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Here are some resources I've found especially helpful for my own puzzle making and codebreaking endeavors.

General Overviews and Websites:

• Cryptography - Wikipedia
  
  
• Classical cipher - Wikipedia
  
  
• Cryptanalysis- Wikipedia
  
  
• Steganography - Wikipedia
  
  
• Ryan Riley's "Introduction to Basic Cryptography" series - Youtube: 1, 2, and 3 (plus several others, just look through his channel)
  
  
• The American Cryptogram Association
  
  
• Practical Cryptography
  
  
• Elonka.com
  
  
• The Black Chamber
  
  Basic Cryptanalytic Techniques:
  
  
• Frequency Analysis - Wikipedia
  
  
• Coincidence Counting - Wikipedia
  
  
• Kasiski Examination - Wikipedia
  
  Beginner hand-cracking tutorials:
  
  
• How to Solve a Cryptogram - Puzzlebaron.com
  
  
• Vigenère decryption with unknown key - Youtube
  
  Tools for creating and cracking codes quickly:
  
  
• Rumkin Cipher Tools
  
  
• dCode Crypto Tools
  
  
• Quipqiup Crytogram Solver
  
  
• Cryptii Tools
  
  
• Guballa Vigenere Solver
  
  
• Boxentriq Code-Breaking Tools
  
  Interesting cryptographic puzzles for inspiration:
  
  
• World's Greatest Unsolved Ciphers (Craig Bauer), Part 1 and Part 2
  
  
• Cicada 3301: LEMMiNO Documentary; Great Big Story Documentary Series
  
  
• Kryptos: Great Big Story Feature; Cracking Kryptos (Elonka Dunin)
  
  Books:
  
  While I haven't read these, I've heard a lot of good things about them:
  
  
• Cryptanalysis: A Study of Ciphers and their Solution, by Helen F. Gaines
  
  
• The Code Book: The Science of Secrecy from Ancient Egypt to Quantum Cryptography, by Simon Singh
  
  
• The Codebreakers: The Comprehensive History of Secret Communication from Ancient Times to the Internet, by David Khan
  
  EDIT: Tweaked some wording and formatting

Some pretty good reads on the subject:

Top Secret: A Handbook of Codes, Ciphers and Secret Writing https://www.amazon.com/dp/0763629723/ref=cm_sw_r_awd_WF1Dub0WN55RY

The Code Book: The Science of Secrecy from Ancient Egypt to Quantum Cryptography https://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/B004IK8PLE/ref=aw_ss_kndl_dp/

Codebreaker: The History of Codes and Ciphers https://www.amazon.com/dp/0802715478/ref=cm_sw_r_awd_OH1Dub103RXB7

And, believe it or not,

Cracking Codes and Cryptograms For Dummies https://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/B005CB22A8/ref=aw_ss_kndl_dp/

You also might check your local newspaper for "Cryptoquote." It's a daily quote that uses a different cipher each day. Great for practice!

I'm the same age as your daughter.

Some months ago, I read The Code Book: How to Make It, Break It, Hack It, Crack It. It's an adaption of another book by the same writer for young people. I found it great and I strongly recommend it.

If you're looking for a book that teaches you about codes and practical codebreaking, here are two greats: Cryptanalysis: A Study of Ciphers and Their Solution, by Helen Fouché Gaines and Codes, Ciphers and Secret Writing, by Martin Gardner.

For a historical look try The Code Book: The Science of Secrecy from Ancient Egypt to Quantum Cryptography, by Simon Singh. I really loved that one!

Easiest is just buy a reader: truly a hitchhikers guide in your pocket.

Here are the wikipedia dumps if you just want to download them to your machine.

I'm guessing you're not a programmer so here's a tool that will just go get pages, called wget. You can get it for most platforms. Look at the recursion options and limit the depth to a very small number like 3 or 4 maybe, or else you'll be retrieving the whole wiki.

Well, that means that the author has access to 5 separate editions, which I would think should be difficult to obtain. But, you're right that the 11th Edition is freely available online. A replica of the first edition can be purchased for nearly $200, but there's no guarantee it has the same number of pages as the original. I couldn't find anything about the third, fourth, or fifth editions.

The 15th edition is 32-volumes, so it seems like only using 5 of them would have been an underutilization of the resource. I'm also not sure if page numbers are continuous across volumes. It doesn't look like this is the case, since Volume II of the eleventh edition begins on page 1.

There's no modern cryptanalysis in it, but Cryptanalysis: A Study of Ciphers and Their Solution is a great book. I still reference it.

For what I can tell, it should be GD. They made an error. Not terribly uncommon. I made one in a geocache challenge and I was left wondering why nobody could find it. There is an excellent book on cryptography called "Codebreakers" that had a really fun cipher challenge but he goofed on the PKE and made it basically impossible to solve.

I would recommend reading Simon Singh's The Code Book. It acts as a basic introduction to the history of cryptography from the distant past to what we can expect in the future. It also has various examples and challenges of encrypting, decrypting, and crypto analyzing classical ciphers. It is one of my favorite books.

William F. Friedman wrote 3 books on crypto that the NSA has declassified. These should be quite valuable to you:

• Volume 1
  
  
• Volume 2
  
  
• Volume 3
  
  EDIT: Check out Military Cryptanalytics too.

I found the site, here are some first observations

• 12 32 35 21 24 from 0001.txt gives you a five-number sequence which could be related to your 5 x 5 grid puzzle
  
• Paul's address 80 E. 11th Street in NYC is a real address of a building called the St. Denis. Furthermore, on the outside of that building is R O L A N D ... one huge letter in each of six windows. Probably not a coincidence, it may be that ROLAND is needed somewhere in this game
  
• The telephone numbers of Jonah, Elias, Paul, and Hermann are actually ISBN-13 numbers of science fiction books by Isaac Asimov. I was looking to see if they are real phone numbers in a certain nation, then realized they are not, they are ISBN, and searching each number yields an Asimov book
  
• 0553803735 = Second Foundation (Jonah's telephone number)
  
• 0553803700 = I, Robot (Elias' telephone number)
  
• 0553803719 = Foundation (Paul's telephone number)
  
• 0553803727 = Foundation And Empire (Hermann's telephone number)

It's about a man who goes crazy after his wife dies under mysterious circumstances. It's a mystery on the surface but you'll find more red herrings than reality. Also a crazy dentist who sees worms in the teeth of infants. (Sadly no uttchuktes are involved.) Since you asked, here's a link. Also likely found at a big-enough library near you.

Thanks for asking! I don't want to seem advertorial but I have some extra copies I could send people who come close to a solve if anyone's interested.

Suggest to the guy to read "The Codebreakers" by David Kahn (that's Kahn, not Khan).

Strongly recommended for anyone interested in ciphers and cryptology. If it's over his head, start with any kid's level book on ciphers and work your way up.

https://www.amazon.com/Codebreakers-Comprehensive-History-Communication-Internet/dp/0684831309?SubscriptionId=AKIAILSHYYTFIVPWUY6Q&tag=duckduckgo-d-20&linkCode=xm2&camp=2025&creative=165953&creativeASIN=0684831309