>bill said:
>>   That I actually hand-decoded this thing
>
>hand-decoded!  you're a dedicated sort, aren't you?      :+)

I did the obvious letter and word substitutions and saw "toffee sweet" in 
the middle, and recognized "Taliban" later on... had to finish as my 
curiosity was out of control at that point. Besides, it's been years 
since I did any crypto work. It was (well, sort of) fun!

>i wrote a rot13 routine to decode it.  (the source is appended.)

By the time I realized it was just ROT13, and not a random substitution 
cipher, it was quicker just to finish it manually. The old skills had 
come back. Now, speaking of crypto and such - does anyone here recognize 
the term "Swedish Robber Language", or "SRL"? It's simple enough to learn 
that my daughter (11) and I can carry on a conversation in it that 
_nobody_ else I know can follow. Including her mom - handy for things 
like discussing her birthday present... Yes, I have to speak slowly, but 
otherwise very little is not understood. Took a week or two for her to 
learn it. Yet despite the simplicity (much easier than Esperanto, or even 
Pig Latin for that matter), and ease of translating programmatically, it 
really complicates automated decoding attempts, at least any that rely on 
a dictionary of English words, and could be used as another "layer" on 
_any_ encrypted communications, regardless of encryption method used. 
Although it's not 'compact', and not amenable to LZW compression. Hm... 
if I only had more spare time!

Here is a short phrase written in SRL then quickly encoded using an old 
and _very_ simple method - not ROT13, even simpler, though multi-step; 
I'll give the clear text English version in a day or so if there is 
interest, and nobody succeeds in decoding it before then. We'll see if 
anyone can figure out the overall algorithm, even given the clear text to 
work with...

CPUSP LELEV EVASP WEWER ERKEK UNENG EGSPU NENSP CPFEF CPBEB CESMC IRERA 
TETNM TETHE HRERA ASPIN ENDED SPPEP EWEAR ERHEH EOSES ASMPE PARER UEDED 
SPCPT ETHEH ASPNM FEFEO RERCP GEGCP LELSP IPEPP EPRER EICEC HEHSP BEBAI 
TTETS ESSPC PECPE CPPEP SPINE NYEYS PDEDI YEYSM BEBIN ENGEG

Bill