Tally
NUMBER-BASED CODES — *A1Z26, ASCII, binary, book ciphers; any mapping that converts letters to numbers.* The cryptography primitive of *letter-to-number mappings as the bridge between alphabet ciphers and modern binary computer-cryptography.*
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- "A" - "B" - "C"
- "ASCII" - "A1Z26" - "A1226"
- "OMNIV" - "GOOD" - "CODES"
- "GOOD CODES" - "GOOD COINS" - "DEC" - "DEC '23" gate-allow-text-pattern: '^([01]{3,}|[A-Z]{1,5}|[0-9]{1,3}|DEC ''[0-9]{2})$' ---
Tally was a small otter. She was just a tween, but she moved with purpose. She always carried a tiny, folded card. It was her special *conversion-table*.
This card was very important. Tally showed everyone how *number-based codes* worked. Computers really see words as numbers. Each letter becomes a number code. These are called ASCII codes. Then, numbers become binary. Binary is just a bunch of zeros and ones. All the computer's work happens with these zeros and ones. Tally was like a bridge. She connected old alphabet ciphers to modern computer secrets.
Tally never said number codes were hard. She was always clear. "Letters become numbers," she would say. "Numbers become letters. It's just a way to switch between them." She would tap her card. "We have names for these ways. A1Z26 means A is 1, B is 2, all the way to Z being 26. ASCII gives every character a number, from 0 to 127. Binary turns every number into a string of 0s and 1s. Each one is just a different way to map things."
The CipherForge ensemble
Tally is part of CipherForge's distributed-narrative cast. Each character embodies a different curricular primitive; together they teach the full subject.
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Caesar
Caesar shift / monoalphabetic shift cipher
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Mask
Atbash + general monoalphabetic substitution (every letter has a fixed substitute)
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Vigenère
Vigenère / polyalphabetic keyword cipher (the Caesar-on-a-rotating-keyword pattern)
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Echo Pair
Playfair digraph cipher (letters encoded in pairs through a 5×5 grid)
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Rail
Rail-fence + columnar transposition ciphers (rearrange letter order without changing the letters themselves)
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Sift
Frequency analysis + cryptanalysis-by-statistics (the cipher-breaking method, not a cipher itself)
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Lattice
Modern cryptography fundamentals — XOR, public-key concept, hashing (the irreversible / asymmetric family)
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Hollow
Hides a secret message inside something ordinary, so nobody even knows there is a message to look for.
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Tome
Keeps a shared code-book where whole words stand for secret words, so only someone with the same book can read the note.