The Dangerous Book for Boys Read online

  Charge after wild charge followed and was destroyed by the archers and the grim men behind them. Edward’s son, the Prince of Wales, played a part, though at one point his position was almost overrun by the maddened French. His father refused to send him aid, saying that he must win his spurs.

  We know the exact number of French aristocracy killed, as careful records were kept: 1,542 knights died that day. The number of common dead is less certain—somewhere between ten and twenty thousand is the best estimate. In comparison, the English forces lost two hundred men, including two knights, forty men-at-arms, and the rest from the Welsh infantry.

  Crécy was a humiliation for the French king. It meant that Edward was able to go on to capture Calais on the north coast of France, which remained an English possession for almost two centuries.

  Philip died in 1350, succeeded by his son, John, who was captured at the Battle of Poiters in 1356 by the Prince of Wales, then kept in London and held for a ransom of three million gold crowns. He never regained his father’s throne.

  This was not the last battle where cavalry played a part, far from it. After all, Winston Churchill took part in a cavalry charge in his youth some five hundred years later. Yet Crécy does mark the end of the dominance of cavalry. It showed the future was with infantry and projectile weapons, at least until the tank was invented.

  The Rules of Rugby Union and Rugby League

  A PUPIL OF RUGBY SCHOOL IN ENGLAND, William Webb Ellis, is credited as the first player to pick up a football and run with it—inventing the game of “Rugby Football” in 1823. The trophy competed for at the Rugby Union World Cup is named in his honor, as is Ellis Stadium in Johannesburg.

  The modern game still has two distinct codes—Rugby Union and Rugby League. The most obvious difference at first glance is that Rugby Union has fifteen players and Rugby League has only thirteen. Rugby Union was played first, with Rugby League splitting off after disagreements over payments in the late nineteenth century. Union matches were originally for amateurs only and a player who had played professional Rugby League was, until recently, banned from ever playing Rugby Union.

  In 1995, the International Rugby Board removed all restrictions on Union games, allowing players to be paid as they are in other sports at the top level. However, the games themselves are still different in a number of ways. The Six Nations Championship (between Italy, France, Scotland, Wales, England and Ireland) and the Rugby World Cup are both played to Union rules, though there is also a Rugby League World Cup.

  RUGBY UNION

  RUGBY UNION SHIRT NUMBERS

  No. Position

  FORWARDS 1. Loosehead prop

  2. Hooker

  3. Tighthead prop

  4. Second row (lock)

  5. Second row (lock)

  6. Blindside flanker

  7. Openside flanker

  8. Number 8

  BACKS 9. Scrum half

  10. Fly half (outside half)

  11. Left wing

  12. Inside center

  13. Outside center

  14. Right wing

  15. Full back

  Two teams of fifteen players compete for two halves of forty minutes on a grass pitch to gain points through tries, conversions, drop goals or penalties. A referee is in charge of the game and is supported by two flag-carrying “touch judges” on the touchlines. The maximum distance between the H-shaped posts at each end is 110 yards (100 m), though behind each post there is an “in-goal area,” ending in a “dead-ball line” that is between 11–24 yards (10–22mm) long.

  Kickoff. Which team kicks off is decided by the referee tossing a coin. The successful team drop-kicks the ball from the center of the halfway line. (A dropkick is when the ball is kicked after bouncing on the ground—usually at the moment of impact with the ground.) It must travel at least ten meters or the opposing team can restart with a scrum on the halfway line or ask for the kick to be taken again. In the same way, after every try and every successful penalty kick or drop goal, the team that didn’t score restarts play with a drop kick from the halfway line.

  Rucks. If a player is holding the ball, he can be tackled, ideally around the lower legs. Tackles around the neck are considered dangerous play and not permitted. Once he is down, he has to release the ball immediately. His own team wants to keep possession, while the opposing team wants to gain it. Both teams are allowed to pile in from behind the ball, but not from the side without earning a penalty, and players must bind onto a teammate. If the ball comes free, it can be picked up and play can continue. A ruck always involves the ball being on the ground. It cannot be handled and must be “rucked” backward with the feet.

  Mauls. A maul resembles a fast-moving, fast-forming scrum, with the ball still being held (and so not touching the ground). They form when a tackle holds up the ball rather than slamming the opposing player into the ground. As with rucks, players can come charging in only from behind the ball. A maul can collapse as it moves forward, in which case a scrum or penalty will usually be given, depending on circumstances.

  Scrums. A scrum is a way of restarting play after a number of different infringements. For example, players are only allowed to pass backward. Even if the ball is accidentally knocked forward, the referee will stop play and award a scrum to the other team. It is a huge advantage to be the team putting the ball into the scrum. Scrums are also given when the ball doesn’t come out quickly from a ruck or a maul.

  Unlike a ruck or maul, only the eight forwards take part in a scrum—usually the heaviest, toughest men in the team, though not always. The hooker, two props, two second rows, two flankers, and the number 8 all link arms in a 3-4-1 formation, ready to lock heads with the opposing forwards. The hooker in the middle of the front row is the most important player in the scrum—it’s his job to hook the ball out backward for the scrum half.

