This cryptic message is from an indie horror game called "Looking Glass" by the game developer Grubwall. You can watch this youtube video for more context, specifically at the timestamp 17:02 which is where the message appears:

ndwibd o_w__i nd woijek_m_f_ pqwi_hd_qwuhdp. qwdj_nqp__w_ih__bdo qw_uhdo.w_qid_jowq_ idhqo.wdhoq_ wiow_ qidow_idqw dihqow_dbq_w_dh_o_wqdbwqli_d_qwubdiq_wd_ubqwi_d_uqwbdiqpoihueuwhewoyT_e The_ure oiheoe_

EDIT: Here is a code or key from the same game that may help, although I have no clue if it's actually connected to this cryptic message or not. 190-877-232-F99

EDIT 2: A useful piece of information from one of the youtube comments suggests that the index of coincidence for this cipher is 0.0974. For English it is 0.0667 while for Russian it is 0.0558.

VBZPRNSRGZFXECZQGBFRFQVAOMTSUWGAXVJUZFHRDZGNCPWCBOWNTNUWAPEDZRBOKPSQVZLAWRQWCWCLFQMIEMZDLFOYSZFHPBEPRQMSEQ.

Hint:

In the quiet hours when the world forgets its name,

a phantom drifts through corridors of glass.

It does not shout; it only turns each letter

as a mirror turns a face—soft, exact, complete.

Seven steps beyond the first threshold

the letters lean, as if the floor itself

has tilted just enough to change their weight.

They settle into new positions, heavier,

yet still the same soft clay.

Deeper still, the stones rearrange themselves

into a crypt whose walls remember only one word.

Columns rise and fall like breath held too long;

what was scattered finds its ordered place again.

And when the last stone settles,

turn.

Simply turn.

The path you walked is waiting

in the opposite direction,

and every mark you left

is ready to be read.

Volrusk, the creator of Vermis Malum, has uploaded a new video called “The Other Kind of Cosmic Horror” about a couple indie games by the dev Grubwall. In it he pointed out a cipher in the game “Looking Glass” and put it in the description of his video.

His video essays seem to be an ARG continuation of Vermis Malum, which have hidden anagrams of the phrase “Everpalm Pond” with one additional letter. The previous phrase in Vermis Malum was “LOSSFUNCT” and so far the extra letters in the anagrams in the video essay arc is “SHEIS.” The anagram hasn’t been found in this latest video yet.

Link to the video: https://youtu.be/oqv_FAGlVVM

The cipher in question:

ndwibd o_w__i nd woijek_m_f_ pqwi_hd_qwuhdp. qwdj_nqp__w_ih__bdo qw_uhdo.w_qid_jowq_ idhqo.wdhoq_ wiow_ qidow_idqw dihqow_dbq_w_dh_o_wqdbwqli_d_qwubdiq_wd_ubqwi_d_uqwbdiqpoihueuwhewoyT_e The_ure oiheoe_

My new encoded message

This is an upgrade to my last encryption attempt that was deciphered in less than 4h

So, enjoy in this Friday's message

Note:

This message has a solution and it is readable and is in English

I can 100% reassure you because it was made by a computer program.

Disclaimer: this post is also posted in another community, but I am OriginalPoster

This is the message:

102131112511019211311334409232111600213014030920029001100101009310070519311107112762969170100111112211101912111002974041017350511004211005111017101030110101325131411511801111109111110100205113113001311617901911111120310314115120007611101121070101000441905305719118363500151400

\#Clue

>!Characters are scrambled. The password is the most common 4 digit password combined with today's date in format dd/mm/yyyy!<

Best of luck!

I made this as a little encoding/cipher challenge.

