Secrets of the Copiale Cipher: 260 years of Silence

History is full of intriguing mysteries, puzzles that can take centuries to solve, if they’re ever solved at all. And with the Copiale Cipher, we have an especially interesting situation.

For over two centuries, this cryptic script lay dormant, holding its secrets close and confounding all attempts to unveil its message. Its mere existence raised a myriad of tantalizing questions. Who wrote it? How did they create a cipher that the best modern codebreakers couldn’t solve?

But, in 2011, the cipher was finally broken, giving us an opportunity to hold up centuries of speculation against the actual answer. Let’s just say when the cipher was finally broken, no one was expecting what happened next.