Happy Valentine’s Day 143

1 4 5 11

Do you?

It just makes me think of Valentine’s Day.  As a little kid I remember getting them from my parents, in their little cardboard box.  In high school, I used to tell my sweetheart of the month that all I wanted for Valentine’s Day was one of those little boxes . . . forget the flowers and stuffed bears!

What’s that you say?  You don’t know what 1 4 5 11 means?  It’s code.  1 4 5 11 is code for I love Necco Sweethearts.  You know those chalky little hearts with the Valentine sayings on them?  I didn’t make up this code, Necco did.  Have you seen these hearts?

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(Find the top 14 conversation hearts here, including 143).

Do you know what 143 stands for?  I (1) love (4) you (3).  Get?  If not don’t feel bad.  This person Facebooked Necco to find out why in the world she ate a heart with 143 on it!

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Anyway, I think its cute and all but as far as codes go . . . its really not that great.  I mean 143 could stand for lots of things couldn’t it?

But here’s the thing, Necco’s touching on something that mathematicians have used for a long time.  That is, numbers as code for something else.  Try this one:

91215225251521.

OK, OK.  So its not that hard, right?

Its either:

IABAEBBEBEAEBA or ILOVEYOU.  I’m not sure that I would want to send some sort of top secret code through cyberspace if my coding technique was A=1, B=2, C=3, etc.  But what about this code?

4560776126257605

Do you want a hint?  OK.  It looks like that number might be divisible by 5.  Oh!  It is divisible by 5.  I wonder what you get when you divide the number by 5?

Hmm.  We might be on to something.  It seems to me that a great way to code something might be to do the whole A=1, B=2, C=3 thing and then to multiply it by another number.  If the person I’m sending the code to knows the number to divide my code by, the code is pretty darn easy for the receiver to crack and its fairly difficult for a spy to intercept and figure out what it says, don’t you think?

So, find a sweetheart and send them something in code for tomorrow.  My sweetheart is getting this message.  Can you crack it?

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