Woods a codebreaker

Two spies in separate prison cells are somehow communicating to each other through the walls. A hidden microphone picks up tapping sounds one night. Can someone listen to the taps and decipher the code — which obviously wasn’t done by Samuel Morse — and find out what the prisoners are up to?

Nathan Woods and his teammates, Jennings Anderson and Forrest Laskowski, recently did just that. They also solved two other difficult encryptions while competing in the online Kryptos cryptanalysis contest.

Woods is a 2009 Columbia Falls High School graduate and a junior at Carroll College in Helena. Woods and his teammates were one of only four teams to successfully break all three codes out of 30 college teams that competed. Not bad for a first run.

Cryptology is the field of secret writing — creating messages others aren’t intended to read. Breaking those codes is called cryptography.

Woods became interested in the competition after one of his professors showed him a pamphlet on the competition a few weeks ago.

Cryptography often involves complicated mathematical solutions. For example, the above-mentioned prisoners were using a double-tap system, where the alphabet was arranged in rows that corresponded with the taps. The letter “A” for example is one tap, one tap, “B” two taps, two taps, and so forth.

“It’s a pretty common cipher,” Woods said in an interview last week.

For Woods, it’s all in a day’s work. He’s a math and computer science major with a minor in physics. He’s also an offensive lineman for the Carroll College Saints football team.

He has a 3.78 GPA and said he and his colleagues are considering offering a class in cryptology at the college.

Woods plans to go on to graduate school to study robotic engineering, where cryptology is all-important. The military, for example, doesn’t want the enemy to figure out the science behind drones.

How do they keep communications secret? Cryptology, Woods notes.

Woods has also done some moonlighting locally. He was a technical consultant for Outside Media, a Columbia Falls advertising and public relations firm.

Woods grew up in Columbia falls. His parents, Lorrie and John Woods, both work at Plum Creek. Lorrie works with the Plum Creek Foundation, and John is a senior data analyst — he conducted a companywide real estate analysis of all Plum Creek lands.

To test your own acumen with cryptology, visit online at www.cwu.edu/~boersmas/kryptos.