  Offside takes many forms in rugby, but in open play it occurs when a player is in front of a teammate with the ball. It all has to do with the fact that they must not obstruct opposing players—whereas in American football, “running interference” is actually a crucial part of the game.

  Finally, the line-out is a way of restarting the game when the ball passes out of play on the touchlines. Whichever team didn’t send it out of play throws the ball to a line of between two and eight players from each team. Whichever team throws the ball also chooses the number in the line-out and tends to have the advantage. The ball is thrown straight down the middle, and the throwing team usually wins the line-out because, by using secret calls, they know the likely length of the throw.

  A try brings five points and is awarded when the ball is grounded in the opponents’ in-goal area. The try must then be “converted” for another two points. A conversion is a kick taken from a point in line with where the try was touched down. The ball must pass above the crossbar and through the top uprights of the H. The easiest conversions are directly in front of the posts, which is why you will sometimes see players reach the opponents’ try line and then run along to touch the ball down under the goalposts.

  If a penalty is awarded when the team is in range of the posts, a penalty kick will usually be attempted—for three points. As with conversions, this is normally a stationary place kick. A drop goal is a ball in normal play that is drop-kicked from the hands between the uprights for three points. Penalty kicks and drop goals have come to be an important part of the modern game.

  RUGBY LEAGUE DIFFERENCES

  RUGBY LEAGUE SHIRT NUMBERS

  No. Position

  BACKS 1. Full back

  2. Wing

  3. Center

  4. Center

  5. Wing

  6. Stand off

  7. Scrum half

  FORWARDS 8. Prop forward

  9. Hooker

  10. Prop forward

  11. Second row

  12. Second row

  13. Loose forward

  In Rugby League, a try is worth four points, though the conversion is still
worth two. A penalty goal is also worth two and a field or drop goal just one point. Apart from scoring, the two most important differences are “play-the-ball” and the “six-tackle rule.”

  Play-the-ball is one of the things that makes Rugby League a fast-moving, exciting game to watch, with fewer stoppages than Rugby Union games. When a player is tackled, all opposing players but two must retreat ten meters from the tackled player. The two markers remain in front as he places the ball on the ground and rolls it backward with his foot to the player behind them. It is also acceptable for the player to roll the ball back, step over it, and pick it up himself.

  The six-tackle rule further differentiates the two kinds of rugby. In League, there can only be five of these tackles where the ball is passed back into play. If a sixth tackle occurs, the ball is handed over to the opponents, so it’s usually kicked high as it comes back into play after the fifth tackle, gaining ground in the process. Ideally, of course, the set of six would gain enough ground to go for a try or a drop goal.

  Both kinds of rugby can be exciting to watch and the sport has not suffered from some of the crowd troubles that have affected soccer in recent years. A single chapter cannot cover every aspect of a complex game, unfortunately. For those who wish to go further, there are growing numbers of local clubs around the country. A definitive collection of Union rules is published by the International Rugby Board: The Laws of the Game of Rugby Union (ISBN 0954093909). Alternatively, the Rugby Football League publishes a 52-page booklet: Rugby Football League: Laws of the Game and Notes on the Laws (ISBN 0902039032).

  Spies—Codes and Ciphers

  THE PRACTICE OF SENDING secret messages is known as “steganography,” Greek for “concealed writing.” The problem with hiding a message in the lining of a coat or tattooed on the scalp is that anyone can read it. It makes a lot of sense to practice “cryptography,” as well, Greek for “hidden writing.” Cryptography is the art of writing or breaking codes and ciphers.

  The words “code” and “cipher” are sometimes used as if they mean the same thing. They do not. A code is a substitution, such as the following sentence: “The Big Cheese lands at Happy tomorrow.” We do not know who the “Big Cheese” is, or where “Happy” is. Codes were commonly used between spies in World War II, when groups of numbers could only be translated with the correct codebook. Codes are impossible to break without a key or detailed knowledge of the people involved. If you spied on a group for some months, however, noticing the president of France landed at Heathrow Airport the day after such a message, a pattern might begin to emerge.

  “Ciphers,” on the other hand, are scrambled messages, not a secret language. In a cipher, a plain-text message is concealed by replacing the letters according to a pattern. Even Morse code is, in fact, a cipher. They are fascinating and even dangerous. More than one person has gone to his grave without giving up the secret of a particular cipher. Treasures have been lost, along with lives spent searching for them. In time of war, thousands of lives can depend on ciphers being kept—or “deciphered.”

  Edgar Allan Poe left behind a cipher that was only broken in the year 2000. The composer Elgar left a message for a young lady that has not yet been fully understood. Treasure codes exist that point the way to huge sums in gold—if only the sequence of symbols can be broken.

  At the time of writing, the state-of-the-art cipher is a computer sequence with 2048 figures, each of which can be a number, letter or symbol. The combinations are in trillions of trillions and it is estimated that even the fastest computers in the world couldn’t break it in less than thirty billion years. Oddly enough, it was created by a seventeen-year-old boy in Kent, named Peter Parkinson. He is quite pleased with it. To put it in perspective, it is illegal in America to export an encryption program with more than forty digits without providing a key. It takes three days to break a 56-bit encryption.

