the.com/pigpen
A cipher that replaces letters with grid lines, not actual pig geometry.
means A small enclosed yard or sty where pigs are kept — and by extension, any space so messy or filthy it looks like one.
from Straightforward compound of 'pig' + 'pen,' with 'pen' going back to Old English 'penn,' meaning a small enclosure for animals. The cipher sense comes later and sideways: the cryptographic symbols are drawn from grid and X shapes that look like the lines of a fenced pen or tic-tac-toe board, which is also why the same code is sometimes called the 'tic-tac-toe cipher' or 'Freemason's cipher.' No actual pigs, geometric or otherwise, are involved — the name just stuck because the diagrams resembled little fenced-in boxes.
- real name
- Freemasons used it, not farmers
- how it works
- letters sit in tic-tac-toe grids, shapes become code
- security level
- trivial once you know the grid
- popularity boost
- featured heavily in Assassin's Creed II