The Cipher Solver Series is a collection of cipher puzzle books, written by D. H. Bernhardt. Each of the books teaches about various cipher techniques and then provides examples that help the reader master them. So far, there are 3 volumes released, and a fourth one is on its way.
Each book in the series starts with a short history on ciphers. Then, it provides 2 chapters on how to encode and decode specific ciphers, followed by 2 chapters with puzzle-examples. Finally, the books end with hints and solutions.
Volume 1 and 2 focus on the so-called Route and Rail ciphers, while volume 3 introduces us to the Pen and Polybius ciphers. The former are examples of transposition ciphers, those are ciphers in which the symbols are preserved, but their order is scrambled. The latter are examples of substitution ciphers, those are ciphers in which the original symbols are replaced with new ones.
Rail Cipher Example
The following example of a Rail cipher is taken out of the first book in the series. Let’s say the task is to encode the phrase “Beware of the attack from the North”. To do that, we create a rectangular grid and starting from the top left corner, we enter the letters of the phrase in a zigzag manner. We add some “X” letters at the end as padding, if necessary. This results in a route-like structure inside the grid, consisting of alternating diagonal rails.
Then, if we read the letters line by line, top to bottom, we get the encryption:
BOCT TXEE FAKM HRHX XWRA TFOE OXXA TRNX
To decrypt an encoded phrase, we just need to determine the dimensions of the grid and the size of the rails of the route. You can practice your route ciphering skills with the following puzzle from the book:
The transposition ciphers are fun but quite easy to solve, especially the Route ciphers. They all have been chosen with identical grid widths, so the only unknowns there are the route rails sizes. I recommend getting just one of the first two volumes, since the novelty in the second one lies mostly in the introductory chapter.
The two substitution ciphers are harder to solve and require more careful analysis. However, it is worth noting that the decoding procedure works identically for both of them, even though the ciphers use different encryption symbols.
Pig Cipher encoding of “BEWARE OF ATTACK FROM THE NORTH”
Polybus Cipher encoding of “BEWARE OF ATTACK FROM THE NORTH”
Despite the remarks above, I think the books are educational, well-structured, and would be engaging to new cipher enthusiasts. I hope once the author completes his series, he considers combining the content in one larger edition divided into sections based on cipher type, such as transposition and substitution.
a great presentation on various ciphers
engaging educational chapters in the book introductions
the route ciphers could have used various grid widths
the substitution ciphers decoding works identically
“The Password Game” is a new web puzzle/game by Neal Agarwal, a Brooklyn-based software developer, popular for various fun projects hosted on his website Neil.Fun.
pon opening the game webpage, you are given the seemingly simple task of creating a password. The password, in order to be strong enough, needs to satisfy a list of conditions. The first few of them are common; there is a minimum length and special characters should be included. However, after complying with every rule on the screen, a new one appears, more complex and bizarre than the previous one. This forces you to constantly make changes to the increasingly lengthy password, while trying to resolve any conflicts that appear.
The Password Game is quite difficult. On our first try, we failed the game after not giving in a timely manner a bug emoji 🐛 to a chicken emoji 🐔 inside our 70+ character password, while simultaneously looking for a YouTube video of the exact runtime of 19 minutes and 34 seconds. Hopefully, you can do better.
If you enjoy “The Password Game”, you can take a look at Neil’s other creations, such as “The Absurd Trolley Problems”, which offers sinister twists on the famous Trolley Problem.
Blaž Urban Gracar is a Slovenian artist. He is a musician (composing music for the theater, producing left-field electronica, playing keyboards in a rock band), writer (publishing poetry, prose and comic books), filmmaker (editing and animating short films), and game designer (mostly creating puzzly solo games). He lives by the sea with his partner, her daughter, two cats, a dog and a turtle.
Interview
Q. Hello, Blaž!
A. Hi, Puzzle Prime! Thanks for featuring me.
Q. I know you are quite a busy person, I’m glad to have you here.
A. Never too busy to talk with friends! But yes, my calendar has become quite crammed lately. I spend most of my days making music, which is basically my main source of income. I compose music for films and theater, but I also make strange electronic music and play keyboards in a rock band. Besides music and game-making, I also write – I have published a few books – and I make videos. Lately this means making animated shorts, but I graduated as a film editor, so I have made or collaborated on several films.
Q. Sounds great! I would first like to focus on your puzzles though, specifically your first published book, LOK. What was the inspiration behind it?
A. When I was making my previous puzzle book, Lineon, which is sadly still unfinished, I started corresponding with Stephen Lavelle, better known as Increpare, who made a bunch of great and acclaimed puzzle games, among them Stephen’s Sausage Roll, which is praised as one of the best puzzle games of all time. I sent him Lineon and he responded with a set of paper puzzles of his own, which were word-search puzzles using the Toki Pona language. Toki Pona is a constructed language that I don’t understand, so solving these puzzles felt very other-worldly. I started thinking how would such word-searches work if they used a completely made up set of words, which would have meaning only inside these puzzles. If we say “Apple” for example, we mean a red and round fruit. What if a word like “Lok” meant that you could erase a letter and that’s it? This idea felt very interesting to me and I quickly prototyped a puzzle which already used a lot of words that are present in the final book. It then took me about a year before I returned to this idea and saw potential for something greater.
