How to Read a Baconian Cipher

Francis Bacon was the inventor of the Baconian cipher.

The Baconian cipher is a method of concealing one text within another. Francis Bacon invented the Baconian cipher. Bacon was the first Viscount Saint Alban, an English author, scientist and politician who lived from 1561 to 1626. Despite the name, the Baconian cipher is techinically not a cipher. It is a method of steganography, in which the text is concealed in the form of the message rather than in the content like in a true cipher.

Instructions

1. Skim the text for clues to cipher. If there is a message in Baconian cipher, the text contains two types of characters interspersed throughout the message. For instance, some letters might be italicized, printed in a different typeface or capitalized. A message which used capital letters as part of a Baconian cipher might read "DEar sTeVE, I HoPe yOu aRe HaPpy."

2. Sort the letters of the text into five-letter groups, ignoring punctuation and word gaps. The above message would therefore read "DEars / TeVEI / HoPey / OuaRe / HaPpy."

3. Assign the two types of letters the values "A" and "B." The actual letters used in the message are unimportant. The important whether the letters are capitalized or not. Experiment to know which is A and B. However, no standard convention exists, only a rule which should be known to both the sender and recipient. Assuming that capital letters are "A" in the above text and lowercase letters are "B," the message would now read "AABBB / ABAAA / ABABB / ABBAB / ABABB."

4. Compare this text to a copy of the Baconian alphabet. A standard Baconian cipher alphabet contains only 24 letters, with I and J being the same character, as well as U and V. Each letter is identified by a five-letter string, with "A" being AAAAA, "B" being AAAAB, and so on, all the way down to "Z," which is BABBB. Comparing the Baconian alphabet to the text above, for example, you would see that AABBB is "H," ABAAA is "I," ABABB is "M," and ABBAB is "O." The sequence ABABB recurs twice, giving the message HIMOM or "Hi, Mom."

5. Translate the text into sentences. Because the Baconian cipher does not contain spaces or punctuation, use the best judgment to provide these.

Tips & Warnings

• There are a number of variations on the Baconian cipher, including different alphabets and versions which only use the first letter of each word in the message. Knowing which version the writer was using is very important.

References

• University of Central Florida: Baconian Cipher; G. Gordon Worley; Feb 2003