The Decoder Ring

A fun and interactive decoder ring! Bask in the nostalgia of encoding and decoding messages and secrets!

if you're like me, you probably are wondering what a decoder ring even is! Back in the day, (no offense to those of more tenure) kids would rush to cereal boxes to obtain a plastic ring inside that helped them decode secret messages located on the box! I have essentially taken the fun and magic of decoding messages, and wrote JavaScript to allow you to encode and decode messages of your own, using 3 unique methods!

The Caesar Shift

The Caesar shift is a type of substitution cipher originally used by Julius Caesar to protect messages of military significance. It relies on taking the alphabet and "shifting" letters to the right or left, based on the typical alphabetic order. For example, if you were to "shift" the alphabet to the right by 3, the letter A would become D.

The Polybius Square Cipher

The Polybius square is a cipher that is achieved by arranging a typical alphabet into a grid. Each letter is represented through a coordinate. For example, in the above table, the letter B would be represented by the numerical pair 21.

The Substitution Cipher

The substitution cipher requires a standard alphabet and a substitution alphabet. Letters from the standard alphabet will be transposed to the standard alphabet. This cipher requires that the recipient have the substitution alphabet, otherwise it will be difficult for them to decode the message.