Talk:Great Cipher

2009-04-14

Rofflebuster

Links to Nicolas de Catinat and Vivien de Bulonde do not work. The description of The Man in the Iron Mask was very well done, otherwise. The last paragraph of Technical nature seemed to be random (though important) facts stuck together; that can be organized better. Other than that, this page works well; could other examples of the cipher’s use be added?Scatter89 (talk) 03:01, 14 April 2009 (UTC)

a comment

Overall the article seems to be in pretty good shape. Would it be possible to add part of the cipher list to the article, as in a brief example of how to read the ciphertext to convert it to plaintext? I think adding a simple example and part of the system used to take plaintext and turn it into ciphertext would improve this article, and bring it into line as what other ciphers have established as a consistent layout. The changes are good improvements on the article's shape. Sj31 (talk) 04:04, 14 April 2009 (UTC)

comment

Really like all the additions you've made to the article. The organization has really improved since its first form, making it substantially more readable. Could you add an example of some text, its enciphered form, and then how to go about deciphering it/what you would need in order to do so? Also, I'm not very well versed in common Wikipedia citation formatting, but the references seem a little muddled. Ignore that if the method you used is by Wikipedia standards. Good stuff overall. --Arjun X3nodox (talk) 04:37, 14 April 2009 (UTC)

Examples

I cannot find specific examples of encrypting/decrypting Great Cipher messages, but the picture I uploaded should clarify how the cipher works: you simply look up what you are trying to say and write the representative number. Decoding is just looking up each number group. How the cipher encodes isn't that novel so I don't think examples are crucial. Rofflebuster (talk) 23:45, 14 April 2009 (UTC)

Which "Grand Chiffre"?

It isn't clear if this article is about the Grand Chiffre of the 16th century, or the Grand Chiffre of the 19th century, in use during the Napoleonic Wars in Spain. The latter code was cracked well before 1893 and was influential in the Coalition victory in 1811. auntieruth (talk) 16:31, 28 January 2015 (UTC)

Clarification

With 'a codegroup that meant to ignore the previous codegroup.' - perhaps quote-marks or a slight rephrasing, to clarify the verbal grouping (or whatever the technical/grammatical term is). Jackiespeel (talk) 10:09, 8 May 2016 (UTC)

I found this clear enough to roughly understand. Only what constitues a "codegroup" would need to be defined first. From the explanations given and the "les ennemis"-example I guess the numbers representing syllables were mostly grouped representing the original words... --BjKa (talk) 12:26, 14 August 2018 (UTC)

The French article says "ignore previous syllable"... --BjKa (talk) 12:33, 14 August 2018 (UTC)

Correction

"in one nomenclature, 131 out of 711 code numbers stood for e": This is incorrect and should be removed. The referenced source, albeit in a different edition, reads as follows:
"Marmont's code consisted of numbers from 1 to 150. (...) A portion of a message sent by one of Marmont's Staff is written out in 711 code numbers. (...) Fully 131 of those 711 code numbers stand for e (...) The cipher, however, allocates nine different code numbers to the writing of this most common letter." <ref>Mark Urban, The Man Who Broke Napoleon's Codes, faber and faber 2001, ISBN 0-571-20513-5, page 108 </ref>
This means that the cipher featured only nine different code numbers for e. The message just happened to contain 131 e's in a total of 711 letters (which indeed is in line with statistical expectations). Furthermore, I doubt if the cipher described by Urban in this passage can be called a "Great Cipher" at all: The vast majority of code numbers appear to stand for single letters which is not typical for a Great Cipher.
-- unsigned by User:KomischerOpa, 5 October 2017‎

Status

What should be added is the current status of the code. The article currently says: "after it fell out of current use many documents in the French archives were unreadable." -- Until when? Still today? Do some remain obscure, as apparently many different lists were used? --BjKa (talk) 12:26, 14 August 2018 (UTC)

310 340

I strongly suspect the General would never have been allowed to walk the battlement of the Marcioly fortress unguarded, so l suspect the code phrases above translate to "armed sentry."Glammazon (talk) 19:04, 13 December 2019 (UTC)