Cryptogram vs Cryptoquote vs Cryptoquip

Written and checked by hand. Last reviewed July 25, 2026.

These three words get used as if they were interchangeable, and they nearly are, but not quite. One of them is the name of a puzzle type. The other two are the names of specific newspaper features that happen to use that puzzle type. Knowing which is which explains why the puzzle in your paper behaves differently from the one in someone else's.

The short answer

Cryptogram — the general term. Any text hidden behind a letter-for-letter substitution cipher. It is a category, like crossword.
Cryptoquote — a specific daily newspaper feature, distributed by King Features Syndicate, in which the hidden text is always a quotation with its speaker named.
Cryptoquip — another King Features feature, in which the hidden text is a pun or joke rather than a quotation, and a clue letter is printed underneath.

All three are solved exactly the same way. The differences are editorial, not mechanical.

Side by side

How the three compare on the things that actually change your solving.
	Cryptogram	Cryptoquote	Cryptoquip
What it is	A puzzle type	A syndicated feature	A syndicated feature
Hidden text	Anything	A quotation	A pun or joke
Attribution shown	Depends on the publisher	Yes, the speaker is named	No, there is no speaker
Clue letter given	Depends	No	Yes, one substitution
Distributed by	—	King Features Syndicate	King Features Syndicate
Typical length	Varies	One or two sentences	One sentence
Where the difficulty sits	Varies	Vocabulary and sentence length	The wordplay at the end

Why the Cryptoquip feels different to solve

The clue letter changes the opening move completely. Instead of hunting for a foothold you are handed one, so the first thirty seconds of a Cryptoquip are much easier than the first thirty seconds of a Cryptoquote.

The ending is the reverse. A quotation is ordinary prose: once you have most of it, grammar and sense fill in the rest almost by themselves. A pun is engineered to defeat exactly that. The final word is often a deliberate mangling, so the technique that finishes a Cryptoquote — read it aloud and let your ear complete the sentence — is the technique that fails on a Cryptoquip. You have to finish it letter by letter.

If the printed clue is what you came here about, we have a page on it: what a clue like D equals C means and how to use it.

Celebrity Cipher, the third one people mean

Celebrity Cipher works like a Cryptoquote: the hidden text is a remark by a well-known person, and the speaker is named once you solve it. It is the work of the puzzle maker Luis Campos and reaches newspapers through a different syndicate from the King Features pair, which is why it can appear in a paper that carries neither Cryptoquote nor Cryptoquip.

What the words literally mean

All three are built on the Greek kryptos, hidden. Cryptogram is hidden writing; the ending is the same one you find in telegram and diagram. Cryptoquote and Cryptoquip are trade names coined on the same pattern, one for a quote and one for a quip. Neither was a word before a syndicate made it one, which is why you will not find them in older dictionaries but will find cryptogram in all of them.

This is not a pedantic point. It is the reason searching for one term brings up the others: the general word and the brand names have been used to mean the same thing for so long that most solvers never had cause to separate them.

Which one are you actually solving?

Two questions settle it in a few seconds:

Is there a clue letter printed under the puzzle? If yes, you are almost certainly holding a Cryptoquip.
Does the solved text end with a name? If yes, it is a quotation puzzle — Cryptoquote, Celebrity Cipher, or a general cryptogram. If it ends with a groan, it was a quip.

And what we publish here

Ours are cryptograms in the general sense, and quotation puzzles in the editorial sense. We are not the syndicated Cryptoquote and we do not reprint it: that feature belongs to King Features, and publishing its answers would be publishing someone else's work. What we do instead is set our own puzzles from quotations that are in the public domain, and show the source of every one.

One new puzzle every morning, in large type.
The answer on the same page as the puzzle, folded away until you want it.
The author, the year and the original source for every quotation, because we would rather be checkable than impressive.
No letter ever stands for itself. See the rules.

If you are here because your paper dropped its puzzle, the newspaper puzzles page is the one you want next. If you have a puzzle in front of you right now and want it broken, the solver runs entirely in your browser.

Questions we get

Which one is harder?

Cryptoquip is usually easier to break and harder to finish: the clue letter gets you moving quickly, but the answer is a pun, so the last few words will not fall out of ordinary sentence logic. Cryptoquote is the opposite. Once the grammar clicks, a quotation completes itself.

Is a cryptoquote a cryptogram?

Yes. Cryptogram is the category; Cryptoquote is one branded newspaper feature within it. Every cryptoquote is a cryptogram. Most cryptograms are not cryptoquotes.

What about Celebrity Cipher?

Same puzzle mechanics, different feature. It is the work of Luis Campos and reaches papers through a different syndicate from the King Features pair. The hidden text is a quotation from a well-known figure.

Do all of them forbid a letter standing for itself?

No, and this is worth checking on whatever you are solving. The puzzles on this site exclude it as a matter of construction. Syndicated newspaper puzzles do not all make that promise.

Why do people search for one name and mean another?

Because most solvers learned the puzzle from one particular newspaper and only ever saw one of the names. Someone who grew up with the Cryptoquip will call every cipher puzzle a cryptoquip for the rest of their life, and they are not wrong to.