Cryptic Quotes
Cryptic Quotes
Cryptic Quotes hands you a famous saying with every letter swapped for a different one, and asks you to put it back. It is a cryptogram, the same puzzle newspapers have printed for a century, with the quotation as the reward for solving it.
Nothing about the puzzle depends on knowing the quote. The letters give themselves away through pattern and frequency, and a solver who has never heard the line will finish it just as fast as one who has. If you enjoy this kind of decoding, Cryptograph works the same territory with numbers instead of letters.
How to play Cryptic Quotes
- Pick a letter in the coded text.
- Choose the letter you think it stands for.
- Every copy of that coded letter changes at once, across the whole quote.
- Wrong guesses can be replaced, so nothing is permanent.
- The puzzle is solved when the quotation reads correctly.
One letter, one substitution
The rule that makes the puzzle solvable is that the substitution is consistent. If a coded G is really an E, then every G in the puzzle is an E, without exception and for the whole quote.
This is why the first correct guess is worth more than any single letter should be. Filling in every E at once turns a wall of nonsense into a set of word shapes.
Tips and strategy
Start with the short words
- A one letter word is A or I. There is nothing else it can be in English.
- Two letter words are a small set: of, to, in, is, it, as, at, on, or, be, by, he, we, an, so, no, do, up, my. That is a short list to test against.
- Three letter words are dominated by the, and, for, but, not, you, all.
Frequency
- E is the most common letter in English, then T, A, O, I and N. The coded letter that appears most often is usually E.
- The letter that turns up most often at the end of words is E, then S and D.
- A letter that appears only once or twice is likely to be J, Q, X or Z, and you can usually leave it until the end.
Apostrophes give you letters for free
An apostrophe near the end of a word is one of the most useful marks on the page. Followed by a single letter it is almost always S or T. Followed by two, it is usually RE, LL or VE.
Punctuation and structure
- A comma often precedes and or but.
- Doubled letters are most commonly LL, EE, SS, OO or TT.
- Once you have three or four letters placed, stop guessing and start reading. Half filled words solve themselves faster than frequency tables do.
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Frequently asked questions
Do I need to know the quotation to solve it?
No. Every cryptogram can be cracked from letter patterns and word shapes alone. Recognising the quote is a shortcut, not a requirement.
Does a coded letter always stand for the same real letter?
Yes, within one puzzle. That consistency is what makes the puzzle solvable, and it is why one correct guess fills in several places at once.
Can I undo a wrong guess?
Yes. Assignments can be changed at any time, so it is safe to test an idea and back out of it.
Which letter should I guess first?
The one that appears most often, which is usually E. After that, look at the one and two letter words, because they have very few possible answers.
Is Cryptic Quotes free?
Yes. It runs in the browser with no download and no account.