I think that amateur cryptanalysts using methods that were impossible for some early civilizations to use demonstrates the accessibility and ubiquity of information today. For example, some puzzles are centered around ciphers and decryption. These puzzles attract the attention of novices who have little to no experience in cryptanalysis. Never the less, these amateurs utilize strategies such as frequency analysis and recognition of small or common words (a, the, and) without having ever studied them. Even on our first day of class, we were able to decrypt the cipher text presented to us by using some of these methods. Similarly, we perform other “higher-order” thinking tasks on a daily basis without giving much thought. We type rapidly, blaze the internet, estimate sale prices, and navigate Vanderbilt with (relative) ease. Of course, we utilize technology to make many of these tasks much easier, but we also must know how to use the technology and make it work for us. Thirty years ago, only serious business people and others with special training used computers. Today, most of us carry around a “tiny computer” with us at all times and know how to operate it efficiently. Basically, we do many things today that require skills that we take for granted. At the dawn of cryptanalysis, however, this knowledge simply was not there for all to benefit from. The moral of the story: when your first [insert impossible class name here] test score comes back much, much lower than you had hoped, take pride in knowing that in the Middle Ages, you would be hailed as a genius.