"A Cryptogram is something that is used by the Military, it's sort of like morse-code." Laura smiled, she was hoping that Professor Hadley would recognised that she had been learning her Arithmancy. "It's used to carry secrets because it makes it harder to intercept than what normal writing would do." Laura smiled. "It's like in world war two Bletchley Park was used by the British to crack Morse-code and Cryptograms." Laura stopped there, she was hoping it was right.

"Not pieces of puzzles, but technically a cryptogram is a puzzle itself," Hadley nodded.

Well that was true too, in the broadest of perspectives. "I'd buy that, yes. Arithmancy, Ancient Runes, even Divination. Anything that involves interpreting patterns of some sort, is indeed a cryptogram."

"Cryptograms are definitely used by Military services! And props to you for mentioning its use in history!" Yay for random history knowledge of events that happened decades ago.

"So there's a few things to keep in mind when solving cryptic messages, which include to pay attention to how common letters or symbols occur. One letter words. Sentence structure."

"I have books available for you to borrow on more expansive history of Cryptograms, as well as more details and hints on solving them, but for now, I have one for you."

Hadley flicked her wand as the following appeared on the board:

XOBWEIXSDZ DXS CQ AOXDWBDXP!

"Write it down in your notes as you work through solving it and let me know when you get it. A hint to get you started is that the D in the puzzle equals C."

Laura decided that she was going to try and work on this cryptogram and she hoped that she could work it out she had been practicing on doing Arithmancy and now was the big test to see if she could do it or not, she was hoping to show her head of house how much she had changed since she had started at Hogwarts.



Laura looked at her work and smiled. "Professor I think I've got it but I'm not sure." Laura was hoping she had but well she would have to wait and see if the Professor said it was right or not.

Well cryto meant hidden or something and gram is usually used in annagrams... wait she was thinking nonsense. So Sarah just wrote down some notes and listened to what the others had to say.

IF d = C, then so far Sarah had
And so Sarah went until she had the final answer

That...hadn't been entirely what she had meant - and Kurumi really REALLY did not want to compare Divination to cryptograms because it somehow made them seem less interesting - Kurumi found herself simply nodding her head. Yep...way out of left field like she had thought. She needed to sort out her thoughts better...NEWT studying was beginning to get to her.

Anyway, the Gryffindor was soon back to note taking and jotting down bits and pieces of new information before class moved on.
Ooooooooooh a puzzle!

Kurumi's quill moved eagerly over her parchment as she wrote down the puzzle at the top of her parchment. The D in the puzzle equals a C? Hmm...interesting... Chewing on her lower lip, the seventh year began to work.


Pausing here for a moment, Kurumi tried to see what sort of pattern there was...which certainly was not coming to her right away. All Professor Hadley had given them was a clue where one of the letters in the alphabet had moved backwards one space. A B C D...where D moved back to C....and doing that with the other letters...well...let's just say that no words were actually being formed. But then she glanced at the textbook and at the three letter word combinations...Hmmm...could it be? The Gryffindor ventured a go.

Hmm...she WAS making some progress...assuming that she was right with her three letter word and if she was then there really was only one option for the two letter word...so Kurumi ventured a go with that possibility as well.

Hmmm...that didn't get her very far at all... Glancing at her textbook again, Kurumi decided to test the whole ETAOIN method listed there. She had already used the E in her two letter word and A was already translated...which left the T there not being used yet. Oh...what if... OF COURSE! Merlin why hadn't she done these steps in order instead of just jumping in?

Yep...she should have used the book's steps in order. Oops. Hehe.

He had already scribbled down the incantation, so he simply circled it when his aunt indicated it was correct. Then, underneath, he wrote COMPOUND NUMBERS. But... Why is she talking about cryptograms? I want to see some curse breaking! The first year was unsettled by this. She was fooling him and he didn't like it.



Wait. Did she just say.. props? As in, his Auntie Faith? He put his hand over his eyes and sunk a bit lower in his seat. How embarrassing.

But thankfully it appeared that hardly any students had noticed. Ooo, research books! He would definitely see if he could snag one after the lesson was over. But for now, it was time to try to solve this cypher!

