If you wrote a word on a ball of string, then unravelled it, how challenging would it be to decipher the word?
Bryn Glover
Kirkby Malzeard, North Yorkshire, UK
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I would expect that a word written on the ball pictured (above) could never be deciphered.
In any coding or ciphering process, the vital factor is that the coder and intended decoder operate according to a logical, predictable process known to both. The first step for a decoder is to discover what this process is.
Some balls of string are wound systematically by machinery, producing a regular cylinder, for example. In such a case, it may be possible to predict the position of any small segment of the string, even taking into account the fact that the circumference of the 鈥渂all鈥� will increase as the wrapping proceeds.
But the ball illustrated has clearly been created by a random process, which, by definition, means it would be impossible to work backwards to recreate any words that had been written on it.
To answer this question 鈥� or ask a new one 鈥� email lastword@newscientist.com.
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