Cryptograms look intimidating at first — a wall of letters that means nothing. But every cryptogram is just a famous quote wearing a disguise: each letter has been swapped for another, and your job is to crack the substitution.
Here's the best news: anyone can learn to solve them. Start with these five techniques and you'll be decoding quotes in minutes.
In English, the only one-letter words are A and I. If a puzzle has a single-letter word, it's almost always one of those two. Write both possibilities above it and let the rest of the puzzle tell you which is right.
Three-letter words ending in an apostrophe are usually contractions: DON'T, CAN'T, WON'T, ISN'T. A two-letter word after an apostrophe is almost always T (as in 'TIS or 'TWAS). The letter after an apostrophe is most often T — and if it's a two-letter contraction, the first letter is almost certainly N or S.
E is the most common letter in English, followed by T, A, O, I, N, S, H, R. The most frequent symbol in your puzzle is probably E. The second most common is likely T. Write those guesses in and see if words start to appear.
Words like THAT, NEVER, PEOPLE, and BETWEEN have distinctive letter patterns (THAT = 1231, PEOPLE = 123124). If you see a five-letter word with the pattern 12324, it's probably NEVER. Pattern-matching is the fastest way to crack longer words.
Every Jifu cryptogram book includes letter reveals on each puzzle. Once you've filled a few letters, the quote starts to reveal itself — and the answer key is always in the back if you get stuck.
Every book in the series contains 100 unique puzzles with solutions, in a clean print-friendly layout. Collect all nine volumes, or grab the complete bundle and save.