Discover your true ‘cipher personality’ with this easy-peasy six-step Ultimate Cipher Personality Quiz.
Note: answers are for entertainment purposes only, and may not apply to people even half as clever as you. 😉
Question #1
While reaching into a hard-to-get-to pocket, your fingers unexpectedly touch a tiny piece of paper hidden there. Unrolling it, you see that it contains the words “Tamam Shud”. Do you:
a) Decide to change dry-cleaners, this current lot are waaaay too weird for you.
b) Nearly fall off your chair. “OMFG! I’m obviously about to be murdered!” And who’s that knocking at your door? It can’t be coincidence, there’s no such thing…
c) Track down who put it there and hurl anonymous abuse at them for the rest of their pitiful life.
d) Smile wryly to yourself, but then don’t really think of it again.
e) Go upstairs to the study to cross-reference it against your large collection of Rubaiyat scans.
Question #2
“The Da Vinci Code” was…
a) Definitely Tom Hanks’ finest hour. That or “Forrest Gump”. I mean, “Apollo 13”, what kind of art-house cinema trash do you call that?
b) Yet more elaborate disinformation to disguise the extraordinarily far-reaching power of the (very real) Priory of Sion.
c) A great excuse to sell fake movie memorabilia on eBay.
d) OK for the beach, but not that much to do with historical ciphers, now you come to mention it.
e) A cynical kick to historical cryptography’s gonads, from which the scars still (more than a decade later) have yet to fully heal.
Question #3
At a family party, an elderly aunt tells you that she’s just heard an interesting piece on the radio about the Voynich Manuscript, and asks if you know anything about it. Do you:
a) Wonder to yourself if she’s remembering to take her medication properly.
b) Freak out, because she reminds you so much of a nymph on page f80v you were looking at earlier.
c) Track down the idiot radio programme producers and hurl anonymous abuse at them for the rest of their stupid lives.
d) Gently correct one or two of the worst misconceptions she’s picked up from the programme. *sigh*
e) Explain that the media almost never do it justice, and then sell her a copy of your own Voynich Manuscript book. (A bargain at £9.95).
Question #4
Alan Turing was…
a) Fanciable. And gay. And what was he doing playing Sherlock Holmes? I didn’t quite get that bit.
b) Cynically murdered by the same Establishment his brilliance had helped perpetuate.
c) Exactly the kind of sensitive smart-arse I’ve made a part-time career out of harrassing online.
d) A genuine National Treasure, though not accurately portrayed in The Imitation Game.
e) Merely one of many brilliant and mercurial individuals who somehow managed to work together as part of an oddly coherent team. If only Bletchley Park’s present-day managers could achieve the same trick…
Question #5
You are an 18th century French pirate, just about to be hanged. You pluck your enciphered treasure map from round your neck and throw it to the crowd, shouting out “Find my treasure, whosoever of you is smart enough”. What flashes through your mind just before you die?
a) Should it be ‘hanged’ or ‘hung’? Or ‘hunged’? I never can remember… urrgh!
b) My fellow Freemasons will ensure the Flaming Cross of Goa is never found…
c) Excellent, that’s the twentieth fake pirate cipher I’ve given away now. My lies shall live forever!
d) Anyone who manages to break something that obfuscated certainly deserves to become fabulously rich.
e) With luck, pinching my arm will wake me up from this frankly rather ridiculous airport novella of a dream. Next!
Question #6
While cleaning out an old chimney in your Home Counties house, a pigeon skeleton with a red canister attached to one leg tumbles down. Inside the canister, you find an enciphered WW2 British Army message. What do you do?
a) Throw it straight in the bin. Dirty things, pigeons: probably died from Ebola or something. Nasty!
b) You realise it’s actually a message from Rudolf Hess, giving the coordinates of the SS’s secret UFO base. But rather than risk releasing information so powerful it could destroy the world, you burn it. And eat it.
c) You make twelve perfect copies and quietly sell them to dealers around the world for half a mill each, then move to New Mexico. Suckers!
d) You frame the pigeon bones and send the message straight to GCHQ: but when they give up, so do you.
e) You rewrite an open-source hill-climbing Typex simulator in OpenCL, and then set it going on your NVIDIA GTX 980 card to reconstruct the ciphertext’s rotor settings. Any minute now…
And Your Cipher Personality Is…
That’s all the questions done! Now count up your answers to reveal your true Cipher Personality…
Mostly a): You are a Cipher Lurker. Pay a little bit more attention at the back, puh-lease!
Mostly b): You are a Cipher Nutter. If you could bottle paranoia and sell it, you’d be rich. But you can’t. So you’re not.
Mostly c): You are a Cipher Troll. Even Tolkien didn’t like you, and he’s the one who made your lot famous.
Mostly d): You are a Cipher Bore. But be reassured that I like you (sort of), even if millions wouldn’t.
Mostly e): You are Nick Pelling. Or if you aren’t actually me, please be at least slightly reassured that I feel so very, very sorry for you.