybaloney]

Hmmmm..... but some words would remain intact such as .......hmmmm .....now let me think....