The geometric symbol alphabet Freemasons have used for private letters for centuries.
This cipher uses symbols: use the reference grid below to decode it.
Turn this message into a real game: create a virtual lock your players must crack open.
Pigpen doesn't replace a letter with another letter — it replaces it with a geometric symbol. Each letter sits in one cell of a tic-tac-toe-style grid (with or without a dot), and its position in the grid gives it its shape: an angle, a square, a dot added or not.
Popularized by Freemasons from the 18th century onward for their private correspondence, the system is actually much older — traces of it show up among the Knights Templar and in military notebooks long before. Its real secret isn't the logic, which is dead simple, but the grid itself.
For an escape room, pigpen is visually striking: the symbols look like a mysterious secret language and instantly hook players, who first have to get their hands on the reference key hidden somewhere in the room before they can decode a single symbol.
Plain message
FOLLOW THE SYMBOLS
Coded message
It's nearly impossible without it: unlike the Caesar cipher, there's no math to figure out, just an arbitrary visual match between each grid cell and a letter. The reference key is the one clue any pigpen puzzle absolutely needs.
Yes — 18th-century Masonic documents and objects, including gravestones, still carry inscriptions in pigpen. The name likely comes from the grids resembling pig enclosures, though historians still debate exactly where the term originated.
Yes — on CrackAndReveal you create a lock whose expected answer is the word your players decode from the symbols and the key. They type their answer online, and the lock opens automatically once they've cracked it.
Yes, several historical layouts exist (with or without dots, with X-shaped grids for the last letters). Nothing stops you from designing your own custom grid for a unique game either, as long as your players get the matching key.
With CrackAndReveal, your coded message becomes a virtual lock to crack: players decipher your code, enter the solution and reveal your surprise.
Create a free lock