Cryptogram

How to play

A cryptogram is a short text written in a simple code: every letter has been replaced by a different one, and the same letter is always replaced the same way. If E has become Q, every E in the puzzle shows as Q. Your job is to break the code.

1. Pick a code letter in the puzzle. Every place it appears is highlighted.
2. Type the letter you think it stands for, on your keyboard or the keys under the puzzle. It fills in everywhere at once, and the selection moves on to the next empty code.
3. Change your mind by typing another letter, or press Delete. A letter can stand for only one code, so typing it somewhere new moves it.
4. When every code holds the right letter, the quotation and its author appear.

No letter ever stands for itself here: an A in the puzzle is never an A in the answer. Spaces and punctuation are not coded, so word lengths, apostrophes and commas are clues too.

Daily puzzle, levels and helpers

• Daily puzzle. One medium cryptogram a day, the same for everyone, changing at midnight UTC. Solve it on consecutive days to build a streak.
• New puzzle gives you a random one at the level you choose. Easy puzzles are short and start with three letters filled in; Medium ones start with one; Hard ones are longer and start with none.
• Hint fills in the selected code. Check marks your wrong letters in red without giving the right ones. You can also have mistakes shown as you type.
• Letters or numbers. The codes can be shown as letters or, as in "letters and numbers" puzzle books, as the numbers 1 to 26.
• Letter counts under the puzzle list each code with how often it appears, the most useful starting point; see how to solve cryptograms.
• Copy link gives you a link to the exact puzzle you are solving, to send to a friend.

Your progress on an unfinished puzzle is saved in this browser, so you can close the page and come back to it.

Where the quotations come from

There are 155 puzzles: traditional English proverbs, and quotations from books, speeches and letters published in 1930 or earlier, which are in the public domain in the United States. Famous quotations are very often misquoted or credited to the wrong person, so before a quotation went in, its exact wording was checked against the original text; anything we could not find word for word was left out. The author and source appear when you solve the puzzle.

Prefer paper? The printable cryptograms page makes a fresh sheet of puzzles with an answer key.

Cryptograms and cryptoquotes

Puzzles like these are also called cryptoquotes when the hidden text is a quotation, and they have been a newspaper favourite for decades. The code is a simple substitution cipher, one of the oldest ways of hiding a message; Edgar Allan Poe made solving one the centre of his 1843 story "The Gold-Bug", and the trick he describes, counting how often each letter appears, is still the best way in.