Crack the Secret Code: Binary for beginners

Can you crack the code?

Let’s see if you can figure out what this says: 01101100 01100101 01110100 00100111 01110011 00100000 01100111 01101111 00100001. It’s hard, right? That’s okay! We’ll do it together. Now’s your chance to take a short break from the horrors of the world to learn something new, feel smart, and crack a secret code!

Read on to learn all about binary, the system used for our code.

What is binary?

Okay, so, you know how when you learn a new language, you often find yourself translating what people are saying into your native language in your head? Like, if you just learned Korean, instead of directly processing what people are saying in Korean, you’ll first translate everything into your native language?

Well, your computer does the same thing with binary. Binary is your computer’s native language. It’s an entire system made up of zeros and ones. So let’s say you’re typing in English, the computer will first translate that English into a bunch of zeros and ones in order to understand it and complete tasks.

It’s not just human language that it translates into binary though, but all input. Whatever it is that you’re doing on the computer — including playing a video or a game — behind the scenes, absolutely everything is a bunch of zeros and ones.

How does binary work?

Let’s start with an example. When you hit a key on your keyboard, let’s say the S button, the computer takes that S and translates it into its equivalent in binary. 

Here’s what S looks like in binary: 01010011.

Wait, how did I get that? And if everything is zeros and ones, how does the computer know what’s what? 

So it goes like this: each piece of information sent to the computer is made up of eight bits. A bit is the smallest unit of data in computing, and can represent either a 0 or a 1 in the binary system.

Eight bits is one byte.

The value of each bit is determined by 2 to the power of its position. So the first bit is two to the power of zero (which is one). The next bit is two to the power of one (which is two). Then we have two to the power of two (that’s four) and then two to the power of three (eight). The next four spots are two to the power of four (16), two to the power of five (32), and two to the power of six (64), and finally, two to the power of seven (128.) 

Alright, that’s a lot of words. Let’s see some equations. 

(27) = 128

(26) = 64

(25) = 32

(24) = 16

(23) = 8

(22) = 4

(21) = 2

(20) = 1

Awesome. 

Okay, so, imagine you found a secret code written in binary, and the first string looked like this: 01000011.

To decode it, you could either do the straight math of multiplying each bit by the power of its position, or to make it easier, you could lay it out in a chart:

128	64	32	16	8	4	2	1
0	1	0	0	0	0	1	1

Next, you need to add up all the lit up bits together – these are where our 1s sit. Here, the only bits in use are 64, 2, and 1, which add up to 67. 

Decoding with ASCII

Great! Now all we need to do is find out which character on the English keyboard corresponds to 67. This is actually the easiest part. Binary corresponds to ASCII (American Standard Code for Information Interchange.) So let’s look at the ASCII table and find our number, 67. Since we calculated in decimal, make sure to find the 67 in the Decimal column.

Did you find it? 67 in decimal corresponds to capital letter C. Now if you look on the same line, but one row over to the right, you’ll notice that 99 in decimal corresponds to lowercase c. These are two different values!

Also, take a second to review the chart. Notice that it’s not just letters at play here, but also every single character and key, including the space bar!

Wait, what the “Hex”?

You probably noticed there’s a column called Hex to the right of each Decimal column. Hex, short for hexadecimal, is another way to write numbers. We know that binary is base 2 (since “bi” means two, like “bilingual” refers to someone who speaks two languages), and decimal is base 10 (since “dec” means 10, like how a “decade” is 10 years.)

Pssst if “dec” means “ten,” why is December the 12th month?

Well, December USED to be the 10th month!

According to Dictionary.com: “The ancient Roman calendar only had ten months in the year, beginning with the month of March. January and February were eventually added after December to the end of the year. But, by the time the Julian calendar was established in 45 BCE, January and February appeared at the beginning of the year, which bumped all of the original months (and their originally assigned names) back by two.”

Now let’s get back to hex!

But “hex” is actually NOT six here, even though a hexagon has six sides. Hex in this case refers to the system based on 16. Why, you ask? Why not? Haha! Because!

And to make it more fun, while the decimal system only uses numbers 0-9, hex uses 16 symbols: 0-9 and also letters A-F (where A = 10, B = 11, …, F = 15).

So, for example, 00101111 (or 101111 for short) in binary is 47 in decimal, but 2F in hex. That’s because 2F = (2 × 16) + (15 × 1) = 32 + 15 = 47.

Once you get the hang of it, using hex can make things shorter and easier when reading computer data.

Can you decode the secret message?

Now that we know how binary works, let’s decode the message from the beginning of the article:

01101100 01100101 01110100 00100111 01110011 00100000 01100111 01101111 00100001

We’ll start by placing each byte into the chart. Remember, we’re only adding up the spots where our 1s sit. Those are the bits in use.

128	64	32	16	8	4	2	1	Sum
0	1	1	0	1	1	0	0	= 108
0	1	1	0	0	1	0	1	= 101
0	1	1	1	0	1	0	0	= 116
0	0	1	0	0	1	1	1	= 39
0	1	1	1	0	0	1	1	= 115
0	0	1	0	0	0	0	0	= 32
0	1	1	0	0	1	1	1	= 103
0	1	1	0	1	1	1	1	= 111
0	0	1	0	0	0	0	1	= 33

Cool! Time to reference our ASCII chart to translate these sums into English! 

Aaand our secret message is:

108 = l

101 = e

116 = t

39 = ‘

115 = s

32 = [space]

103 = g

111 = o

33 = !

Let’s go!

Congrats, you cracked the secret code!

Leave me alone, I don’t want to do any math!

That’s totally fine! You can learn binary without the headache. Just search “binary decoder” or “binary to text” in your favorite search engine to find tons of different tools that are happy to do all the dirty work for you. 

BONUS: Okay but what about the “digital rain” code in The Matrix?

Binary often brings to mind the movie The Matrix. But what’s hilarious about this is that you would think the message behind the raining code in the opening scene of The Matrix movie would have something to do with simulations, reality, or even just… computers. But no, my friends. 

It’s sushi recipes. 

From this CNET article:

Simon Whiteley, creator of The Matrix code, attributes the design to his wife, who’s from Japan.

“I like to tell everybody that The Matrix’s code is made out of Japanese sushi recipes,” says Whiteley, a production designer from England who’s now based at the Animal Logic animation and visual-effects studio in Sydney. He scanned the characters from his wife’s Japanese cookbooks. “Without that code, there is no Matrix.”

I guess the clue was that the raining code was made up of Japanese characters, and not zeros and ones!

I hope you enjoyed this article. I’m proud of you for making it to the end, and taking the time out of your day to crack a secret code! Have any questions? Let me know in the comments!