How to Crack a Cipher
Every letter has been swapped with a different letter — the same swap is used throughout the whole puzzle. Your job is to figure out which is which. Here's how the pros do it.
🎯1. Start With the Easy Wins
Single-letter words — If a word is just one letter, it's almost certainly A or I. These are your first free letters.
Two-letter words — Very common pairs to try: OF TO IN IS IT BE AS AT SO WE HE OR ON DO IF. Cross-reference with any letters you already know.
The word THE — THE is the most common three-letter word in English. If a three-letter word appears several times, start here.
📊2. Letter Frequency
In English text, some letters appear far more often than others. The cipher letter you see most often is probably E. The next most frequent are usually T A O I N S R H.
Count how many times each cipher letter appears in the puzzle — the progress bar fills as you solve letters. The most frequent is your best first guess for E.
📝3. Common Word Patterns
Memorising a handful of these pays dividends across every puzzle.
👯4. Spot the Doubles
Two identical cipher letters next to each other? In English, common doubles are LL SS EE OO TT FF RR NN PP CC MM. Try LL first.
LL words to try — WILL · ALL · CALL · STILL · WELL · TELL · FULL · FALL · BELL · HALL · HILL · PULL · FILL
SS words to try — LESS · MISS · LOSS · PASS · BOSS · CLASS · DRESS · PRESS · GLASS
Remember — After cracking a double, every other instance of those cipher letters updates automatically — a single solve can unlock many squares at once.
✍️5. Follow the Apostrophes
Apostrophes stay in place and give you free information about the letters immediately around them.
If a two-letter cipher word ends in 'T, it's almost certainly a contraction. That final cipher letter decodes to T — one of the most common letters in the alphabet.
🔚6. Common Word Endings
Recognising a suffix can unlock several letters at once.
🔛7. Common Word Beginnings
If the end of a word isn't obvious, try the beginning. These letter pairs start a huge proportion of English words.
TH is by far the most common pair — it appears at the start of THE · THAT · THIS · THEY · THERE · THINK · THROUGH and dozens more.
⚖️8. Rules That Never Break
Q always precedes U — If you find a cipher letter that's always followed by the same other cipher letter, you've likely found Q and U.
No letter maps to itself — The cipher used here guarantees that every letter is replaced by a different letter. So if you see cipher letter P, the answer is definitely not P.
Each cipher letter has exactly one answer — Every time you see cipher letter X, it always decodes to the same plain letter — and no two cipher letters decode to the same answer. If your guesses contradict this, one of them is wrong.
🧠9. Big-Picture Strategy
Build momentum — One confirmed letter ripples through the whole puzzle instantly. Even a single correct guess can suddenly make three other words readable.
Use the Check button — Not sure if a guess is right? Hit Check — wrong guesses flash red. Remove them and try again rather than building on a bad foundation.
Hints are your friend — Stuck for more than a minute? Use a Hint. It reveals one random letter and you can use up to 5 per puzzle. There's no shame — that one letter could unlock the whole thing.
Read the partial text aloud — With a few letters filled in, read the half-decoded quote out loud. Your brain will often complete the pattern before your eyes do.
Work from the author — The author is shown below the puzzle. Knowing who said it gives you vocabulary clues — a Stoic philosopher uses different words than a 20th-century novelist.