TheCodeBreakers
defghiklmnopqrstuxyzwabc
efghiklmnopqrstuxyzwabcd
........................
zwabcdefghiklmnopqrstuxy
wabodefghiklmnopqrstuxyz
Trithemius used this tableau for his polyalphabetic encipherment, and in
the simplest manner possible. He enciphered the first letter with the first
alphabet, the second with the second, and so on. (He gave no separate
plaintext alphabet, but the normal alphabet at the top can serve.) Thus a
plaintext beginning Hunc caveto virum . . . became HXPF GFBMCZ FUEiB. ...
In this particular message, he switched to another alphabet after 24
letters, but in another example he followed the more normal procedure of
repeating the alphabets over and over again in groups of 24.
The great advantage of this procedure over Alberti's is that a new
alphabet is brought into play with each letter. Alberti shifted alphabets
only after three or four words. Thus the ciphertext would mirror the
obvious pattern of repeated letters of a word like Papa ("Pope"), or in