The Alchemist's Code

SCIAR ACHEE CIRCO SPETT O

The Maestro pressed his fingertips together, enjoying his lecture. “Now we shall apply the key, and in this case the word will be VIRTU, as that was Algol’s choice. The man has a sense of irony, if not humor. Pray write that under each of the groups.”

“Excellent. Now leave a line and write out the normal alphabet again. Good. Under it write the Caesars you will use to encipher your plaintext.” He frowned at Vasco’s blank stare-he is accustomed to dealing with my less-circumscribed intelligence. “The first row, you begin with a V… VXZAB…and end with U. The next begins IJLMN…”

It took a while and Vasco’s rows and columns were not as straight as might be desired, but he got there. The Maestro was beaming.

“Excellent! We’ll make a scribe out of you yet. Now to begin the encipherment! Under the first letter of the plaintext, S, you see the V of VIRTU, yes? So you find S in the normal alphabet, the one that begins with A, and go down to the alphabet that begins with V and what letter do you find?”

Thoroughly bewildered, Vasco did not find any, so I directed him to P, and he wrote it underneath the S, as instructed. The next letter, C, on the I alphabet, came out as B, and so on. By the time he reached the middle of the second group, he was managing by himself and I was making admiring noises.