Fincher, working with a fantastically detailed script by the young James Vanderbilt, chronicles the case of the self-identified Zodiac killer, a taunting, publicity-mad creep who murdered at least five people in the San Francisco Bay Area in the late sixties and sent confessional notes about the crimes (sometimes in cipher) to newspapers.

NEWYORKER: Zodiac

They searched for the most commonly used characters in a cipher alphabet and matched them with the most frequently used letters in the real alphabet.

FORBES: I've got a secret

Last month, Giuliani sent a message to the Republican base that, in the cipher of abortion politics, was meant to say, Trust me.

NEWYORKER: Mayberry Man

The King of Sentences, unmistakably, though withered like a shrunken-apple fetish of the noble cipher in the photograph.

NEWYORKER: The King of Sentences

The Government Code and Cipher School in Bletchley, where Alan Turing did pioneering work on early computers, is a popular site of pilgrimage.

BBC: How to play hide-and-seek by satellite

Gord Young, from Ontario, inherited a codebook which he thinks holds the key, believing the message relies on a cipher also used in World War I.

ENGADGET: Alt-week 12.22.12: strange skulls, solar portraits and 17-minute code cracking

With the advent of the first electrical cipher, the German Enigma machine in 1918, cryptanalysis changed its fundamental character.

FORBES: I've got a secret

In Mary's case, Elizabeth's master code breaker Thomas Phelippes cracked the cipher and exposed her crime.

FORBES: I've got a secret

To envisage what Republicans would do if they win in November, the person to understand is not necessarily Romney, who has been a policy cipher all his public life.

NEWYORKER: Fussbudget