His first step was to copy the text into his notes. Then, he wrote D-->C and replaced each D with a C. Er... now what?

He stared at his parchment, the ink constantly shifting colors. Slightly distracting... Focus! What do you know about Aunt Fina? She would probably make this about Arithmancy, no? He counted the letters in the words. Well, Arithmancy fits for the first word, plus the D goes to C clue works. Where does that leave me with the rest?

He filled in the rest of what he could based on the letters in the first word.


Well, that last word has to be 'practical,' I think. Auntie is always harping on about how her topic is useful in the real word, not just some abstract theory. He filled in the P and L. And.. the only word that fits in the last spot... It's 'be,' I think. Yeah, and that Q isn't used anywhere else, so it has to be the vowel E, O, or U!

He wrote the word above the symbol CQ. "Done!" he exclaimed excitedly, circling the answer and putting his quill down. So what if he hadn't done it the way he was supposed to? She hadn't given them rules, right?

Lex began to grumble when the professor started talking about some word that sounded too complicated to be understandable. It should have been illegal to have first years in a class like this. How did anyone expect them to know anything???

She scowled a bit as the woman began talking about some books that she had that could help. At first she thought to argue this but then she remembered that Ancient Runes class where Kurumi told her to look in the textbook and suddenly everything was clear. Okay. So she'd give it a try.

Alexa looked at the jumble of letters on the board then flipped open the book. Quill held just a bit from the parchment she began gnawing on her lip as she tried to figure it out.



She looked to the book and began reading for a bit before trying again.



She Squinted her eyes and her brows furrowed in concentration. It actually seemed like she could do it and she wanted to give it a shot. Lex stared a little harder at the letters while mentally trying to switch them out in her head. Slowly the answer hit her.

"Yes!" She blurted, momentarily forgetting where she was. It was just...SHEACTUALLYFOUNDOUTTHEANSWER!!

Yeah, Penelope didn't really know the answers to any of the questions, so she just sort of sat there in her seat kinda listening, but mostly just hoping this spell they were talking about wasn't something they were going to practice today. She didn't really feel like failing after all. And so far, things seemed to be going her way.

They had to figure out this crypto-thingy now though, but at least it wasn't a spell. She just had to use her brain a little, which was something she had far more success with than using her wand.

So she scribbled the random letters down, as well as the hint that D meant C for it, and started working.

SPOILER!!: Penelope's parchment

XOBWEIXSDZ DXS CQ AOXDWBDXP!

D = C

XOBWEIXSCZ CXS CQ AOXCWBCXP!

So...now what? That big long one looked really hard so she moved on to the smaller ones. What three-letter words did she know of that started with a C? There was "can".......and that was the only one she could think of off the top of her head. So she decided to try it and switched the other letters out in the rest of the words.

SPOILER!!: Penelope's parchment

AOBWEIANCZ CAN CQ AOACWBCAP!

Well that helped...a little. She...sorta knew what the first one now was? Penelope eyed it for a moment before deciding to give it a try.

SPOILER!!: Penelope's parchment

ARITHMANCY CAN CQ ARACWICAP!

That filled in a lot! And...she supposed she could guess the two-letter one now? There was only one two letter word she could think of that would work with this.

SPOILER!!: Penelope's parchment

ARITHMANCY CAN BE ARACWICAP!

And now she decided to just run off the alphabet in her head to figure out these last few letters. One of them was bound to just sound right, right? So yeah. A, B, C, D, E, F...etc, etc...hm? Maybe this one would work?

And once that one was in place, the last letters became obvious.

SPOILER!!: Penelope's parchment

ARITHMANCY CAN BE PRACTICAL!

Success! She'd figured it out.

Hopefully, at least. It was very possible she messed up somewhere somehow, so she wouldn't be too excited yet.

Ira had wanted to answer the cryptogram question. But seeing some others answer the same thing that she had wanted to tell, she let it remain and quietly listened. This class was definitely going to be interesting with all the curse breaking and the cryptograms!

And ooh! A puzzle for them! Yay! Ira quickly cast glance at the book on the cryptogram and then scribbled and copied down the random letters. And now.. time to solve it.

