Goal
The paragraph above has been encrypted with a substitution cipher. Every A in the original might be a Q, every B a Z, every C a P, and so on, consistently all the way through. Your job is to deduce the mapping and reveal the original story.
The interface
- Each character of the paragraph is shown as a stack: your guess on top (in purple), the cipher letter as a small label below it.
- Click any cipher letter in the paragraph to select it (the slot above it highlights).
- Then click a key on the on-screen keyboard, or just type a letter on your keyboard, to assign it as that cipher letter's plaintext.
- Your guess propagates: if you guess that
X = E, every X in the paragraph turns into an E.
- Press Backspace while a letter is selected to clear that mapping.
- Tap View Frequency Distribution to toggle a panel that lists every cipher letter sorted by how often it appears, with the count next to each. Tap any pill to select that cipher letter directly.
- Words that don't fit on one line break with a trailing - at the end of the line, like a hyphen, so you can tell the word continues.
Wrong letters and the Autocheck button
- You can enter any letter you like, even ones that turn out to be wrong. Wrong guesses don't lock you out, they just don't satisfy the puzzle yet.
- By default the puzzle gives no visual feedback at all: every guess looks the same whether right or wrong. You have to deduce wrongness from the words and patterns.
- Tap Autocheck to toggle on a sanity-check view: every cipher letter whose current guess is wrong is highlighted in red. Tap Autocheck again to hide the highlights. As you fix each wrong letter, its red goes away live.
- Whether you used Autocheck at any point during the round is recorded in your share text, so a clean solve without Autocheck is its own bragging right.
- Hint-revealed letters and the auto-solve when every cipher letter is correct still work the same as before.
The hint buttons
- Hint selected letter (-15). Pick a cipher letter (click it in the paragraph or in the Frequency Distribution panel), then tap this button. The correct plaintext for that letter is filled in and locked. Targeted, so it costs more.
- Reveal random letter (-10). Reveals one unsolved cipher letter chosen at random. Cheaper than the targeted hint because you don't get to pick which letter you get.
- Reveal Answer. Fills in everything and ends the round. Your score is forced to 0, but the story is unlocked so you can read it.
Scoring
- Start with 100 points.
- Wrong letter: -2 per submission. Typing the same wrong letter again still counts.
- Hint selected letter: -15. Reveal random letter: -10. Autocheck (first use only): -20; toggling off and back on later is free.
- Reveal Answer: score becomes 0.
- Streak bonus: +3 for every five player-typed correct letters in a row. Hints don't extend or break the streak; wrong typed letters reset it.
- Flawless: +10 if you finish without any wrong letters, hints, or Autocheck usage.
- Range: minimum 0, maximum 120.
Rank bands
- 100+ · Cipher Master
- 90-99 · Cryptographer
- 75-89 · Codebreaker
- 60-74 · Sleuth
- 40-59 · Apprentice
- 0-39 · Keep practising
Worked example
Suppose the cipher reads:
P TKVAH WUM RFHVH ZKVAH
Reasoning:
P stands alone as a single-letter word. In English that's almost always A or I. Try P = A.WUM is 3 letters. The most common 3-letter words are THE, AND, FOR. Its pattern (no double letters) and the surrounding context tilt towards HAS or HAD. Suppose W=H, U=A, M=D, but we already said P=A, conflict. Try HIS instead: W=H, U=I, M=S.- This is how decryption works: form a candidate, see if it's consistent everywhere, back out and try again.
(The real puzzles use full sentences, which gives you many more constraints to triangulate from.)
Strategies that actually work
- Letter frequency. The most common cipher letter is probably E, then T, A, O, I, N (the rough English ranking).
- Single letters in the paragraph are A or I.
- Two-letter words: OF, TO, IN, IT, IS, BE, AS, AT, SO, and so on.
- Three-letter words ending in the same consistent letter often share a final letter (like THE, ARE, HAS).
- Apostrophes aren't common in our stories, but in real ciphers an apostrophe before a single letter usually means contractions: 'S, 'T, 'D, 'M.
- Double letters in the cipher map to double letters in the plaintext: LL, EE, OO, TT, FF, SS are most common.