In this article we are going to show you how to solve cryptogram.
So a cryptogram is a single letter substitution cipher which basically just means a code where one letter stands for another but a letter never stands for itself.
So for example the first letter Q in the image above could theoretically be any letter in the alphabet except Q. Your job is to figure out which letter it could be and once you figure that out you’ll write it in for every instance of letter Q in the code.
But Where Do You Start?
It’s always wise to say… start in one of two places if you can. Either single letter words or find an apostrophe and figure out what the contractions might be.
We have two apostrophes in our cryptogram K’Z and GQMO’M and those are going to be a really good hints, but let’s start with the single letters first.
K is our code letter that indicates a single letter and there are only two single letter
words in the English language: A and I. So you have about a fifty fifty percent chance of figuring out which one is which.
In fact K’Z will give you a clue which one it is.
Think about how many times you see the letter I with an apostrophe when you’re reading a book?
It comes up quite a bit right? You’ll see I apostrophe D you’ll see I apostrophe M so it’s very common. Now think about how many times you see A in that situation? Not much!
In this situation we can be pretty confident that ‘K’ is actually ‘I’ so I’m going to go ahead and write that in above the letter all throughout the code as you can see in the image below
Now since K’Z is actually I’Z that leaves us with two probabilities, the Z can be probably be a D or M but I’m not sure which one yet, so we’re gonna wait on this one.
Lets instead look at this contraction: GQMO’AM
this one is interesting because it’s a contraction with two letters and we don’t see many of those either. We see words with apostrophe RE or VE or double L-s but this is not a double L situation because ‘A and M are two different letters.
We’re not sure which one it is, but both of them end in E, so it’s likely that the M is actually an E.
Now E is a very common letter to see in words. So just going to through the puzzle and seeing how many times the M comes up we can safely say E pretty good guess for M because there’s a lot of them.
Not let’s focus on the Letter A, and as you can see we encounter i 5 times. TIISFEEA makes me wonder how many words are there that end In B or begins with B and I can’t think of many words that end in B, but words ending in R are more common so we will guess for now that A is R.
Now 3 letters followed by an apostrophe and ‘RE and now GEMO’AE becomes GQEO’RE. Continuing with this contraction let’s think about what this word could be. It is something with ‘RE in the end of it, so it could be We Are, They Are, You are. Since there are 4 letters before the apostrophe most likely it is THEY. We encounter G a few times and its not uncommon to read T in They, Them, Those etc. We are going ahead with your guess and GQEO’RE becomes TH EY’RE.
This means that G > T and Q > H and O > Y.
Now since we have revealed H(L)TE we know that the unknown letter behind L could only be a vowel A O U Y. Most likely it is an A for the word to become HATE, we replace every L with A. Now we have I HATE IT xHEc I THIcp. The end word must be THINK because after I you expect a verb/action and the complete sentence should be become
“I HATE IT WHEN I THINK”.
So C and P become N and K and X becomes W.
We will let you solve the rest of the crypto quote yourself.