She pored over the book, and thought about it. D was C. Alright. First do that.


First step done. Now on to the next step. This was becoming easy for Ira. And exciting too. Poring over the book given, she read it with focus, and tried her best. And following the steps, she derived the answer. Woot!

Jory nodded as Professor Hadley corrected him and jotted down some notes. When he was done, he copied down the cryptogram on the board and began to work on it,keeping in mind the clue that was given.

The badger occasionally paused, looking for patterns then continued on working until he finally got it.

...

Really? They were to decrypt the cryptograms? But.... BUT PROFESSOR? Ugh, that's it. Kat wanted to protested. Her head was aching and she just had to... DO THIS? Hadley, have a heart right now. Kat didn't want to lose points though, which is why she just obeyed the Arithmancy professor.

Grabbing a piece of parchment and her quill and inkwell, the Slytherin started to decode... or decrypt the hidden text. Scanning through the book made it easier though.

....

........

................

Done. Kat's head was pounding when she finished. She shut her eyes close so that she can breathe in and out calmly. Urgh... She could feel her vein throbbing. She didn't like this.

Minerva looked around as people talked about cryptograms. She was confused already and class had just started off. Why in four terms was she not feeling more confident of this subject. She just wanted to sneak out of class, but knew she could never do that. She was on the opposite side of the room, plus Oakey would probably be a jerk and announce her leaving or something. Now they had to solve a puzzle. Min looked at the letters that were placed in front of them. Then she went to her book to try and see if she could figure it out.



Now looking at her book she tried to figure out what to do first. Looking at the letters it was just all confusing. She tried to see if moving letters around would work:



Looking at it Minerva checked just to see she had what she thought was right. "Arithmancy can be practical." She mumbled to herself. Well that did sound like a puzzle answer that Professor Hadley would have them solve.

So, Ethan did not know what the incantation was for finding numbers associated with curses. His only experiences with Arithmancy at Beauxbatons had only been with numerical divination, not curse-breaking. But when cryptograms were brought up, the boy's interest was piqued. He loved puzzles.. and they were going to do one? The 16 year old's face lit up.

Ethan copied down the puzzle on his parchment, listened to the hint, and began figuring out the answer.



Finished... Well, that was sorta fun.. would they be doing more? Ethan looked up hopefully at Hadley as he sat back in his seat.

Eliza was pretty intrigued at the mention of cryptograms. She liked trying to solve things, so this should be fun for her. She didn't know much history on them, so she let the others answer. Once the professor had put a sample on the board, she dove right in.

Okay, and D=C.... right. Does every letter move back a space? I should check the book first. She flipped it open and began following the instructions.

SPOILER!!: Progress

XOBWEIXSCZ CXS CQ AOXCWBCXP!

What's a three letter word that starts with C? ....Can?

AOBWEIANCZ CAN CQ AOACWBCAP

D=C , X=A , S=N

Umm...okay now what? This was harder than she'd hoped for.

SPOILER!!: Progress

AOBWEIANCZ CAN CQ AOAWBCAP

There are no contractions so, that doesn't help here... Frequency analysis using ...ETAOIN? Okay.. W and B are in there twice each...so they could be E or T? Clearly she was not having her best Ravenclaw moment. If there is a real H in here, it should go with another letter. So whatever is H will be next to whatever is likely T or C or S... Um, are there any letters that are by each other? BW and WB...reverse-able? She sighed in frustration. She'd never been good at that muggle game show The Wheel of Fortune either. It was an ancient show by now, but her dad collected all sorts of odd things.

She continued to work on the puzzle, hoping she wouldn't run out of time before the class moved on. Why can't I think straight today? she wondered irritably.

Oh, great.

So not only was she expected to figure out Arithmancy, but she was also expected to figure it out in some weird, foreign-type language. What gives?!

Sierra copied down the random letters.

XOBWEIXSDZ DXS CQ AOXDWBDXP!

...and all she had to start with was D equals C?! What about the other twenty-four letters?! What did THEY equal?

Sierra changed all the D's to C's.

XOBWEIXSCZ CXS CQ AOXCWBCXP!

