Ciphers and codes are of great importance during times of warfare. Consulates regularly exchange information with their governments in coded messages. The solution of the Enigma cipher led to Hitler's defeat in WWII. There is a large branch of research devoted to this study especially with issues of privacy on the Internet and its relation to cryptography. The simplest cipher is a substitution of one letter for another. For example:
SYSTEMS ANALYSIS
becomes
BKBXYLB RQRSKBPB

with a simple substitution of B for S, K for Y, etc. To make the following English message a bit harder to decode, the words are run together and the letters are grouped in blocks of five. punctuation has been added to help.

FMFPW HFNAN SMFTF TFZAS MNDNQ PZUPB TFIZJ
QFW.MZ JXTSS XZQRP ZKWPB WQXTP BPWNH HNPWF
PZFZS GWNAT AUZQH NPTZA FMFPW HFDQZ LSWH.P
BWISN FFTFN SFZXQ TPTAK TAPWA FTGW,H NRTAK
PBWIZ JQFWU QJFPQ NPTAK, WAKNK TAK,NA CIBNS
SWAKT AK.WAE ZMHWW PTAKZ PBWQF PJCWA PF.

what is the coded message?


i have absolutely no clue as to what the answer is, so don't ask. my friend gave this to me and after staring at it for an hour my head hurts, i thought i'd ask you all and see what you could make of it.

I beilieve I've seen this before. It was part of a message incoded on some famous cryptogropher's stone (Not to sure what type of stone, commemoration, tombstone etc) And to this day leading experts in the world have only decoded the first part. Then again I could be wrong and be thinking of something else.

The most commonly used letters in American English are, (mostly)in order E, T, A, O, I, N, S, H, R, D, L, U.

For years the more "in the know" contestants who made it to the end of show bonus puzzle on Wheel of Fortune would choose as their "five consonants and a vowel" T, N, S, R, L (or occassionally D) and E. Later, those letters would become a given.

Well there is a method to solving this and cogitater mentioned the beginning, but that is usually not enough. Like in the case of the code above it is usual that two or even three letters in the code are represented equally so further analysis is needed (F and W here) - you see how often are they around other letters, make a table really because for example letter E can appear before or after any other letter really, while consonants like T rarely appear before or after B, D, G, J. Also once you are fairly certain which letter represents E you can see by looking which letter is most common before but almost never after E, that would represent H. Then it is more like guessing the words for starters, more difficult in this case since they have been grouped in fives.

Try to find a logic realation between the letters have in your mind that in cryptography everything can be raplaced for exaple even space can be replaced with A.
Try to find some of the most common words in english in there and get the letters you need for exaple and, the, is e.t.c
I will try to find the answer and come back to you soon