Q. How long did it take you to finish LOK and what was the hardest part?
A. It took me a little more than 6 months to make LOK. I thought it would take me maybe 3 months, as I saw LOK as a smaller project at first, something to make in between bigger projects, so I pushed to finish it as soon as possible and made the first draft in about 2 months. I now see this as a smart approach – to rush the first draft – as it then took me 4 more months to perfect everything and make it really shine. I think it’s really important to have everything in place and see it for what it is, even if it’s not finely tuned yet. The last 10% were the hardest, but this was expected. It took me weeks to decide on some miniature details, like the correct font for titles, or the alignment of chapter artworks. Everything needed to match the vision, and it was hard to be certain what is correct in some aspects. But I’m very happy with how it all came together in the end.
Blaž making music
Q. How do you approach making a puzzle?
A. Well, apart from some rare tributes and try-outs of some already established genres, I generally like to make up my own system of rules, within which I then create a bunch of puzzles. I rarely do one-offs. So, when I first start exploring a new system I made up, I just throw things at the wall and see what sticks. These puzzles are usually ugly, random and without any real a-ha moments, but with them, I kind of expose most of what the system is capable of. I then re-do the puzzles that have interesting interactions or ideas, try to make them more elegant, guided and beautiful, but I also retain some of these early puzzles as they were, because they already work quite fine. So, after I internalize all the ins and outs of a system and start working on proper puzzles, my process is usually thinking of an idea that I would like the solver to find out and then kind of build a pathway for them. I try to think like the solver and how they would react to certain insights and deductions. Basically, I want the solver to have fun and to blow his mind every few puzzles, haha.
Q. How does creating puzzles differ from creating in these other fields?
A. Music, films, prose, all of these art forms are kind of direct compared to puzzle-making. They communicate something in a direct way, even if they are metaphorical or dream-like. Puzzles, on the other hand, work on two levels. One is the first impression: how they look at first sight, if they are symmetrical, big or small, if they intimidate or seem easy. The second level is the hidden meaning of a puzzle, its solution and how you get to it. It feels like designing an onion, where you want to put as many surprises into different layers as possible. You also need to be a lot kinder to the consumer of your puzzles compared to other art forms. You have to respect their intelligence and patience, make the system and a puzzle as mechanically sturdy as possible, because ultimately they need to “get” your message. You certainly need to be a lot more pragmatic.
Q. You come from Slovenia. Is there an active puzzle scene in Slovenia and do you hang out with other puzzle designers?
A. There is no puzzle scene in Slovenia that I know of. It’s strange, because ever since I got serious about game design, I feel like I create in a bubble. When I make music, people around me respond to it, they come to concerts, they buy CDs. Even my books, which are a bit more niche, find some audience in Slovenia. But my games or puzzles don’t really connect with anyone around me. It’s like I live a double life, one with friends and family, and the other just on the computer, which I use to communicate with puzzle lovers from around the world. This is how I got in touch with you as well. When I published LOK, I sold 95% of books to people outside of Slovenia, people I don’t know, people from Europe, America, Asia. It’s strange, but it also feels nice to at least have an audience somewhere, even for my small and weird little games.
Lineon Puzzle Book and Sountrack
Q. What are your next puzzle projects?
A. Based on the response for LOK, I already have many ideas for the continuation of the LOK story. The main one is the digital adaptation of LOK which I’m already working on with Raindrinker, a talented creator from Spain I met online. We hope to publish the game in 2023. Besides LOK, I might return to Lineon and start working on it again from the ground up, with the experience I gained in the meantime. There are some other ideas that I’m bouncing around in my head, maybe also a continuation of my solo card game “All Is Bomb” in some form. Let’s see what happens – I love designing games, so something will probably appear in a short while.
LOK is a new original puzzle book, created by the musical and visual artist Blaž Gracar. It is his first published work in this domain and considering the attention to detail put into puzzle design, solutions system, and illustrations, I would say that’s an impressive start, and I am looking forward to his future endeavors.
The puzzle mechanics of LOK are quite innovative, and despite my long-time puzzle history, I cannot relate them to anything I have seen before. Each puzzle consists of a grid partially filled with letters and the goal is to black out all cells by marking certain words and then triggering their effects. For example, if one has the letters L, O, K in consecutive cells and marks the resulting word LOK, then they must black out the cells of all three letters plus an additional cell by choice.
There are 5 more trigger words that appear in the book, but since it is the solver’s challenge to figure out what their effects are, I will not spoil them for you. All I can say is that each of them works uniquely and sometimes solving the puzzles gives the feeling of planning ahead the moves of a chess game.
In addition to the funny-sounding trigger words, new chapters introduce various other mechanics, building upon the previous ones and making the puzzles progressively more complex. You will encounter ”conductors“ that let you connect separated letters, “clouds” that let you black out a given configuration of cells, and other interesting concepts.