...and then she consulted the books, because...what else could she do? She read all about ETAOIN and how some letters appear more often than others. This was hurting her head! She began counting how many times each letter appeared in the words.

There sure were a lot of X's. Sierra marked E's, T's, and A's above all the X's and then added a little question mark to the end. There were no contractions in this word. Merlin, Hadley! Sierra moved on to the one three-letter word in the puzzle. There was an X in it, but...that wasn't helpful.

On a whim, Sierra counted the letters in the first word. Hmm. What would Hadley give them a message about? HA! Arithmancy! Sierra counted the letters again. Heh. She wrote the word Arithmancy above the first group of letters. So now she knew the X's meant A's, and she went through the word and marked those, too.

ARITHMANCY CAS CQ AOADWBDAP!

Arithmancy...cas? Cas... Cas... CAN! Arithmancy can...what?

She began to match up letters based on what she'd figured out about the first two words. Finally, she ended up with:



She was so excited to have figured it out that she put a ton of exclamation points behind her answer.

Dylan just looked at the jumble of letters that were in front of him they had to solve that thing? was the professor ok? *blink* *blink* But he had to do it seeing as he looked around and everyone got stuck in faster than you could say DJ and that was pretty quick! Even Alexa was there scribbling away.. so he got started too



He looked at the second word that began with C... it just had to be CAN... right? So he changed the letters to that meaning that X was A and S was N.. changed those letters too!



Now the third word.. had to be.. can IN, can IT, can IS.. no.. no.. NO!!! "Man this is too hard!!" he mumbled as he hit his desk without meaning to sending ink spots all over his parchments some huge ones other tiny ones.. he started playing with the tiny ones as he looked at the word.. then it came to him.. can.. BE?! that sounded perfect so he went onto change that



He got so excited that he kissed the parchment getting ink spots all over his nose and lips... but he had no idea with no mirror in the room.. so he carried on working with the ink on his face. But he was now stuck!! there were no more letters to change or a few hints at what that word could be.. he looked around the classroom.. he needed to be a claw to figure this one out.. it was giving him a headache already! He looked around and saw Ethan scribbling away as was Minnie.. they were claw and claw-like. He sighed and went back to his parchment.. and went to the first word.. suddenly noticing ANC... wel in a word C.. usually came before.. Y? was that it.. was the Z a Y.. he decided to test out this theory



It sure did look right.. now that word began with a and ended with ANCY.. "wait a minute!! Doesnt that look an awful like ArithmANCY?!" he mumbled to no-one in particular, well lets go test it out he thought



"YEAH!! WOOHOO!!" he called out before knowing that he could probably change the letters in the last word too according to Arithmancy.. he hadnt even realised that he may have caused a disturbance in the class as he started speedily changing the letters in the last word getting more and more excited as they started revealing themselves to him now.



So he now had just two more letters remaining.. he stared at the first word getting more and more excited knowing that he was very close to figuring out the word.. PRACTICAL? it sure did look like it!!



"Arithmancy can be practical?!" he then chuckled "Yup.. trust you professor to come up with that one!!" he said to her grinning like there was no tomorrow.. he had actually figured out the code.. so did that mean that he was like a claw? well he was pretty smart to figure that one out that was for sure!!

Vickers leaned forward in his seat as the Professor launched into the discussion of these cryptograms. He began leafing through the books as the discussion continued, then looked up when the puzzle was posted on the board. He reached out for his parchment and pressed his lips together, trying to decipher the message.




He finally leaned back in his seat and stared at his final answer. well heck he hoped that was right. Although this may work well for Muggles he couldnt push the thought out of his mind that Wizards can easily unravel this with a spell without needs for ciphers, of which Muggles are highly dependent on.

Harvey had always enjoyed Arithmancy but now he came across something he hadnt done before and it was solving that cryptic message, that was interesting for sure! So once given the go ahead and the first clue he set to work on it using his Ravenclaw mind!



Harvey then sat back as he looked at his solved cryptogram, he was definitely a claw for sure as he solved this in no time at all. He looked around as he saw that many others had also solved it and were now waiting for the class to move on.

