On the side he invented a precursor to the Vigenere cipher, a code so strong it took three centuries to crack.

FORBES: I've got a secret

But what we have instead is a game that hands you a key and tells you to go find a lock, or gives you a cipher and tells you to go find a code.

FORBES: An Attempt to Understand BioShock Infinite's Brilliant and Bizarre Ending

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

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

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

Here are secrets and codes, an elaborate cipher-breaking machine, an obsession with graves and crazy adventures to find lost manuscripts.

ECONOMIST: The man and his pen

The watermark, Dr Venter says, includes a cipher which contains the URL of a website and three quotations, if you can work out how to decode it.

ECONOMIST: Artificial lifeforms