The book is split into 12 parts: 8 chapters with a total of 80 puzzles, 2 expansions with 10 extra puzzles, Rules that explain all the concepts in the book that have been left to the solver to discover, and Solutions that provide the answers to all puzzles. The parts are separated by beautifully illustrated pages of cute worm-like creatures, called ”Loks”, performing various activities, such as flying in space or working in a factory, on 10 additional solvable grids. Of course, the author could assemble the book just with all the 100 puzzles inside, and it still would have been great, but that extra touch of art is what makes LOK even more special for me.
While the market is currently flooded with all kinds of derivative logic books filled with computer generated Sudokus and Kakuros, LOK differentiates itself as an ingenious passion project of someone who simply wants to contribute to the world of puzzling. You can get the digital version of LOK for free from the author’s website by clicking the button below. If you like, there you can also purchase the physical edition and solve the puzzles the way they are intended to be solved, with pencil and eraser on paper. For those who prefer to keep their puzzle books in immaculate condition, a transparent draw board is included in the package. Thanks!
appropriate for all ages
more than 90 carefully hand-crafted puzzles
surprising mechanics taught through practical solving
Who says science jokes are not funny? Below you can see some of the best Biology jokes we know, along with short explanations of the more obscure of them.
Do you know any funny Biology jokes yourself? Let us know in the comment section below.
Two blood cells met and fell in love. Alas, it was all in vein.
Explanation A clever wordplay with the words “vein” and “vain”.
Pavlov is sitting at a pub, enjoying a pint. Suddenly the phone rings and he jumps up shouting, “Oh no, I forgot to feed the dog!”
Explanation Pavlov is a physiologist who used to ring a bell every time he fed his dogs. After some time, he noticed that ringing the bell by its own caused salivation in his dogs, even if he didn’t offer them any food.
“I wish I was adenine, then I could get paired with U.”
Explanation In RNA (Ribonucleic acid), adenine (A) makes a “base pair” with uracil (U).
“What did one sister chromatid say to the other?” “Stop copying me.”
Explanation “Sister chromatids” are two identical chromatids (replicated chromosomes), which are joined with each other.
What does DNA stand for? National Dyslexia Association.
Explanation Dyslexia is a reading disorder, which causes various troubles during reading, even for people with normal intelligence. If read correctly, the abbreviation for National Dyslexia Association should be NDA, not DNA.
“What did the stimulus do to the neuron after they got married?” “It carried it over the threshold.”
Explanation The “threshold” is the depolarization level over which a stimulus must carry the neuron, in order for an action potential to be fired.
An infectious disease enters a bar. The bartender says, “We don’t serve your kind here”. The disease replies, “Well, you are not a very good host.”
Explanation The word “host” has several meanings, one of which is “a person who accommodates guests”, and another one is “an animal or a plant in which a parasite lives”.
The scientists have just found the gene for shyness. They would have found it earlier, but it was hiding behind two other genes.
“What is the fastest way to determine the sex of a chromosome?” “Pull down its genes.”
Explanation Word play with the words “genes” and “jeans”.
One lab rat says to another: “I’ve got my scientist so well trained that every time I push the buzzer, he brings me a snack.”
“Girl, you are so hot, you denature my proteins.”
Explanation When things get hot, proteins denature, i.e. lose their shape and structure.
“What did Gregor Mendel say when he founded genetics?” “Woopea!”
Explanation Gregor Mendel made his experiments using pea plants.
“What is sleeping brain’s favorite rock band?” “REM”
Explanation REM stands for “rapid eye movement”, which occurs during sleep.
With the huge success of real-life Escape Rooms all around the world, more and more puzzle manufacturers have been trying to recreate the experience with their solve-at-home kits. ThinkFun‘s latest offering, Escape the Room: The Cursed Dollhouse, is possibly the closest you can get to the real thing, so far.
The setup of “The Cursed Dollhouse” is quick and simple. Within a few minutes you get to build a cardboard model of a dollhouse, turn on the recommended soundtrack of creepy music, and light up a few candles to get into the right mood. Once you do this, you can start reading the story of the house and unravel its mysteries.
You begin the adventure in the living room, where you have to solve several puzzles, involving a broken bookshelf, a dusty carpet, and a spiderweb on the wall. Then, you make your way through the rest of the house: kitchen, bathroom, bedroom, until you get to the attic. Each of the rooms you visit contains multiple objects, including hidden ones, which you need to use in order to solve its three challenges. Once you solve a challenge, you get a cryptic symbol which you must enter in the “solution wheel”. Get the three symbols correctly and proceed to the next room.
As you progress, you will encounter various puzzles, including many mechanical ones. You will have to cut, fold, entangle, and do all kinds of fun activities. The puzzles are logical and satisfying to solve. There were one or two which my group found a bit confusing, but fortunately, ThinkFun has created a website, where players can get small hints without spoiling the entire puzzles. In the end, all participants were very happy with the time we spent playing together.
While the price of “The Cursed Dollhouse” is a bit steep, the game provides a lengthy and immersive experience which justifies the cost. It also can be replayed by another group of people using the provided printable forms from the official website.
1-4 players, 13 years and up
over 30 puzzles to solve within 2.5 hours
realistic small-scale Escape Room experience
puzzles are re-printable from the official website
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