Masters of Logic : Virtue

Are you interested in ciphers? If each letter is substituted by some other random letter, how would you know the correct letters with no other hints given? There is a particular method of solving this type of problems and generally it involves a lot of guesswork. The longer the text of cipher you have, the easier it is to solve. Some ciphers don't even contain spaces and punctuation marks, making it all the more difficult to break them.

But the one given here is a nice one. It's a poem. I have not deleted spaces and punctuations, and it's long enough. And what's more, it's rhyming too !

Ybffu cst, yv ivvn, yv isnp, yv lejwku,

Ukf lejcsn vh ukf fseuk sgc yqt,

Ukf cfb yksnn bffo ukt hsnn uvgjwku;

Hve ukvx pxyu cjf.

Ybffu evyf, bkvyf kxf sgwet sgc lesrf

Ljcy ukf esyk wszfe bjof kjy ftf,

Ukt evvu jy frfe jg juy wesrf,

Sgc ukvx pxyu cjf.

Ybffu yoejgw, hxnn vh ybffu csty sgc evyfy,

S lva bkfef ybffuy ivposiufc njf,

Pt pxyji ykvby tf ksrf tvxe invyfy,

Sgc snn pxyu cjf.

Vgnt s ybffu sgc rjeuxvxy yvxn,

Njqf yfsyvgfc ujplfe, gfrfe wjrfy;

Lxu ukvxwk ukf bkvnf bvenc uxeg uv ivsn,

Ukfg ikjfhnt njrfy.

You could crack it using machines. But I suggest you use the one installed over your ears. If you crack it, let me know. Post it in the comments.


HINTS

This type of ciphers are known as monosubstitution ciphers. Some of the monosubstitution ciphers have a keyword with which the whole text can be decoded. This one is slightly more difficult as it has no keyword. Each letter in the alphabet has been randomly assigned some other letter. Suppose if 'a' stands for 'g' somewhere, then it is true for the whole text. Now let us see how to find that out.

We should use the letter frequency method. Letter 'E' is most frequently used in English, followed by T, A, O, H, N, I ans S respectively. This knowledge may be used to identify some of the letters in the code. Next, notice the two-letter words. Most frequently used two-letter words n English are 'of', 'to', 'in', 'it', 'is', 'be', 'as' in this order. (source : _http://deafandblind.com/word_frequency.htm)

The letter frequency distribution for this code is as follows:

A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z
1 14 17 0 21 54 15 6 8 21 25 7 0 21 4 8 2 8 25 12 32 30 8 15 37 1



Hint for this problem : 'u' in the cipher stands for 't'.