1. I thought that the hardest part of this reading was the section on affine ciphers. I am at least somewhat familiar with the shift and substitution ciphers, and this type was just that one step further in terms of sophistication--to me at least. Luckily, we had just gone over modular division, so that part didn't really phase me at all. It just gets a lot more difficult when you suddenly have to keep track of more than one characteristic. Really, if it were up to me, I'd only try to crack codes if they were based on one characteristic unless the code was really important. If only those trying to read my codes thought that way too.
2. Reading through this really makes me think about my project, especially when it comes to determining what a letter may represent based on how often it show up. I hadn't really been thinking of this fully when we were brainstorming how to make a good code, and so ours may fall short of the mark we set for it if Alice were to discover the method by which the code is made. After all, even if each character is represented by three new characters, it can still be blocked off in a similar manner. So, overall, this was a good reading at this point in time in order to hit home how a code needs to avoid such an inspection through a stronger set-up.
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