ABSTRACT

A scytale is an ancient way of sending secret messages. It uses two dowel rods of the same size and a long strip of paper. The strip of paper is wrapped around the sender's dowel rod and the message is written while the paper is wrapped around the rod. When you unwrap the paper, it looks like a list of letters. When the receiver gets the message, she wraps it around her dowel rot and she can read the message. The secret is having dowel rods that are the same size. Otherwise it’s pretty hard to read the message!