Rotary phone with numbers and letters

Question

I am going to organise a quest for teenagers.

I have a vintage phone like below:

enter image description here

I am looking for ideas how to use the rotary phone with numbers 1,2, ..., 9, 0 and letters A, B, C, F, H, I, K, L, M, R.

My attempt is: to use a "A1Z26" cipher (in my case A1R0), for instance, 3188 - CALL, 2188 - BALL, 619 - I AM, 4188 - FALL, 7688 - KILL, 2688 - BILL.

What is an alternative to the substitution cipher?

I found your phone! translatetheweb.com/… en.todocoleccion.net/phones/… — JMP, Commented Dec 1, 2019 at 4:42
Some interesting longer words available from those letters are blackmail and armchair. — Jaap Scherphuis, Commented Dec 1, 2019 at 6:00

JMP · Accepted Answer · 2019-12-01 11:29:44Z

4

You can get a bit more excitement from the letters if you assign each number to a range, albeit an irregular one.

So 1=A, 2=B, 3=C,D,E, 4=F,G, 5=H, 6=I,J, 7=K, 8=L, 9=M,N,O,P,Q, and 0=R,S,T,U,V,W,X,Y,Z.

So for example PUZZLING STACK EXCHANGE becomes 90008694 00137 30351943.

To decode, reverse the process. With some of the letters fixed, guessing the others should be easy enough.

answered Dec 1, 2019 at 6:49

JMP

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$\begingroup$ If the phone has actual letters marked on it, then using a different correspondence between letters and digits seems likely to be really confusing... $\endgroup$
– Gareth McCaughan ♦
Commented Dec 1, 2019 at 10:50
1

$\begingroup$ @GarethMcCaughan; fixed - it was very early... $\endgroup$
– JMP
Commented Dec 1, 2019 at 11:30

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