ConceptsTransposition cipher
Concept · cryptography · in 3 mysteries
Transposition cipher
A cipher that keeps the plaintext's letters and changes their order.
A cipher that scrambles the order of the letters rather than replacing them, so the letter frequencies of the plaintext survive intact. That survival is the tell: a cipher text with the frequencies of ordinary English or Latin but no readable words is probably a transposition, or has a transposition stage, as the Zodiac's Z340 and the Kryptos K3 passage do.
Where it comes up
Kryptos
K4 combines a Vigenère-type substitution on the KRYPTOS tableau with a transposition or masking step, a change of method from K1 to K3.
Methods that use it 1
Periodicity, transposition and isomorph battery
MTHVoynich Manuscript
Cite it
Mysteries Department. (2026). Transposition cipher [Concept CPT0DECVZZD5M0G]. https://mysteriesdept.com/r/CPT0DECVZZD5M0G
@misc{mysteriesdept_cpt0decvzzd5m0g,
title = {Transposition cipher},
author = {{Mysteries Department}},
year = {2026},
note = {Concept, catalog key CPT0DECVZZD5M0G},
url = {https://mysteriesdept.com/r/CPT0DECVZZD5M0G}
}