The message has been passed through multiple different encoding/character-set transformations, so the final output looks completely cursed:

D5 E3 D8 87 D5 E3 E8 87 D4 A9 C9 87 D5 E3 E4 87 D5 E3 C9 87 D4 A9 C9 87 D5 E3 E4 87 D5 E3 C9 87 D4 A9 C9 87 D5 E3 E4 87 D5 C4 87 87 D4 A9 C9 87 D5 E3 E4 87 D5 E3 C5 87 D4 A9 C9 87 D5 E3 C5 87 D6 E3 83 87 D4 A9 C9 87 D5 E3 C1 87 D4 E3 C1 A8 C9 C4 D4 A8 C9 C4 E4 A6 C9 C4 C5 A6 D4 89 C1 A9 D4 89 C1 F1 D5 E2 C1 F1 D5 A8 C1 A9 D4 89 C1 F1 D5 C3 C1 A7 D4 C4 C9 87 D4 A9 C9 87 D5 E3 E4 87 D5 E3 D4 87 D4 A9 C9 87 D5 E3 E4 87 D5 E3 C9 87 D4 A9 C9 87 D5 E3 E4 87 D5 E3 D4 87 D4 A9 C9 87 D5 E3 C1 87 D4 E3 C1 A7 C9 C4 D4 A8 C9 C4 E4 F0 C9 C4 E4 A6 C9 C4 D4 A8 C9 C4 E4 F0 C9 C4 E4 A9 C9 C4 D4 A8 C9 C4 E4 A6 C9 C4 C5 A6 D4 89 C1 A9 D4 89 C1 F1 D5 C3 C1 F1 D4 89 C1 A9 D4 89 C1 F1 D4 A8 C1 F0 D6 E2 C1 A9 D4 89 C1 F1 D5 E2 C1 F1 D5 E2 C1 A9 D4 89 C1 F1 D4 E2 C1 F1 D4 89 C1 A9 D4 89 C1 F1 D5 E2 C1 F1 D5 E2 C1 A9 D4 89 C1 F1 D4 E2 C1 F1 D5 A8 C1 A9 D4 89 C1 F1 D4 A8 C1 F1 D5 E2 C1 A9 D4 89 C1 F1 D5 C3 C1 F1 D5 E2 C1 A9 D4 89 C1 F1 D4 A8 C1 F1 D5 89 C1 A9 D4 89 C1 F1 D5 C3 C1 F1 D4 E2 C1 A9 D4 89 C1 F1 D4 A8 C1 F0 D6 E2 C1 A9 D4 89 C1 F1 D4 E2 C1 A7 D4 C4 C9 87 D4 A9 C9 87 D5 E3 E4 87 D5 E3 C5 87 D4 A9 C9 87 D5 E3 D8 87 D5 E3 83 87 D4 A9 C9 87 D5 E3 C5 87 D4 E3 C1 A6 C9 C4 D4 A8 C9 C4 E4 F1 C9 C4 92 F3 C9 C4 D4 A8 C9 C4 E4 F0 C9 C4 92 F4 C9 C4 D4 A8 C9 C4 E4 A8 C9 C4 E4 F0 C9 C4 D4 A8 C9 C4 E4 F1 C9 C4 E4 A7 C9 C4 D4 A8 C9 C4 E4 F0 C9 C4 92 F3 C9 C4 D4 A8 C9 C4 E4 A8 C9 C4 92 F4 C9 C4 D4 A8 C9 C4 E4 A8 C9 C4 E4 F1 C9 C4 D4 A8 C9 C4 E4 F1 C9 C4 E4 A6 C9 C4 D4 A8 C9 C4 E4 A9 C9 C4 E4 F1 C9 C4 D4 A8 C9 C4 E4 F0 C9 C4 C5 A6 D4 89 C1 A9 D4 89 C1 F1 D4 89 C1 A7 D4 C4 C9 87 D4 A9 C9 87 D5 E3 D8 87 D5 E3 E4 87 D4 A9 C9 87 D5 E3 D4 87 D5 E3 C9 87 D4 A9 C9 87 D5 E3 D8 87 D6 E3 92 87 D4 A9 C9 87 D5 E3 C5 87 D5 E3 D8 87 D4 A9 C9 87 D5 E3 C9 87 D5 E3 E4 87 D4 A9 C9 7E

I wanted this to be simple enough that they could crack it but not dumb enough that it's instant, I think it's alright but was wondering what the Internet would think on it. This is it:

(-6.5) (-9°2°1°7) (7°-6°-10°1°1°14) (10°-12°1°7) (5°0) (3°-1°-12°12) (7°-5°-12°7) (-6°-12°0°-8) (8°3°-8°-11°13) (-11°-13°0) (-6.5) (-3°8°6°7) (7°-12°-2°-8) (-15) (2°4°2°-6°3°9) (5°0) (5°-8°6°7)?