His eyes then fell on Ella, and without meaning to just looking at her made him smile and so that Professor Hadley wouldnt tell him off or even Ella.. he looked back at his parchment with a BIG grin on his face. He was glad that she was sitting near him, cause he could now glance at her occasionally without Professor Hadley knowing.

Alex hated this part of the lesson, when they had to actually DO stuff themselves. Blehhh. This was so annoying. He thought this class was about numbers, no letters! They were two separate things and should never be mixed like this. How muggles survived algebra and stuff, he would never know.

Right, complaining about it wouldn't help him solve this, so he flipped open his book. Ok, so the first thing was to look for 1 letter words...well, cool. There WERE no one letter words. That didn't help him at all.

He skimmed the page...there were no contractions either, so he decided to look at the two and three letter words in the puzzle. Based off his knowledge of how many letters were really common ones, he could start guessing and work from there.

SPOILER!!: Parchment and work

XOBWEIXSDZ DXS CQ AOXDWBDXP!

D = C

XOBWEIXSCZ CXS CQ AOXCWBCXP

Second word HAS to be CAN

Hmm, this actually wasn't as hard as he expected it to be. Now that he had the middle word figured out, he could plug in those two letters, X and S, and hopefully be able to figure out some words from there.

SPOILER!!: Problem solving yay!

XOBWEIXSDZ DXS CQ AOXDWBDXP!

D = C

XOBWEIXSCZ CXS CQ AOXCWBCXP

Second word HAS to be CAN

AOBWEIANCZ CAN CQ AOACWBCAP

Now he needed to figure out what that second word was...there weren't many that went with CAN and actually made sense. It wasn't a question, so "can be" didn't make sense. "Can it" didn't make sense either. So that meant that it was probably "can be" right? Well, he'd try it out.

SPOILER!!: Guesswork!

XOBWEIXSDZ DXS CQ AOXDWBDXP!

D = C

XOBWEIXSCZ CXS CQ AOXCWBCXP

Second word HAS to be CAN

AOBWEIANCZ CAN CQ AOACWBCAP

CAN BE?

AOBWEIANCZ CAN BE AOACWBCAP

The only thing annoying about that was that there weren't any other C's or Q's in the puzzle. So he really had no clue where to go now. Maybe if he just stared at the paper, the answer would come to him...so he stared. And stared. He listened to people scribbling anxiously around him and only felt his anxiety heighten, since he had no ide--WAIT. THE FIRST WORD. HE KNEW THE FIRST WORD. It made total since, seeing as how they were IN arithmancy class--why hadn't he seen that earlier? Good going, Greingoth.

He quickly matched the letters up with his newfound discovery. It fit!

SPOILER!!: Ta da! A breakthrough!

XOBWEIXSDZ DXS CQ AOXDWBDXP!

D = C

XOBWEIXSCZ CXS CQ AOXCWBCXP

Second word HAS to be CAN

AOBWEIANCZ CAN CQ AOACWBCAP

CAN BE?

AOBWEIANCZ CAN BE AOACWBCAP

ARITHMANCY CAN BE AOACWBCAP

Match up discovered letters from first word to last word...

ARITHMANCY CAN BE ARACTICAP

Now it was just that last part. Hmmm. What could it be? He tried to think of words off the top of his head that matched that letter combination, but couldn't think of anything. Oh, wait! Yes he could! After about 2 minutes of struggling, he remembered the correct word, and it made total sense in the puzzle. He'd done it!!

SPOILER!!: Final answer

XOBWEIXSDZ DXS CQ AOXDWBDXP!

D = C

XOBWEIXSCZ CXS CQ AOXCWBCXP

Second word HAS to be CAN

AOBWEIANCZ CAN CQ AOACWBCAP

CAN BE?

AOBWEIANCZ CAN BE AOACWBCAP

ARITHMANCY CAN BE AOACWBCAP

Match up discovered letters from first word to last word...

ARITHMANCY CAN BE ARACTICAP

ARITHMANCY CAN BE PRACTICAL

Fantastic! Now Hannah had to figure out some sort of code puzzle thing? She hated puzzles. This was the reason why she had not attended many of these classes before. Still she knew that she did not have a choice if she wanted to impress her parents. She listened to everything that the professor had to say and made notes because she knew that she would be counting on them later.

