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Historical methods, documented
Caesar, Vigenère, Atbash, monoalphabetic substitution, affine cipher, Polybius square… Each technique gets its own page explaining how it works, where it breaks, and how to attack it by hand.
Cryptography, played
Observe. Decode. Again.
CipherChronicle turns every grid into an investigation. You don’t attack the text: you take it apart step by step, until the hidden message surfaces.
Grid
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Ciphertext
A block of letters that looks random.
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Frequency analysis
The most frequent letters betray the source language.
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Hypothesis: Caesar (+3)
The pattern suggests a regular alphabet shift.
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Apply the inverse shift
Each letter moves back three positions.
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Message revealed
The grid finally tells its story.
One puzzle, many layers of reading
A CipherChronicle grid is not an opaque riddle: it’s a mechanism you disassemble. Each stage reveals a new rule and the grid shifts under your eyes.
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It all runs in your browser
No game server: generation, validation and solving all happen client-side. We store only the SHA-256 hash of the solution — never the cleartext.
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Create, share, compete
Build your own grids in a few clicks, publish them under your handle, and track your progress on the community’s puzzles.
Learn by playing, not by pulling your hair out
Hints on demand
Stuck? The hint staircase reaches out, step by step. You pick how far you go — no spoiler crashes the party uninvited.
Your secrets stay yours
Your solution never leaves the browser. We compare a fingerprint, never the text — even we don’t know what you guessed.
Every cipher tells a story
Once the grid falls, dive into the page: who dreamed the method up, in what context, and how it eventually cracked. Crypto is also good storytelling.
Cipher methods
A living directory of classic techniques. Every method has its own page with history, example, weaknesses and related puzzles.
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caesar
Caesar cipher
A fixed alphabet shift. The classic — easy to grasp, easy to break.
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rot-13
ROT-13
A special case of Caesar (shift 13, involutive).
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atbash
Atbash
A full alphabet flip. A ↔ Z, B ↔ Y.
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vigenere
Vigenère cipher
A Caesar whose key changes at every letter. Long thought unbreakable.
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rot
Generic ROT
The mother family of shift ciphers: ROT-N for any integer N. ROT-13 and ROT-47 are the iconic ones.
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substitution
Monoalphabetic substitution
A free permutation of the alphabet. 26! options — but frequency gives it up.
Frequently asked
The questions we hear the most about how the site works and how your data is handled.
See all questions-
Is it “encipher” or “encrypt” — does it matter?
In English both « encrypt » and « encipher » are accepted, but the distinction matters: strictly, you encipher with a key and decipher with the key, while « decrypt » means recovering the plaintext WITHOUT the key — breaking a cipher. French draws an even stricter line: « chiffrer » (to cipher) is correct, « crypter » is flagged as incorrect by the French national security agency (ANSSI) and isn’t recognized by the Académie française. Throughout the site we use the precise terminology.
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Are my answers stored anywhere?
No. We only keep a SHA-256 hash of your solution, computed client-side. Nobody — not even us — can recover the cleartext from that hash.
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Do I need an account to play?
Not for public grids. An account is only required to create your own puzzles and to track your progress.
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Can I create my own grids?
Yes — the “Encrypt” page walks you through it. Pick a method, a source text, a difficulty, then publish.
Ready to get hooked?
Warm up on an easy grid, or jump straight into crafting your first cipher.