Recruiting for a Secret Club/Group

Even though you have started a secret group, you still need to be able to (secretly) recruit people of the highest intellect and creativity to join. This instructable will show you how to use a cipher and secret letter to recruit possible members for your group.

• A computer, or other device with messaging, such as texting, capabilities
• Microsoft word, or other typing software

or

• Paper and Pencil
• Envelope (optional)

Depending on your secret group,you will need different types of people. For this instructable these people should be somebody you know and communicate with. These people should also have strong intellectual and creative ability. They could also be athletic, artistic, tech-savy, etc. As said before it really depends on your requirements for your group. If you will be sending letters instead of texting/emailing, consider distance between the possible recruit and yourself. If you already have other members in your group, consult them before recruiting.

Once you have chosen your subject(s), it's time to begin. The first step is finding a pangram. A pangram in a sentence where every letter of the sentence is used at least once. A very famous one using English is, "the quick, brown fox jumped over the lazy dog". We will need to use a pangram to create our cipher. While finding this pangram begin communicating with your possible recruit regularly, see picture 1. Then, go onto Google, or Yahoo, or Firefox, or whatever, and look up, "pangram examples" (picture 2). You should find LOTS of examples. I would recommend not using the fox and dog one, because it's so well known. I chose then sentence, "The five boxing wizards jump quickly".

This might be the most important step. First you have to make your pangram be only 26 letters long. (The length of the English alphabet) This means you will delete any repeating letters, which, yes, will make your sentence very weird. Mine turned into, " The fiv boxn wzards jump quckly" And, yes. I do know there are two u's. Now condense the sentence into one word, "thefivboxnwzardsjumpquckly". To turn this into a cipher, you need to diagonally type the alphabet down a word document or piece of paper. (First image) Next, type your sentence directly next to the alphabet. (2nd image) Now, in mine, a=t, b=h, c=e, and so on. This is your cipher.

You need to casually send your pangram, aka the key to the cipher, to your possible recruit without them thinking too much about it. This can be hard because most pangrams are quite weird. This is why you need to be communicating with the possible recruit regularly. If you talk with them a lot, they might simply think that it's just a mistake, or was meant to be sent to someone else. In the bottom of a email, letter of text, casually write your CONDENSED pangram at/near the bottom. (Image 1) If they ask about it, simply don't answer and change the subject.

Images two and three are examples.

It's time to send the recruitment letter! Start of with the receivers name. (Image 1) This adds to the intensity for the receiver at the thought that you know their name. You can add their middle name for even more freakiness. For the beginning of your letter, write in English, but not using your usual tone. Use bigger words, and imposing language. This will give a secret society vibe. Make sure to not over do it, as it might scare the reader. Explain that they need to use a cipher for the next part of the letter, and that the key to it was hidden in messages they have previously received. Feel free to use a cool font, too. (Image 2) For the final pare of your letter, use the cipher to create a encrypted message. This should tell them some interesting details about the group (not too much though!), and other information. If you want to do more codes to further see if they're up for the job, the message can lead them to the next clue. (Image 3) P.S. I'm not finished writing my coded message. For the final step, sign off. Do not use your real name, or even the secret group's name. Instead use a pen name. This can either be in normal English or encoded. (Image 4) When sending this message, it would be best if handed off as a physical letter. This way you can't see email address, tracking the possible recruit back to you. If you must send via the internet, try to use an encrypted or fake email address.

You might receive a response to your message very quickly, or it might never happen. Be patient. I hope the instructable helped with recruiting!