Women Cryptologists of World War II Stamps 💌 (Puzzle & Review)

At Room Escape Artist, we love snail mail.

In today’s world of easy digital communication, there’s something novel about a handwritten note. As our Patreon supporters know, we typically wax seal ours, just to make it extra special.

We also choose our stamps carefully, and we’re excited to use “forever” stamps themed on Women Cryptologists of World War II.

Mini Review

These stamps recognize the importance of puzzle solving in our history, and particularly the women who were instrumental in codebreaking efforts both in the United States and the United Kingdom.

We often solve puzzles for fun, but cryptology is an important field, with plenty of important uses and new challenges to solve. We love that the United States Postal Service has gone out of their way to recognize this field, as well as the often forgotten women who contributed so much to it.

The Cipher

It’s an eye-catching stamp – perfect to make a letter recipient stop and think briefly about cryptography.

When you buy a sheet of these forever stamps, there’s a little code for you to solve. While it isn’t the most complex cipher, it is more complicated than a simple caesar shift.

You can crack it yourself, or just slide the image over to reveal the back of the stamp book which contains an explanation of how the cipher works as well as the cipher key:

It’s pretty straightforward. All the information is provided, so with the smallest bit of searching, anyone can decipher it. Points for accessibility! But also points for not just tossing the solution in plain text on the back like the USPS did with their 2021 Mystery Message Stamp.

I truly hope that the USPS continues to explore codes and puzzles with their stamp designs.

Thank you!

Thank you to our Patreon backers.

We love sending personalized, handwritten notes to the folks who financially support us. As our Patreon community continues to grow, the work that we do becomes more sustainable. And for us, part of that is thanking people. Dropping a puzzle or cipher stamp on the letter has been a key part of this for us for the past couple of years.

Special shout out to those who joined this month: Kam, Devin Sanders, Julie Buchheit, Eric Schwanke, Janelle Gallagher, Cruise Monkey, Kevin Burns, Daniel Riordan, Suhani Singhal, Bogdan Dascalescu

To those of you reading who have the means, we hope you’ll consider joining this wonderful group of supporters.

Support Room Escape Artist’s Mission

There are lots of ways to support Room Escape Artist, like buying from Amazon, Etsy, or Art of Play after clicking into the links included in this post or backing us on Patreon.

The money that we make from these helps us to grow the site and continue to add more value to the community that we love so much.