The "Delany" code solution, by Jeff

As requested, I will now post the solution to the code from last week. I believe this sort of help with a code definitely qualifies as a "copout," so I've also fulfilled this week's post.

And if you can't accept that reasoning, then surely you can accept that my use of that reasoning to claim that this post counts is a large enough copout in and of itself.

So here's the key: I referred to the "Delany" code as a uniquely American code. To encode a message, you take every letter in the message and replace it with a state abbreviation. I've posted my entire key below.

Since there are 50 states, and only 26 letters in the alphabet, you can see there are many letters that can be replaced with multiple state abbreviations. For example, to write the word "yaw," you could encode it as "ARDEME" or "ARIAME." That's where the human element of randomness comes in and makes it harder to crack.

Now, the order of states assigned to letters is not done alphabetically, but instead by order of admittance to the Union. For Americans properly educated (which might be a stretch, I suppose), this code would come naturally to them.

A	DE	IA
B	PA	WI
C	NJ	CA
D	GA	MN
E	CT	OR
F	MA	KS
G	MD	WV
H	SC	NV
I	NH	NE
J	VA	CO
K	NY	ND
L	NC	SD
M	RI	MT
N	VT	WA
O	KY	ID
P	TN	WY
Q	OH	UT
R	LA	OK
S	IN	NM
T	MS	AZ
U	IL	AK
V	AL	HI
W	ME
X	MO
Y	AR
Z	MI
.	FL
?	TX

The reason "Delany" triggered this thought for me is that it is a word made up of state abbreviations. If it was in code, the original word would have been "ark."