Downloading and running the executable homophonic.exe. Create a new folder in a location you can find easily, called CryptoPrograms or something similar that you will easily recognize. Create another folder inside this one for the cipher type, e.g., Homophonic. Now download the executable homophonic.exe into this folder. You will also need to place a con in this folder, as a text file. This file should consist of the con itself as a continuous string with no End-of-Line characters, and the tip in uppercase letters on the next line. You can start with the sample con file available for download from the same Computer Column folder on the ACA website that you got the homophone.exe file. For example, the sample con for the Homophonic cipher is called E1ND2010.txt. To run the program, double-click the executable, and a new window should open. It will give the name of the program and ask for the file name of the con. Before going further, I suggest that you customize the window as follows: 1. There is an icon just to the left of the title at the top left of the window. Clicking on this reveals a drop-down menu. Select the Defaults option. This opens another window called Console Windows Properties, which has 4 tabs. Change nothing in the General tab. 2. Click on the Font tab and choose Raster fonts, 8x12 character size. 3. Click on the Layout tab. Increase both the window width and screen buffer width from 80 to 100, giving a slightly wider window. 4. Click on the Colors tab. Change the screen background from black to white and the screen text from white to black by clicking on the appropriate radio button and then on the desired color square. 5. When you have finished making the changes, click OK. These changes don't take effect until after the window is closed and re-opened. To make the changes immediate, select Properties in the drop-down menu and make the same changes. You can make the window longer by dragging down on the lower right corner of the window. At the correct mouse position, a double-headed arrow control should appear. You can't make the window wider using this control. After customizing the window, go back to the program window, enter the name of the con file. If you made the con file using Notepad or another text editor, it will show up in the folder with the name you used when saving it. IMPORTANT: For these programs you must add the .txt extension when typing in the name. The program will display all solutins whose score exceeds the threshold score. Quitting the program is accomplished by entering -1 when it is given as an option. If at some point you want to print out the display, you will need to prepare the window to highlight the part you want to print. To do this, follow these steps: 1. Click on the icon at the top left corner of the window and mouse down to Edit. 2. A second menu opens; select Mark. 3. Now use the mouse to highlight the portion of the window you want to print. This is done by selecting the area you want just as in a word-processing document. 4. Open the drop-down menu again, mouse down to Edit, and select Copy in the second menu. 5. Open a new document in Notepad. 6. In Notepad's Edit menu select Paste. The part of the window you highlighted should now appear in this Notepad document, and you can print it. Make a note of the desired solution, then press the enter key as directed by the program. The window will then close. Program flow: after the log digram frequency data are converted to integers and stored in the 2-d array dig[i,j], the con file is read in. Then the con is stripped of non-numerical characters, and stored in the string temp. Each numerical digram of the con is converted to an integer and stored in the array CIPHER[i]. Four nested do-loops with shifts i1, i2, i3, i4 are set up, and the con is deciphered for every value of the 4 shifts. Each trial solution is scored using log digram frequencies, and those whose scores exceed 699 are displayed, along with the associated 4-letter keyword. They are also written to a text file called sol.txt. To make a con file, paste the con into a new blank text file using Notepad, Microsoft Word, or any text editor. Make sure that the con is in one continuous string, with no end-of-line characters (carriage return, line feed) present in the con except at the end. Give the con a name, with extension .txt. Put it in the same folder with the executable homophonic.exe. The tip, if given, is not used.