To encipher, a table of alphabets can be used, termed a tabula recta, Vigenère square, or Vigenère table. It consists of the alphabet written out 26 times in different rows, each alphabet shifted cyclically to the left compared to the previous alphabet, corresponding to the 26 possible Caesar ciphers. At different points in the encryption process, the cipher uses a different alphabet from one of the rows. The alphabet used at each point depends on a repeating keyword.
For example, suppose that the plaintext to be encrypted is:
ATTACKATDAWN
The person sending the message chooses a keyword and repeats it until it matches the length of the plaintext, for example, the keyword "LEMON":
LEMONLEMONLE
Each letter is encoded by finding the intersection in the grid between the plaintext letter and keyword letter. For example, the first letter of the plaintext, A, is enciphered using the alphabet in row L, which is the first letter of the key. This is done by looking at the letter in row L and column A of the Vigenere square, namely L. Similarly, for the second letter of the plaintext, the second letter of the key is used; the letter at row E and column T is X. The rest of the plaintext is enciphered in a similar fashion:
Plaintext:
ATTACKATDAWN
Key:
LEMONLEMONLE
Ciphertext:
LXFOPVEFRNHR
Decryption is performed by finding the position of the ciphertext letter in a row of the table, and then taking the label of the column in which it appears as the plaintext. For example, in row L, the ciphertext L appears in column A, which taken as the first plaintext letter. The second letter is decrypted by looking up X in row E of the table; it appears in column T, which is taken as the plaintext letter.
