3054: Scream Cipher
| Scream Cipher |
 Title text: AAAAAA A ÃA̧AȂA̦ ǍÅÂÃĀÁȂ AAAAAAA! |
Explanation
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This is one of 54 incomplete explanations: Created by A ÃA̧ȂÁAǍẢÂA̋ ȦÅĀ - Please change this comment when editing this page. Do NOT delete this tag too soon. If you can fix this issue, edit the page! |
A Cipher is a method of encryption, where characters or sometimes words are substituted for other characters in a set pattern, allowing for arbitrary strings to be enciphered using it. The complexity and strength of ciphers varies, from one-time pads and (historically) Enigma as stronger and more complex, to substitution ciphers as some of the weakest and least complex, where each character is simply given a set different symbol to represent it in the cipher.
This comic uses a substitution cipher, where all the letters of the English Alphabet are represented using the letter "A", with different diacritical marks to define the differences. See details about the 25 marks in the Trivia section below. This kind of cipher is often used on a recreational basis by children or casual enthusiasts, the similarity of the letters increasing the obcurity of the content and the skill or technology required for use, but there is also significant impracticality, as not only are substitution ciphers the easiest to break, but also the similarities in the letters do make the cipher hard to read and easy to misread, and the detail in the diacritical marks makes it easy to draw the "A"s incorrectly or ambiguously, potentially leading to part of the message being lost. This was our experience in the comments section of this very article, where one person implemented translator functions alongside another person crafting a message that failed to translate. However, the logic behind the code is mostly visual similarity, and if attentive to connecting concepts between the American and scream cipher alphabet, it could be quickly learned and translated in a glance.
It's named "Scream Cipher" (as a pun on stream ciphers, commonly used in computing) because the written form of a scream is a long string of As, possibly with some other characters at the end (and often an exclamation point for emphasis), such as "Aaaaaah!" or "Aaaaaaagh!". The name may or may not be a reference to IBM's Scream cipher published in 2002.
In the comic, Cueball texts the ciphered version for the plaintext "HELLO", and Megan responds with that for "HI".
The title text deciphers to "AAAAAA A SCARY MONSTER AAAAAAA!"
You can translate text to and from Scream Cipher using the Scream Cipher Translator or an alternative with additional features.
Another recent comic featuring all "A"s was 2957: A Crossword Puzzle.
Diacritics was also the main theme in 1647: Diacritics (of course) and was previously also mentioned in 1209: Encoding and in 1857: Emoji Movie where they have an important part of the pun, and is mentioned in one point of the list in 1957: 2018 CVE List.
Worked example
Say we want to encode "Scream" in the Scream Cipher. First we would need to split out word into the letters, so S, C, R, E, A, M.
The first letter is S, so if we go to S in the table S is shown to become to Ã, C similarly becomes A̧, R becomes Ȃ, E corresponds to Á, A is the main letter so A is unchanged to A, and M becomes Ǎ. If we then write them again in order, we find SCREAM becomes ÃA̧ȂÁAǍ.
To turn cipher text back into normal text, the process is repeated in reverse. To translate A̧ẢA̯A̰ÁȂ, we go to A̧ in the table and find A̧ becomes C. Ả similarly becomes I, A̯ becomes P, A̰ becomes H, Á becomes E, and Ȃ becomes R. If we write the letters in order, we see that A̧ẢA̯A̰ÁȂ becomes CIPHER.
Transcript
- [The top of the panel has the 26 letters of the alphabet written, each followed by a hyphen and the letter "A" with a unique diacritical mark for each. "A - A" is the only letter in the top row, and the only one where that A on the right side doesn't have a diacritic. The next 25 is sorted in a 5 by 5 grid, with the first five letters after A in the first column, then the next 5 in the second column and so on:]
A - A B - Ȧ G - A̋ L - Ă Q - A̤ V - À C - A̧ H - A̰ M - Ǎ R - Ȃ W - Ȁ D - A̱ I - Ả N - Â S - Ã X - A̽ E - Á J - A̓ O - Å T - Ā Y - A̦ F - A̮ K - Ạ P - A̯ U - Ä Z - Ⱥ
- [Beneath these letters we see Cueball and Megan typing on their phones, Cueball with two hands and Megan with one hand, small lines indicating the movement of their hands. Cueball and Megan is turned towards each other but with more separation than if they were engaged in normal discussion. They both look down at their phones not towards each other. The text they type is shown above their phone with a line starting in a starburst at the top of their phones going up the to the text.]
- Cueball's phone: A̰ÁĂĂÅ
- Megan's phone: A̰Ả
- [Caption below the panel:]
- In the Scream Cipher, messages consist of all As, with different letters distinguished using diacritics.
