Cryptogram Solver

How it works, and why it sometimes cannot

A cryptogram replaces each letter of a sentence with another letter, the same way every time. That substitution never changes the shape of a word: whatever HELLO becomes, the second and third letters of it will still match each other. So the first thing this page does is file every word in its dictionary under its shape, and look up the shapes in your puzzle.

That gives a list of possible words for each cipher word, and the lists constrain one another, because a letter can only stand for one thing across the whole puzzle. Ruling out the impossible combinations narrows the alphabet; a search then tries what is left, longest and most constrained words first. It is dictionary lookup and bookkeeping, done faster than you could do it. There is no guessing model and no machine learning involved, which is why it either proves an answer or tells you it could not.

When it fails, and what to do about it

There are only a few reasons a solve comes back empty, and each has a fix:

• A word is not in the dictionary. Surnames, place names, brand names and invented words are the usual culprits, and a Cryptoquip pun is often invented on purpose. The solver reports the letters it did prove; fill those in and the odd word usually falls out by eye.
• A letter really does stand for itself. Newspapers almost never allow it, so that rule is on by default. Turn the checkbox off and try again.
• A letter was mistyped. One wrong letter makes a word shape that no English word has, and the whole puzzle becomes unsolvable rather than merely hard. Check the odd word against the paper.
• The clue was read backwards. A printed clue goes from what is printed to what it means. If yours produces nonsense, try it the other way round. There is more on this on the clue letter page.
• The puzzle is very short. A five-word cryptogram may genuinely have several readings that all make sense. When that happens they are all listed, best first, and you decide.

What a solver is not

Getting the answer and solving the puzzle are different pleasures, and this page only offers the first. If what you want is the second, the honest route is the method: single letters, apostrophes, doubled letters, then the frequency table. Most solvers we hear from use this page the way you would use the back of the book — to unstick one word after a genuine try, not to skip the try. There is a good case for feeding it only the sentence you are stuck on.

Cryptogram, cryptoquote, cryptoquip: one tool, three names

The three names describe the same cipher with different contents. A cryptogram is the general term. A cryptoquote is one wrapped around a quotation, usually with the author's name enciphered at the end, which is why the last word so often resists — proper nouns are not in any dictionary. A cryptoquip is one wrapped around a pun, and it comes with the clue letter precisely because puns give you no help from sense. The differences that matter when you are solving are set out on cryptogram vs cryptoquote.

Whichever your paper runs, paste it above. If a name at the end is the only thing left unsolved, that is a normal and complete result: you have the sentence, and the name is spelled out for you by the key.

On the answers we do not publish

The Cryptoquote and the Cryptoquip that run in American newspapers are copyrighted work belonging to King Features Syndicate. We do not reprint their puzzles, and we do not publish their solutions — not the daily ones and not an archive of old ones. What this page does instead is give you the means to solve the copy you already paid for, without anyone having to republish anything. That is also why the search runs in your browser rather than ours: there is no copy of your puzzle on our side to keep.

Questions people ask