A possible approach: if the rhyme is first written on a strip of paper then twisted around a cylinder so that each character is just below another on the previous row, an encoded version of the rhyme is generated by reading the paper vertically down the cylinder. This procedure can then be repeated, using the same or a different sized cylinder to thoroughly scramble the message. The message has 63 characters including spaces, which would suggest 7 as one of the cylinders, the other(s) could be 3 or 9, or a combination of those. It's not clear to me whether the full stop is supposed to be a character or not, so I haven't attempted a full solution. Incidentally, this method leaves either the first character or the last unchanged (depending how the wrapping is done), so presumably either the first character is R, or the last is u, or a full stop (depending on whether the full stop is part of the message or not).

Posted by broll on 2010-05-02 08:29:44