A word to the writers of the world:

[conuly]

If the codewords are simply English words written backwards, or the hidden message in the letter involves reading the first letter from each word (or the first word from each sentence), and it takes your adult or "super intelligent" protagonists more than three minutes to figure this out, I'm gonna seriously question both your and their intelligence. I know you need to make a code that your characters and your readers can figure out, but by now I habitually read all unfamiliar words and names backwards, and also automatically read just the initials of any in-fiction letters. You can do better than this.

Comments

[jtthomas]

I default to commas and periods making morse code with the word stop meaning, well, stop.

[amaebi]

I love where form criticism leads you. :)

[moon_custafer]

I have so many pet peeves that are kind of related to this trope:

Computer passwords that are (a) an easily-guessable personal reference, and (b) not case-sensitive.

Murder victims who took the time while dying to point to some object in the room that is a clever rebus on the murderer’s name, or some other kind of clue.

Similar to what you said above — villains whose pseudonym is an obvious anagram or translation of their regular name (kind of acceptable if they’re someone like the Riddler who canonically has a compulsion to show off like this; also props to the Joker in that one episode of Justice League for using “Gwynplaine Entertainment” as his front, because allusions to Conrad Veidt movies are always welcome.)

[conuly]

I mean, actual people have their password read PASSWORD all the damn time, truth in fiction!

But nobody bleeding out is going to have the strength of mind to write anything with said blood.

[conuly]

Now THAT is worth a read.

[conuly]

I do make the exception for the Mirror of Erised, first because Harry is a particular unobservant child and second because she at least took the time to play around with the spacing.

[nodrog]

Worthie Sir John—Hope, that is ye beste comfort of ye afflictyd, cannot much, I fear me, help you now. That I wolde saye to you, is this only: if ever I may be able to requite that I do owe you, stand not upon asking of me. 'Tis not much I can do: but what I can do, bee you verie sure I wille. I knowe that, if dethe comes, if ordinary men fear it, it frights not you, accounting it for a high honour, to have such a rewarde of your loyalty. Pray yet that you may be spared this soe bitter, cup. I fear not that you will grudge any sufferings: only if bie submission you can turn them away, 'tis the part of a wise man. Tell me, an if you can, to do for you any thinge that you wolde have done. The general goes back on Wednesday. Restinge your servant to command.

R. T.

[jtthomas]

My first time doing it was a Firefly fanfic back when I was 12-ish, writing out River's letters to Simon. It works, so I've kept it up since then. I'll see if I can scrounge it up tomorrow, it should be on a flash drive.

[brokenallbroken]

I don't think the Mirror of Erised was meant to be a code, Watsonianly. Mirror writing around the frame of a mirror isn't a surprise or mysterious, although I'm now wondering what happens if you put a mirror in front of MoE.

But yes, that was particularly doltish of Harry to miss.

[conuly]

See, that's cleverer and I had to google it.

[conuly]

This is Harry, who is constantly being introduced to students in his year or house whom he ought to have known by name for ages already. Hogwarts is a small school! (None of JKR's nonsense about 1000 students, it can't have more than 400 - and that's a generous estimate.)

[brokenallbroken]

No, I know, The series pretty much hinges on Harry being a dumbass disinterested in people who aren't Hermione or a Weasley.

The professors for core subjects don't have time for more than 250, which is in line with there being 10 students in Gryffindor in Harry's year, unless it was an unusually small class due to the war. There's those two Gryff girls in his year whose names we never find out (assuming there is gender parity in the year and it's not just Hermione, Padma, and Lav).

[conuly]

The professors don't have time for 250 unless they're all using their personal Time Turners like it's going out of style. I seriously believe that JKR's aversion to math approaches some sort of disability, and may in fact be rooted in a disability to begin with. (Not that all writers have to be scrupulously detailed with their math, but JKR is pretty detailed about all sorts of things so long as she never ever has to apply basic arithmetic to her worldbuilding.)

[conuly]

(Also, since we appear to have entered the HP-rant zone, the Weasleys are awful parents. Not as bad as the Dursleys, but they aren't exactly in line with best practices in childcare.)

[nodrog]

A little-known fact:  Wm Shakespeare wrote the 46th Psalm, “God is our refuge and strength, an ever-present help in trouble”

Proof?  The 46th word is “shake” - and the 46th word from the end is “spear.”

Q E D.

[nodrog]

Composing it - particularly against a literal deadline - would be maddening, I’d think, unless your brain is wired a certain way.

[nodrog]

http://www.dinktoons.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/09/Charles-Addams.gif

[jack]

Expert protagonist: Yay, we broke the code!
Expert protagonist: Oh, no, a further code! I have not been able to crack it in the first half-second, therefore I despair we ever will.
Amateur protagonist: Wait, this is about Leonardo Da Vince, right? What is the fact about his writing which is literally one of the most famous things about him!
Expert protagonist: Oh, of course! How wise of me to have brought along a trained amateur who, like lassie, can sometimes contribute practical help even in the face of my trained expertise.
Amateur protagonist: If only you'd noticed the letter frequency fit standard english letter frequency, you might have been able to guess what sort of code would have hidden the meaning, but, you know, not very much.
Expert protagonist: You've learned so much.
Amateur protagonist: After all, you were literally looking at it in front of a mirror, if only you'd shifted your eyes a few inches to the reflection before giving up, you would have solved it instantly.
Expert protagonist: OK, ok, well done, lesson over. I'll take over from here.

[calimac]

Re murderer's name clues, I always wonder, what if the murderer' name had happened to be something else not so convenient?

[fred_mouse]

Time travel where someone remembers their password from ten years ago!

[moon_custafer]

What do you think of the cipher in The Nine Tailors? On the one hand, it’s nigh-unbreakable— on the other, it seems to me now that it’s way overelaborate too for the circumstances: rechecking the plot summary on Wikipedia confirms that the cipher was essentially a mnemonic for Deacon to remind himself where the emeralds were hidden – he sent it to his accomplice as a token of good faith, but more to impress him without any expectation he’d be able to understand it. Then again, that kind of showboating to people he knows won’t fully appreciate it, just so he can feel extra clever, is pretty in-character for what we’re told of Deacon.

[moon_custafer]

I will accept a version of that from an old Rathbone/Bruce Sherlock Holmes movie, because it gave Moriarty to opportunity to chortle: “I was looking for a solution that was ingenious—this is ingenuous!”

[brokenallbroken]

Parenting is but one of a myriad of things the Weasleys are bad at. Kind of shocking Ron is still on speaking terms with them by the end of the series.

...The best parents in the whole story might be the Malfoys. I think I need to brush my teeth after saying that.

MEGO

[nodrog]

I confess, since writers like Dashiel Hammett and Mickey Spillane “took murder out of the Vicar’s rose garden and gave it back to the people who are good at it,” overly-elaborate overrefined artificial contrivances like Miss Sayers’ slide right off of me.  [I remember discovering what a good writer M Spillane actually was.  The opening chapter of The Long Wait alone is worth the price of the book.]

- I except Randall Garrett’s Lord Darcy stories, wherein magic is used as a tool of forensic investigation, because that idea is cleverly applied to such settings.

[It’s never a deus ex machina even when it could be; the dead man’s eyes do hold the image of the last thing he saw, but the woman seen firing at him is not recognized because “beauty is in the eye of the beholder” and no one else sees her as he did…]

[nodrog]

“Speak, friend, and enter” - if the password were DROWSSAP analysts at the NSA would cry.  That’s the very thing that never occurs to anyone…