Trivia
The Unicode names of the characters in the cipher are as follows:
| Input | Substitution | |||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Plain | Unicode description | Cipher | Unicode description(s) | Notes |
| A | U+0041 LATIN CAPITAL LETTER A | A | U+0041 LATIN CAPITAL LETTER A | Unadorned base character |
| B | U+0042 LATIN CAPITAL LETTER B | Ȧ | U+0226 LATIN CAPITAL LETTER A WITH DOT ABOVE | A with one dot over it, which can indicate a single change in math and science. Phonetic symbol for low central vowel. |
| C | U+0043 LATIN CAPITAL LETTER C | A̧ | U+0041 LATIN CAPITAL LETTER A, U+0327 COMBINING CEDILLA | Cedilla is often attached to a 'c', as in "français", as well as starting with 'c' itself. |
| D | U+0044 LATIN CAPITAL LETTER D | A̱ | U+0041 LATIN CAPITAL LETTER A, U+0331 COMBINING MACRON BELOW | Some see the lower bar as similar to the lower edge of the D. |
| E | U+0045 LATIN CAPITAL LETTER E | Á | U+00C1 LATIN CAPITAL LETTER A WITH ACUTE | Many words have an acute e, as in "fiancé". |
| F | U+0046 LATIN CAPITAL LETTER F | A̮ | U+0041 LATIN CAPITAL LETTER A, U+032E COMBINING BREVE BELOW | |
| G | U+0047 LATIN CAPITAL LETTER G | A̋ | U+0041 LATIN CAPITAL LETTER A, U+030B COMBINING DOUBLE ACUTE ACCENT | Adds two acutes to a letter. |
| H | U+0048 LATIN CAPITAL LETTER H | A̰ | U+0041 LATIN CAPITAL LETTER A, U+0330 COMBINING TILDE BELOW | The low tilde has horizontal ink in the middle that moves vertical toward the sides, like an H. |
| I | U+0049 LATIN CAPITAL LETTER I | Ả | U+1EA2 LATIN CAPITAL LETTER A WITH HOOK ABOVE | |
| J | U+004A LATIN CAPITAL LETTER J | A̓ | U+0041 LATIN CAPITAL LETTER A, U+0313 COMBINING COMMA ABOVE | The comma symbol looks like a small letter 'J' in some fonts |
| K | U+004B LATIN CAPITAL LETTER K | Ạ | U+1EA0 LATIN CAPITAL LETTER A WITH DOT BELOW | |
| L | U+004C LATIN CAPITAL LETTER L | Ă | U+0102 LATIN CAPITAL LETTER A WITH BREVE | |
| M | U+004D LATIN CAPITAL LETTER M | Ǎ | U+01CD LATIN CAPITAL LETTER A WITH CARON | The top-centered caron is the same shape as the top center of the M. |
| N | U+004E LATIN CAPITAL LETTER N | Â | U+00C2 LATIN CAPITAL LETTER A WITH CIRCUMFLEX | The lowercase letter 'n' also looks like a circumflex in some scripts. The circumflex peak mirrors the peak at the top left of the N. |
| O | U+004F LATIN CAPITAL LETTER O | Å | U+00C5 LATIN CAPITAL LETTER A WITH RING ABOVE | The symbol contains the letter 'O'. In Scandinavian languages like Swedish, this *is* the letter 'O' (a written 'O' may be closer to a 'U', but not always) |
| P | U+0050 LATIN CAPITAL LETTER P | A̯ | U+0041 LATIN CAPITAL LETTER A, U+032F COMBINING INVERTED BREVE BELOW | Refer to R: P also has a curve at the top center, but is encoded with one below. |
| Q | U+0051 LATIN CAPITAL LETTER Q | A̤ | U+0041 LATIN CAPITAL LETTER A, U+0324 COMBINING DIAERESIS BELOW | The two dots below the baseline reflect the two times Randall's Q touch the baseline. In the Orthographies of Spanish, Catalan, French and Galician, the grapheme 'qu' normally represents a single sound, before vowels 'e' and 'i'. In the few exceptions where the 'u' is pronounced, a diaeresis is added to it. |
| R | U+0052 LATIN CAPITAL LETTER R | Ȃ | U+0202 LATIN CAPITAL LETTER A WITH INVERTED BREVE |
The inverted centered top curve mirrors the curve at the top center of an R. |
| S | U+0053 LATIN CAPITAL LETTER S | Ã | U+00C3 LATIN CAPITAL LETTER A WITH TILDE | Tilde looks like a sideways 'S'. |
| T | U+0054 LATIN CAPITAL LETTER T | Ā | U+0100 LATIN CAPITAL LETTER A WITH MACRON | The macron looks like the top horizontal line in the letter 'T' |
| U | U+0055 LATIN CAPITAL LETTER U | Ä | U+00C4 LATIN CAPITAL LETTER A WITH DIAERESIS | Many German words have a 'ü', as in "Fahrvergnügen". Similar to the encoding for Q, the two top dots mirror the two times the script of U reaches the top line. |
| V | U+0056 LATIN CAPITAL LETTER V | À | U+00C0 LATIN CAPITAL LETTER A WITH GRAVE | Grave has the letter 'V' in it, as well as being half of its shape. |
| W | U+0057 LATIN CAPITAL LETTER W | Ȁ | U+0200 LATIN CAPITAL LETTER A WITH DOUBLE GRAVE | The letter 'W' is visually two copies of the letter 'V' |
| X | U+0058 LATIN CAPITAL LETTER X | A̽ | U+0041 LATIN CAPITAL LETTER A, U+033D COMBINING X ABOVE | The symbol contains the letter 'X'. |
| Y | U+0059 LATIN CAPITAL LETTER Y | A̦ | U+0041 LATIN CAPITAL LETTER A, U+0326 COMBINING COMMA BELOW | Comma is used con conjuntion as the letter 'Y' in some languages like Spanish |
| Z | U+005A LATIN CAPITAL LETTER Z | Ⱥ | ||
