Pigpen Code

Before the meeting:

1. Review the Pigpen Code
   • In the pig pen code, the alphabet is copied into grids. Then, each part of the “pig pen” is substituted for the letter in that part. For the second grid of each type, dots are added.
   • Draw two tic-tac-toe type grids and two large “X”.
   • Start in the top left corner of the first tick-tac-toe grid and write the letter A. Then moving left to right, top to bottom, fill in the first grid with the remaining letters B through I.
   • In the second grid add a dot in each grid, then in the same manner as the first grid fill in the letters J through R.
   • In the first large X place the letters S, T, U, and V.
   • In the second large X place dots in each section and add the letters W, X, Y, and Z.
2. To create a letter, draw the section of the grid without the letter. For example, the letter A is written by drawing the top corner of the grid with one line horizontally meeting another line vertically at a 90-degree angle at the lower right corner.
3. Set up room to allow space for Cub Scouts to make pig pen codes.

During the meeting:

1. Gather the Cub Scouts and ask them if they have ever sent or received an email. Explain to them:
   • To protect the information in the email a computer may scramble the message so if someone who wasn’t supposed to receive the email gets it, they can’t read it. This is called encryption.
   • Encrypting messages has been going on way before computers. When all messages were written the message would use a code and to understand the code you needed a key.
   • Today we will create a secret code using a method that was used before computers.
2. Give each Cub Scout a piece of paper and a pencil.
3. Ask Cub Scouts to open their Wolf handbook to the Pigpen Code.
4. Ask Cub Scouts to create a message using Pigpen Code.
5. Ask Cub Scouts to exchange their codes and decode the message they got from their buddy.