Create messages using codes and how they can be broken people tend to assume that a code they have created will be very hard to break when in fact most basic codes can be cracked in a very short time codes and ciphers studies just how this is done. The art of creating and using such codes and ciphers is called cryptography which comes from the greek words for hidden and writing code and cipher terminology it shouldnt be too surprising that cryptography which is all about making things hard to read has a lot of its own special words. A beginners guide to codebreaking written by prof graham a niblo mathematical sciences university of southampton 27 september 2016 edited by dr claire swabey version 11b 1st october 2016 about these notes these notes form a brief introduction to using and cracking substitution ciphers. A beginners guide to codebreaking written by prof graham a niblo edited by dr claire swabey school of mathematical sciences university of southampton version 12 29th september 2019 graham a niblo on ciphers version 12 page 1