It is always good to have keys. You can use them to open the right door, to free yourself from the square in-between, to open the gate to a new world full of secrets and mysteries. And in general, living with keys is much more optimistic than living without keys.
The editors of The Global Technology magazine know all about the intricate properties of keys, so they’ve prepared six lock picks for you. Behind each key you will find a riddle that opens the door to the exciting world of encrypted messages.
Choose your favorite key and boldly make a step towards exciting experiments, after which you will be able to open any door. Good luck!

We have news for you: you are a romantic sort, perhaps even a poet. At least you have chosen the key that hides the most touching encryption method.
Hans Christian Andersen once took pity on a little girl in his fairy tale and came up with the plot that she would receive an unusual letter that would make her heart beat more often. The envelope the girl will receive will contain two neatly folded sheets of paper – the girl will see words with missing letters on one of them, and she will notice a sheet of music with a fragment of a piece of music on the other sheet.
The girl managed to combine both fragments and smiled. Now you smile too.


Take courage. This is a classic example of a permutation cipher. We have encrypted three phrases for you to solve. In order to guarantee that you will be able to solve all three ciphers, we have shifted the lines to the right in all cases. In order for you to feel the beauty of encryption, we started shifting the lines randomly.
UGHT THER EARE NOBA RRIE RSTO HUMA NTHO
XPLA NATI ONST HERE AREN ODIF FICU LTSC IENC ESON LYDI FFIC ULTE
YSIC SAND STAM PCOL LECT INGA LLSC IENC ESAR EDIV IDED IN TOPH

Looks like you’re in luck. This key hides anagrams – scrambled words that have been formed from other words. In order to solve this word puzzle, you can use the key – the description of the scrambled word in brackets.
Net Tire (tired of the net)
Shape Norm T (norm of the shape?)
A Fine Galactic Lintel (someone must have called him spacey)
A Try Bet (try, bet, fire it up)
Crypto Rebs (a new kind of sport “the rebellion of cryptocurrency”)
Logarithm (it’s too easy to give you the key)
Ramp Germ Or (a virus on the rise)
Silent (you need to be quiet to be able to listen)
Earth (the connection between nature and feelings)
Vase (that’s one way of calling it)
Live (a complete antagonist)
Iceman (is it an accident or a cold calculation of the director?)
Stone (it is carved in eternity like on the stone)
Desserts (sometimes the best way to cope with it is to eat something sweet)
Wolf (movement energy and predator nature in one)
Pot (the choice may lead you either to the top or to the pot)
Eat (they are always near)
Dog (who is the owner of whom?)
Glean (he collects kind deeds)
Study (your knowledge gets to be covered by it if not used)
Veil (he often hides behind the mask)
Tinsel (listening to it, we decorate the reality with glitter)
Pears (what you keep can become a yummy treat)
Fried (sometimes looks like roasting)
Heat (what will happen if you turn it into warmth?)
Pool (a circle or a pool for ideas)
Reward (if you look there, you may find a reward)
Peals (an error can result in peals of laughter)
Admirer (sometimes the one who admires becomes a husband)
Secure (to safe means to secure)

Wow. You’ve been given a royal key! After all, this is the method of encryption used by the autocracy when sending secret messages to someone. I wonder if you will be able to find the secret phrase in the text and confirm your noble origin.
One day, I wanted to make one of my favourite soups. I went to the market and wandered around until I came across an interesting vegetable. I looked at it for a long time. I thought about how tasty it would make the soup and that I was a good cook.
The vegetable seller interrupted my thought. He suggested that I go away to the north. To which I suggested that he go for some maize.
My suggestion angered the vendor in the market. He called out to the security officer. His stomping sounded behind the vegetable guru. ”Rascals, Scoundrels,” I started to shout.
The guards shouted back at me, “You’re about to be hanged, ahh!” I got nervous and by mistake I grabbed someone else’s basket with chili.
So there I was, with a strange vegetable in my hand and someone else’s basket trying to jump into a crowded wagon. I didn’t notice any inscriptions on the wagon or its number at least. And, as ill luck would have it, I left my compass at home on the couch. I had to buy a season ticket to get home.
Before I knew it, there was a fire and a bleep. Someone behind me shouted “Attack! Mama!” It’s happening. Someone in front of me lost a necklace. I had to squeeze my way to the exit like Red Army soldiers. “It’s a trap, oh no!” My grandmother shouted behind me with grief. The gun shot!
The bus door swung open with a flash. We saw a beautiful landscape. Right in front of us, we saw a kangaroo like in a dream. It was sitting proudly in a potato field area. And right behind it there was a forgotten tractor standing. “I’m saved,” I thought, and ran towards the tractor like a good runner in an arena. My grandmother ran after me as if she was being chased by the fuzz. In no time I took us to the neighboring village by taxi. There I transferred my grandmother to a dump truck where she was born. It was unforgettable!

A worthy choice of key! Now you will have a chance to see how famous mathematicians encrypted their messages and decrypt them.
When many brilliant mathematicians gather in one place, they start to argue. That’s what happened this time. Some of the mathematicians are sure that there is an error in these calculations. Some other mathematicians know that there is no error in these questions. There is only one cipher, which will help to prove some mathematicians right and others wrong.
The key to this cipher is simple: you need to remember how numbers are written in English. After that, you need to imagine these numbers as they were imagined by Pythagoras, Euclid and Archimedes.


If you like this key, you may well have a remarkable ability to solve complex riddles.
If you like this key, you may well have a remarkable ability to solve complex riddles.
On January 13, 1942, the famous British coders from Bletchley Park posted a complex crossword puzzle in The Daily Telegraph newspaper, which offered to solve it in 12 minutes. It was the British Army’s last hope of finding brilliant mathematicians to help the intelligence service crack German military ciphers. The crossword contained a code message that could be read after successfully completing the entire crossword puzzle.
We publish this crossword puzzle in the original to pay tribute to human ingenuity and the entire history of encryption.