Cipher methods Symbols
Dotsies (Craig Muth, 2012)
Dotsies is an experimental writing system designed by Craig Muth in 2012, published on dotsies.org. The principle is elegantly simple: each letter becomes a vertical bar of 5 dots where each dot can be black (1) or white (0). This yields 2⁵ = 32 possible combinations, of which 26 are used for Latin letters (the remaining 6 are available for future characters).
Muth’s explicit goal is to modernise writing for fast reading: the vertical bar is about 32 % shorter than a Latin letter at the same body size, and the brain can theoretically learn to read the whole block at a glance (much as speed-reading already trains us to do on Latin words). In practice, adoption has remained marginal — Dotsies stays a typographic design exercise rather than a serious alternative to Latin writing.
A variant created by a user named Faust is optimised to encode base64: each 5-bit combination (64 base64 combinations) gets its own modified Dotsies glyph.
How does the alphabet work?
The cipher uses a monoalphabetic substitution: every letter of the plaintext is replaced by a glyph drawn from a fixed correspondence table. It is one of the oldest cryptographic techniques on record — already described in antiquity (Caesar cipher, ~50 BC) — and the most directly readable family for a beginner.
The table holds 26 glyphs for the 26 Latin letters — each is a vertical bar of 5 dots black or white (1 bit per dot, 5 bits = 32 combinations, 26 used). No digits.
Cryptographic strength: weak. Because every plaintext letter always maps to the same glyph, the cipher falls to a frequency analysis in a few dozen words (in both English and French, E remains the most common letter, an immediate entry point). Monoalphabetic substitutions are therefore used today for their decorative, playful or pedagogical value — not to protect real information.
Historical and modern usage
- dotsies.org (2012-) — official site, conversion tools, learning tutorials.
- Typographic community — discussed at ATypI conferences and on Smashing Magazine.
- Base64 variant (Faust) — used by a few pedagogical cryptography tools.
- Pedagogy — interesting example of visual binary encoding for teaching computer science.
Related variants
- Dotsies base64 (Faust) — 64-symbol variant, not covered here.
- Braille — another 6-bit → 64-combination encoding, see our dedicated entry.
What are the weaknesses?
- Monoalphabetic substitution — immediate frequency analysis.
- Hard to read without training — the compactness advantage only materialises after several hours of practice.
- Very dense glyphs — risk of confusion between letters differing by a single dot (E ≠ F).
The 26 glyphs