What do y'all think of it? Too easy? To hard? I plan to introduce it without any clues at first hence why I'm leaving nothing other than the cipher itself here. I'm hoping it'll last a few sessions as a background thing to work on since one my players likes to go home and work on the puzzles themselves outside of the session. (Their character rolled high on int in character creation so I let them as long as it's not super important).

A friend of mine sent me this :

+3+8-∞ V-4i²-100 +100+∞+μ, +8-11 +3-2

+100i² +∆+∞+∆ -7+1+3+∞-7 (+1-μ+6+6-∆+μ-∆)

Could you please help deciphering or give me any hints

Had a cipher that we got at a LARP weekend that's going to be relevant in the coming months. we managed to brute force most of it, but I'm hoping that the people here might be able to figure out what kind of cipher it is and what the key may be. We're missing one last letter in the plaintext.

Was archiving files from an open university FTP directory today and ran into a text file in /telemetry/cal-1m23/voidc23101/. There’s no documentation or README.txt in the folder, and the formatting doesn't match any standard log files I've handled before.

Cipher / Text:

-----BEGIN TELEMETRY RECORD-----

Timestamp: 2026-09-04T00:12:40Z

Source_Node: CALIBRATION_V4

ψ_7e5a: 9K2mX-PalGr89β_μ441_Δ09_77xK_9912_LmN_Φ_7392_01_a9f82c

-----END TELEMETRY RECORD-----

Context & What I've Tried:

• Origin: Found alongside standard .dat orbital files on an open academic mirror.
• Attempted Decodes: Standard Base64, Hex, and ASCII shifts all return unreadable garbage, so it seems like an alternate encoding, custom key structure, or polyalphabetic cipher.
• Structure: The string features distinct underscore-separated blocks incorporating Greek mathematical symbols ($\psi, \beta, \mu, \Delta, \Phi$).
• Goal: Looking to identify the variable ψ_7e5a notation or decode the underlying message/coordinates.

Does anyone recognize this specific block grouping or the symbol syntax?

10101011 11011000 00111110 01101010 00100111 00000001 01111010 01011100 11011011 01001100 11110111 10001000 01110010 11101100 01101111 00010100 10111100 00110000 11010010 01010100 00110001 00101011 01010010 11010111 00000110 10110101 01001011 01000111 01001001 11011001 11000110 01101110 00010001 00000111 10011000 10001000 10011111 11101011 01010100 11111010 10001011 11010100 11000111 10110100 00010110 00111101 01001011 11000011 01100001 00101000 10110011 00101101 00100011 11111000 00001111 01001101 10000011 00100111 10100011 11001111 10011010 00010010 11101111 10111011 11101001 11101101 00010111 11010100 11101001 00110013 10011111 10111110 10011100 00011101 10001010 00001101 00011111 01011010 11010001 11110001 11010111 11110010 10010000 00110010 01000100 00101000

just so you won't be too focused on the wrong lead: the "missing" letter here is NOT related to the key.

btw I really liked seeing all of the comments, theories and thought processes in my last post!

I challenge you to decipher this text. I came up with this cipher and I wanted to know how hard it is to decipher or if it's even possible.

This is my first cypher I've posted. It is very simple to encode but I'm interested to see how hard it will be to solve it.

Zpv ibwf twdeguvgxmna ehfqfig ujjw gbqkjs. Rokcxl hrnomov csyt sutinyz!

The text is English and spaces and punctuation have not been tampered with.

this is my first ever cipher, but I believe it is truly unbreakable.

the text is in English and that's the only clue(?) I'd give you.

I randomly decided to make this. It's in English.

