Adventure Island Book Ten
The
Mystery of the Invisible Spy
Reading
Between The Lines
At last! Emily
has been dying to uncover an enemy spy and finally it seems that she has her
chance. The strange man with the binoculars is definitely spying on something and she’s pretty sure it’s not
the larks nesting on the sand dunes. But, as always in Castle Key, nothing is
quite as it seems. There are some big surprises for Scott, Jack, Emily and
Drift in The Mystery of the Invisible
Spy.
For Emily one of
the most exciting parts about this investigation is that she gets to use some
secret codes. Emily is an expert on cryptography
– that is, the use of codes and ciphers (ten million super-brain points if you
know the difference between a code and a cipher. A cipher is where you replace
the original message letter by letter, whereas a code is where you replace word
by word. People often use the word code to
mean both, though).
Codes have been
used to communicate secret messages throughout history. One of the most famous
examples led to the death of Mary Queen of Scots.
If you remember
your Tudor history you’ll know that Elizabeth I kept her cousin Mary Queen of
Scots under house arrest for many years. Mary’s supporters believed she should rightfully be on the throne
of England, and they sent coded letters to her, discussing a plot to overthrow
Elizabeth. But the letters were intercepted by Elizabeth’s spymaster - with the help of a carefully placed double
agent or two. The code was soon cracked, the plot was discovered, and Mary was
beheaded.
a snippet of the message sent by Mary Queen
of Scots – can you decipher it using the key?
Mary’s code was
quite easy to crack (even if you didn’t have the key on the same page!) because
was each letter was replaced by a symbol. The codebreakers could look at the
text and see which symbol came up the most often – they knew that almost
certainly represented the letter E, which is the most frequently used in
English. With a bit of effort you can soon crack the whole code using this kind
of ‘frequency analysis.’ Elizabeth’s spies certainly did.
Another problem
with messages like this is that they are obviously in code so they immediately attract attention. If you came across a message that looked like
this, GRDE XNY PZYIG
you might not be able to read it, but you’d know that someone was UP TO
SOMETHING and sending TOP SECRET INFORMATION (either that, or they were trying
to type while eating a hot dog and watching a really exciting Cup Final match!)
One way round
this problem is to use steganography
rather than cryptography. Steganography
means concealed writing. You conceal
your secret message within something perfectly innocent-looking – like a shopping list. Then, if it falls into enemy hands,
they have no reason to be suspicious. If Mary had disguised her messages as
orders to her dressmaker for some new gloves, for example, she might not have
met her terrible fate.
So, how do you
conceal a message? The Ancient Greeks apparently tattooed messages onto the
shaved heads of messengers, who then let their hair grow back to conceal the
words! Or you can use invisible ink to write between the lines of a ‘cover text’ (if you’ve ever heard the
phrase ‘reading between the lines’ you now know where it comes from).
the problem with invisible ink is that
you can’t see what you’re writing, so it’s easy to make mistakes – can you spot
the letter I’ve missed?
But these days, steganography
is more often used to send coded messages over computer networks, where information
can easily be hidden large data files, such as ordinary looking digital
photographs.
Do you know of
any other kinds of code? How about
devising your own code and sending some messages to your friends?
OPERATION
DIAMOND
Question
10: Go back to the message in code used by Mary Queen of Scots and decipher it
using the given key. Where does Mary want her supporters to meet her?
Top tip! In the Tudor alphabet the
letters "u" and "v" were the same letters.
In
the field (I)
On
the beach (N)
And that’s it!
You should now have all ten letters you need to reveal the culprit and enter
the competition to star in the next Adventure
Island book.
You will need to unscramble your letters to crack
the mystery.
So, whodunnit?
Was it:
RAFE
BRYANT
BRIAN
T. FRYE
FAYE BANTER
FERN BEATTY
or
RYAN B. FEARN?
(If you want more information about the mystery and the suspects you will find it all here:
Email: competitions@orionbooks.co.uk
with the subject line ‘OPERATION DIAMOND’ and the name of the thief in the
email, along with your name, age and address.
GOOD LUCK!
STOP PRESS!
Even if you haven't started the treasure hunt yet, there's still time to go back and find the clues because the closing date for entries isn't until July 23rd, 2012!
These are the direct links to the blog posts
1. GUARDIAN CHILDREN’S BOOKS
2. READINGZONE
3. THE BOOKBAG
4. ANORAK
5. CHICKLISH
6. ARMADILLO
7. ACHUKA
8. BOOKTRUST
9. ORION BOOKS
10. HELEN MOSS
This
competition ends on Monday 23 July 2012 and is open only to entrants in the UK
and Eire.