  Combinations to computer locks are one thing. This chapter contains some classic ciphers—starting with the one used by Julius Caesar to send messages to his generals.

  1.The Caesar Shift Cipher. This is a simple alphabet cipher—but tricky to break without the key. Each letter is moved along by a number—say four. A becomes E, J becomes N, Z becomes D and so on. The number is the key to the cipher here. Caesar could agree the number with his generals in private and then send encrypted messages knowing they could not be read without that crucial extra piece of information.

  “The dog is sick” becomes “WKH GRJ LV VLFN,” with the number three as the key.

  As a first cipher it works well, but the problem is that there are only twenty-five possible number choices (twenty-six would take you back to the letter you started with). As a result, someone who really wanted to break the code could simply plod their way through all twenty-five combinations. Admittedly, they would first have to recognize the code as a Caesar cipher, but this one only gets one star for difficulty—it is more than two thousand years old, after all.

  2.Numbers. A = 1, B = 2, C = 3 etc, all the way to Z = 26. Messages can be written using those numbers. This cipher is probably too simple to use on its own; however, if you combine it with a Caesar code number, it can suddenly become very tricky indeed.

  In the basic method, “The dog is better” would be “20 8 5—4 15 7—9 19—2 5 20 20 5 18,” which looks difficult but isn’t. Add a Caesar cipher of 3, however, and the message becomes “3 23 11 8—7 18 10—12 22—5 8 23 23 8 21,” which should overheat the brain of younger brothers or sisters trying to break the encryption. Note that we have included the key number at the beginning. It could be agreed beforehand in private to make this even harder to break. (With the Caesar combination, a difficulty of two stars.)

  3.Alphabet ciphers. There are any number of these. Most of them depend on the way the alphabet is written out—agreed beforehand between the spies.

  With this sequence, “How are you?” would become “UBJ NER LBH?”

  In this one, “How are you?” would become “SLD ZIV BLF?” It’s worth remembering that even simple ciphers are not obvious at first glance. Basic alphabet ciphers may be enough to protect a diary and they have the benefit of being easy to use and remember.

  4.Most famous of the alphabet variations is a code stick—another one used by the Romans. Begin with a strip of paper and wind it around a stick. It is important that the sender and the receiver both have the same type. Two bits from the same broom handle would be perfect, but most people end up trying this on a pencil. (See picture.)

  Here the word “Heathrow” is written down the length of the pencil, with a couple of letters per turn of the strip. (You’ll need to hold the paper steady with tape.) When the tape is unwound, the same pen is used to fill in the spaces between the letters. It should now look like gibberish. The idea is that when it is wound back on to a similar stick, the message will be clear. It is a cipher that requires a bit of forethought, but can be quite satisfying. For a matter of life and death, however, you may need the next method.

  5.Codeword alphabet substitution. You might have noticed a pattern developing here. To make a decent cipher, it is a good idea to agree on the key beforehand. It could be a number, a date, the title of a book, a word or even a kind of stick. It’s the sort of added complexity that can make even a simple encryption quite fiendish.

  Back to one of our earlier examples:

  If we added the word “WINDOW,” we would get the sequence below. Note that no letters are repeated, so there are still twenty-six in the bottom sequence and the second “W” of “WINDOW” is not used.

  This is a whole new cipher—and without knowing the code word, a difficulty of three stars to crack.

  6.Cipher wheels. Using a pair of compasses, cut four circles out of card, two large and two small—5 inch (12 cm) and 4 inch (10 cm) diameters work well. For both pairs, put one on top of the other and punch a hole through with a butterfly stud. They should rotate easily.

  A circle = 360 degrees. There are twenty-six letters in the alp
habet, so the spacing for the segments should be approximately 14 degrees. Mark off the segments as accurately as you can for all four circles. When they are ready, write the normal alphabet around the outside of the large circles in the usual way—A to Z. For the inner circles, mark the letters in random order. As long as the matching code wheel is done in the same way, it doesn’t matter where the letters go. The code sequence will begin with the two-letter combination that shows the positions of the wheels—AM or AF, for example.

  You should end up with a cipher-wheel encrypter that can only be read by someone with the other wheel. Now that is a difficulty of four stars.

  7.Morse code is the most famous substitution cipher ever invented. It was thought up by inventor Samuel F. B. Morse, who patented a telegraph system and saw it explode in popularity. He realized that a pulse of electricity could act on an electromagnet to move a simple lever—transmitting a long or short signal. He arranged a moving strip of paper to pass underneath the metal point and a new method of communication was born. Using his cipher, he sent the first intercity message in 1844 from Washington to Baltimore. The marvelous thing about it is that the code can be sent using light if you have a flashlight, or sound, if you can reach a car horn, or even semaphore, though that is fairly tricky.

  The first message Morse sent was “What hath God wrought?,” which gives an idea of just how impressive it was to pick up messages as they were written on the other side of America. In Morse’s lifetime, he saw telegraph lines laid across the Atlantic.

  The example everyone knows is SOS—the international distress call. (“May-day” is also well known. That one comes from the French for “Help me”—M’aidez.)