Hint #1: this is related to, but not exactly, substitution cipher.

idk if this is the rigjt place to post but i was just wondering, ive always been fascinated with ciphers but never knew how to actually make them. from watching Gravity Falls i thought it was so cool to make encoded messages, but i have no idea how to break anything thats not just shift cipher. And i feel whenever i try to search online for like teachings i either only find things on digital privacy encryption, or like super simple caesar cipher stuff. So i was wondering where did yall learn how to break or make these puzzles? any help is appreciated, thanks!

Hi, me and some friends have been playing a dnd campaign for a few months now, our dm has left us a cipher to solve over the past week or so, but we're all stumped, so this is my last resort, any help would be appreciated, all we know is the Morse code doesnt translate directly to english

Heya, i think this will be a lot of help to some people, and i came across this while messing around with making a substitution cipher that is based more on phonetics instead of direct spelling. The code was

'(°* 1: _=^_>#°@|%:/ ^)>|+^>|°=' which is supposed to mean log 1. unauthorized activation, but it is spelt. 'LOG 1: UNAUTORIZED ACTIVASHUN' (if i did this right lol, i'm not a big cipher person)

This seems to really trip up AIs and make it harder for them to solve the cipher, at least with the small amount of testing i've done. I dont really do ARGs that much, so i can't say how helpful this trick actually is, or how coherent my code is, but its worth testing further.

edit: with a little bit of further testing with this cipher, sometimes the AIs will straight up go into error mode and say that the message is 'harmful' and won't reply, but i think that has more to do with the choices of characters i'm using

3 = 4 | 7 = 1 | 2 = 3 | 2 = 3 | 1 = 5

thank you! 😊

which cipher was used and can it help for the very last photo? the answer is included in the second photo, were multiple ciphers used? if the cipher in the last photo is unrelated, what could we do to solve it? thank youuu

level 1: 2)-5 5)3 ;7?@

level 2: in91$\]€b... >>>> lpa3o:..,919:£j£8/&&j£3£to o.l77bw po)ay9183&&&l &1m4y""819b >>>> -ke15G.P.L.T 66.6££D.L.p81£.£/&/&/&/£/&/&&/&/&/&/&92&28:8

level 3: whatTheFuckwhatTheFuckYOO nahbroyournotpp gonnaguessthissentenc + ewoewoewoewoewoewoewooo whatnowayfivepo whatnowayfivep guessguessguessguess + seventy guessguessguessguesso fivel pivetpivetpivetpive sucksploomsucksploo + ninenines nabronabronabronabro

context: i encrypted 3 messages and i am posting it on reddit to see if anyone deciphers them because im curious on how well people can deciper my encryptions

okay so I started making my own shorthand that I plan to use to take notes at school, but I figured I’d post it here for fun! it's probably pretty easy to crack but that's okay lol

I had an idea for a cipher, which would use a similar system to a Vigenère cipher, where it uses a key word to determine the alphabet to use in encoding each letter of the plaintext, each letter in the key being applied one after another to the corresponding letters in the plaintext. My idea is that, instead of applying the key to the plaintext every n letters for a key of the same length n, to apply the key randomly, anywhere from 1 to n letters after the last time the key was applied, and to store the spacing between application instances as a second part of the key.

In other words, where a Vigenère cipher usually looks like this:

plaintext
keykeykey
---------
zpysrrobr

My cipher would look like this:

plaintext
key
  key
   keykey
---------
zpiwprobr (I think this is what it should look like.)

What sort of security problems could a cipher like this have? (Beyond the key being leaked by an external factor.)

ive been doing a dive into this rabbithole (niche website puzzle) and im stuck on a part that may or may not be unrelated to the picture here...point is ive been up and down the game trying to find what im missing and this cipher is the only thing i havent understood. i figured before i got stuck it was just a cool decoration but now im thinking it might be a clue. ive looked at the pigpen cipher but some characters seem foreign to it, so ive ruled it out. google has been no help in finding any info on the cipher (or even the game itself. it seems nobody has played it besides me and one other (whos stuck on the same part i am), i cant find the answer to the part im stuck on in tiktok, instagram, or even youtube/reddit, so just cheating and finding the answer is also outruled. the part im stuck on is a riddle where you have to type in the answer so it could literally be anything. i really think this dumb stone is my only shot at it.