How did I figure out the code?

So, people want to know how I figured out the code in the latest Celestia Wallpaper reveal.

One summer when I was in fifth grade or so, I went to the bookmobile (the next question is, what's a bookmobile?) that used to stop by my street and I checked out a book on how to break and make alphabet codes. I loved that book. It had its own skill sheets and everything. I can't remember the name of the book, but I do remember a few basic tricks from it.

1- Well, first, it took recognizing that it was a code and not just a banner element.


That just looks like code. It isn't repeating in a regular pattern, there's spaces between elements . . . yup, that's an alphabet code.

2- Next you look for common short words like "and" or "but" or "the" or "it" or "a"


"The" was pretty easy to pick out since you wouldn't normally see "word *and* word *and* word word word" plus that last element just looked more like an "e". So I opted for "the."

3- You fill in the other blanks with the letters you just found.



4- Since each word contains a vowel, your next job is to pull out the vowels. The letter "i" was pretty obvious as to it being an "i". The "a" kind of looked like an "a" and since there were so many of them it was a good bet it wasn't a "u".



5- Now you look for words to pop out. Beneath popped right out. That "B" element now looked like how a "b" would look. Solving Beneath then gives you an "n" in the final word of the series.



6- This would normally be the time to find all "R,S, T, N, and L" letters, just like in the game wheel of fortune. I already had my "n". But, the word "shine" popped out quite easily, and that gave me four other s's.



7- My brain saw the words at this point and I shouted out the answer and published it to my blog as fast as I could! LOL.



I wish I could remember the name of the book, but it's been. . . oh . . . well over 20 years ago since I read it, so . . . sorry.

Anyway, that's how I did it without the use of any tools besides my brain. You just kind of need to know how language and words are constructed and let the pieces fall into place.

Of course, KI has done much MUCH more complex codes than this, you may remember this one that was VERY INTENSE. I couldn't help at all with that.

Happy Dueling!