She figured the best way to start was to use the hint that Hadley gave them. Ok here goes nothing she thought to herself! Ok so maybe it wasn't that bad after all. Something seemed to be clicking in her head anyways.




Ok so what did the rest of the letters mean? Ugh! Her moment of happiness went out the window really quick. She opened up her book and tried to make sense of everything in it, but all she managed to do was give herself a headache. Come on Hannah...you have to be able to figure this out. She read about ETAOIN and the laws about the letters and blah, blah, blah. So that meant that the X had to be either E, T or A...right?



She looked at her parchment and it just didn't look right because she knew for sure that D = C and she knew that there wasn't a word that spelled CE- So X could not be E. A seemed like a more common letter so she decided to give that a try.



Arithmancy can be what? Hard, pointless, irritating? Think Hannah. She was only missing a few letters. Then it hit her. She had it. She had actually done it. She felt so accoplished.

Hadley was ecstatic when she saw many of them working so heavily on decoding the message. It was simple and slightly corny, but it worked well for practicing. "Of course! Arithmancy can be practical!" Fina exclaimed, reiterating upon the correct answer that she saw on many of their parchments.

"Curse-breaking isn't necessarily about decoding simple messages like this one. Often they're more complicated. And you never know what the decoding system used is going to be. Sometimes it may even use numbers for letters. It may follow the Fibonacci sequence or it may be simply the alphabet reversed," actually she never saw the Fibonacci sequence used for curse-breaking, but it was possible, right? Maybe. "The point is that it requires critical thinking, as you never know what the pattern will be."

"Which brings us to the close of introduction to curse-breaking, part two," Hadley said, letting out a sigh, as she glanced at her wristwatch. "For the next lesson, make sure you have your wands. And in the meantime your homework will be to create a decoding system of your own and give it to a friend to try and solve. The decoding system could use numbers - Chaldean or Pythagorean or some other number system - or letters or symbols even... whatever you want."

ooc: Yea. *points to school chat* Sorry for the lateness in continuing. Power went out .... again =( .... but it's back now, so that's good. But bad news is that other classes starting up now and I don't want to keep you here forever, sooo yea .... *gives hw for reals this time* <3

ooc2: I'll post a more clean-cut description of the assignment on my notice board, so you may want to wait to post on your common room boards until then ... ;D

Practical, yes. But that's not why Pao liked it. He liked the theory behind it. And yet, he understood why she was stressing its practicality. So many students would not see the point of the subject compared with classes like Charms or Transfiguration.

Okay, that homework assignment sounded seriously cool. He was going to come up with something WICKED AWESOME. No one was going to be able to solve it. Not even the seventh year Ravenclaws! The assignment was quickly scribbled down in his planner. But honestly, there was NO WAY he would forget about this--he was looking forward to it!

"Thanks for the lesson, Professor!" He had really enjoyed it. Sure, he was still a bit disappointed that she hadn't given a demonstration of curse breaking in action. But he was willing to be patient.

So she had managed to do it and she had to admit that she was very proud of herself. Not only had she managed to attend this class, but she had actually gotten something right. She felt like she was making progress. She wouldn't go as far as to say that she liked this class or anything, but something was clicking for her.

She gathered up her belongings and gave a polite smile to the professor. "Thanks for the lesson professor." She was not looking forward to the homework, but she would cross that bridge when she got there!

Sarah was glad that her answer was right and then realised that the lesson was finishing up. "Thank you for the lesson" she said to the professor. She still did not know how arithmancy helped with curse breaking but whatever.
Home work she got to make her own code? Sarah loved making codes and puzzles so she was looking forward to it.

FROWN! BOO! Class was over already and they hadn't gotten to anything really practical yet? All the seventh year could hope was that this was all building up to some sort of epic conclusion the final lesson of the term. Right, Professor Hadley?! Something where they got to work with cursed objects and try to decode their curses and work through a maze or something, right?!

Small pout on her lips, Kurumi began to gather up her parchment and quills, putting them back in her bag. "Have a good rest of the day, professor," she said with a small bow. She was off to pout, get over it, and start thinking up her own code.