Park Game: Cryptograms

How to solve a cryptogram

1. First take a look at the hint if one is provided. Hint is a word or words that are written in plain letters. If you can guess a word next to the hint, you will have cracked those numbers. For example, if there is CHEWING 123, you might guess that 123 is GUM. Sometimes the hint word is repeated somewhere in the cryptogram. See if you can find a word with the same pattern of characters as in the hint.

2. Short words can sometimes be guessed, because there are not too many possibilities. Here are some common short words:

one letter: a, i, (o)

two letters: of, to, in, is, it, be, as, at, an, by, he, on, or, so, if, no

three letters: the, and, for, are, but, not, you, all

3. See if you can recognise some of the partially solved words. Let's say there is a DIS4. That might be either DISH or DISK. Now take a look at other words. If you find one where substituting 4 with either an H or a K makes any sense, then that's probably it.

4. You can try a technique called frequency analysis. "E" is the most common letter in the English language. If you count the numbers and find that 21 is the most frequent one, then 21 probably signifies "E". You can then do the same with other letters. However, since the secret messages are not very long, this method may be inaccurate, and you will have to try other letters of similar frequency as well. Complete order of letter frequencies is: E T A O N I R S H D L U C M W F Y P G B V K J X Q Z.

Cryptogram Hints here.

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