Welcome to Gaia! :: View User's Journal | Gaia Journals

There are a total of 45 letters in the cryptogram. The hint, FARIS has 5 letters. So, divide 45 by 5 is equal to 9 so it would be like this;

ENTPTSOEP XINMIINRE IINROHTUR FGTOSTIDO LNATMEACP

The keyword FARIS is of length 5, and the keystring is defined by the alphabetical order of the letters in the keyword. In this case, the keystring would be
2 1 4 3 5 = the order of the columns.If you arrange it to the keystring, the ciphertext would be like this;

XINMIINRE ENTPTSOEP FGTOSTIDO IINROHTUR LNATMEACP
1 2 3 4 5

Then, you can turn it into 5 columns with 9 rows. It will be like this;



This is where the second and third clue comes in. When a snake moves uphill, it will either glide left to right while heading up or right to left while heading up like a wave. In this case, it is from right to left. Please read it from the bottom right, going to the left, then up, then from left go right, then repeat. Kinda like the motion Z. There you have it. The X in the end is a null. It is used to make the whole cryptogram divisible by "FARIS". The answer is "PROPER EDUCATION IS THE MOST IMPORTANT THING IN LIFE"



What if you don’t have a Keyword like FARIS?
Then you can solve it by doing a frequency count, you’ll know it’s likely to be a transposition cipher. Then do anagramming - sliding pieces of the ciphertext around, then looking for sections that look like anagrams of English words, and solving the anagrams. Rearrange the columns to get words that make sense.