--- title: Nyctography: A substituton cypher by Lewis Carroll description: Nyctography is a substitution cipher writing system invented by Lewis Carroll (Charles Lutwidge Dodgson) in 1891. It uses a physical device called a nyctograph... canonical: https://daily.dev/posts/nyctography-a-substituton-cypher-by-lewis-carroll-3eesyrboz twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:site: @dailydotdev og:type: website og:site_name: daily.dev og:title: Nyctography: A substituton cypher by Lewis Carroll | daily.dev og:description: Nyctography is a substitution cipher writing system invented by Lewis Carroll (Charles Lutwidge Dodgson) in 1891. It uses a physical device called a nyctograph... og:url: https://daily.dev/posts/nyctography-a-substituton-cypher-by-lewis-carroll-3eesyrboz og:image: https://api.daily.dev/og/posts/3EeSYrBoZ.png og:image:alt: Nyctography: A substituton cypher by Lewis Carroll og:image:width: 1200 og:image:height: 630 og:locale: en --- > ## Documentation Index > Fetch the complete documentation index at: https://daily.dev/llms.txt > Use this file to discover all available pages before exploring further. # Nyctography: A substituton cypher by Lewis Carroll **[Hacker News](https://daily.dev/sources/hn)** · 5 min read · 0 upvotes · 0 comments ## Summary Nyctography is a substitution cipher writing system invented by Lewis Carroll (Charles Lutwidge Dodgson) in 1891. It uses a physical device called a nyctograph — a gridded card with 16 square holes — to write notes in the dark without needing a light source. The system employs a square alphabet where each character has a dot in the upper-left corner, using dots and lines along the sides of squares. Carroll invented it to record nighttime thoughts without the hassle of lighting a lamp. The alphabet included 26 letters plus special characters for common words, digits, and dates, with no native capitalization or punctuation, drawing similarities to Braille in how numbers are represented. ## Full article daily.dev links to this article rather than hosting it. Read it at the original source: ## Community take How the wider developer community reacted, aggregated from 3 discussions and 20 comments across hackernews (as of 2026-08-02). **TL;DR:** Commenters are largely nostalgic and enthusiastic, sharing personal stories of learning secret alphabets and cipher systems as children (Tolkien runes, Daedric script, Pigpen cipher, homemade crypto disks), with only minor skepticism about the practical utility of the concept. **Sentiment:** 70% positive · 20% mixed · 10% skeptical **The case for** - Many commenters share fond childhood memories of independently learning or inventing substitution alphabets and ciphers, suggesting broad appeal of the concept. - DIY implementations (cardboard cipher disks, cut-out templates) are highlighted as accessible and fun for kids. **The pushback** - One commenter questions the core premise, noting that handwriting in the dark is already legible without a special system. - Skills learned in these scripts tend to fade over time, limiting long-term practical value. **By community** - hackernews (positive): Commenters are predominantly nostalgic and enthusiastic, sharing personal anecdotes about secret scripts and ciphers from childhood games and books. **Hottest debate:** Whether the system actually makes writing in the dark easier compared to ordinary handwriting. **Open questions** - What specific advantage does this cipher/script system offer over standard cursive or print writing in the dark? **Highlights** > This reminds me that as a child I taught myself Tolkien's runes from The Hobbit, which is mostly another substitution of the modern English alphabet: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cirth#Runes_from_The_Hobbit I got to the point I could read and write without a reference. Not as fast as English but not slow either. Many years later I found a notebook with many pages of things I'd written but had since lost the ability to read again. > — [suprjami on hackernews · 4 comments](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49139357) > As a child I made several crypto disks out of cardboard, draw a 3 inch circle, give it enough segments to fit your alphabet, 32 is easy and gives you room for the capitals and some punctuation, draw the letters twice on each segment inside and outside of the circle, then cut out the circle, glue the outer part to a backing sheet and glue a tab/handle to the inner part to make it easy to spin. Used statically it works as a simple ceaser cipher, but the real advanced ciphers became available if you rotated it by a specific amount after each letter. Many plans and conspiracies about what we were going to do with our new "unbreakable" encryption system, but in retrospect, never used and more fun to build and think about than operate. > — [somat on hackernews](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49140044) > I have a very similar story, except I taught myself and a friend to write using "daedric" from Morrowind. I don't know if it was the actual daedric letters from the game, I think I just found a font that claimed to be daedric from a website and thought it was really cool. My friend and I would write notes to each other in this little secret chicken scratch-looking alphabet, it was fun. I sometimes try to remember how to write it or how to read it (I still have some notebooks from when I was a kid as well), but it's been 20+ years and I only recognize a few characters at this point. The rest is practically Greek to me now. > — [nozzlegear on hackernews · 1 comments](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49140783) > I'm not understanding how this makes it easier to write in the dark. I'd think handwriting in cursive or even printing would work OK. In fact I just tried it and it was perfectly legible. > — [SoftTalker on hackernews](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49140738) **Source threads** - [hackernews](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49081851) · 57 points · 16 comments - [hackernews](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40932571) · 9 points · 2 comments - [hackernews](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42033169) · 4 points · 2 comments ## Similar posts on daily.dev - [Schneier on Security](https://daily.dev/posts/schneier-on-security-klbvepj8z) · Schneier on Security · 0 upvotes · 0 comments - [Encryption In The 1790s](https://daily.dev/posts/encryption-in-the-1790s-7spt183tn) · Hackaday · 0 upvotes · 0 comments - [Alice in Wonderland is mostly math jokes — Storica](https://daily.dev/posts/alice-in-wonderland-is-mostly-math-jokes-storica-lyjlmtwwv) · Hacker News · 0 upvotes · 0 comments --- Tags: [#cryptography](https://daily.dev/tags/cryptography) [View this post on daily.dev](https://daily.dev/posts/nyctography-a-substituton-cypher-by-lewis-carroll-3eesyrboz) ```json {"@context":"https://schema.org","@graph":[{"@type":"Organization","@id":"https://daily.dev/#organization","name":"daily.dev","url":"https://daily.dev","logo":{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://daily.dev/apple-touch-icon.png","width":180,"height":180},"sameAs":["https://twitter.com/dailydotdev","https://github.com/dailydotdev","https://www.linkedin.com/company/daily-dev-ltd"]},{"@type":"WebSite","@id":"https://daily.dev/#website","url":"https://daily.dev","name":"daily.dev","publisher":{"@id":"https://daily.dev/#organization"},"potentialAction":{"@type":"SearchAction","target":{"@type":"EntryPoint","urlTemplate":"https://daily.dev/search?q={search_term_string}"},"query-input":"required name=search_term_string"}}]} {"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"TechArticle","headline":"Nyctography: A substituton cypher by Lewis Carroll","url":"https://daily.dev/posts/nyctography-a-substituton-cypher-by-lewis-carroll-3eesyrboz","mainEntityOfPage":{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https://daily.dev/posts/nyctography-a-substituton-cypher-by-lewis-carroll-3eesyrboz"},"datePublished":"2026-08-02T01:54:42.381Z","dateModified":"2026-08-02T09:45:19.630Z","description":"Nyctography is a substitution cipher writing system invented by Lewis Carroll (Charles Lutwidge Dodgson) in 1891. 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