Decipher

Decipher turns the newspaper cryptogram into a daily web puzzle. The answer is always a quotation from a known person, such as Napoleon, Oscar Wilde or Annie Dillard, written out with a simple substitution cipher: every A in the quote has become the same other letter, every B another, and so on, with the spaces and punctuation left in place.

You select a letter in the coded text and type the letter you think it stands for, and your guess fills in everywhere that code letter appears. Short words, apostrophes and repeated patterns are the way in: a lone letter is usually A or I, and a three-letter word that keeps coming back is often THE. If you are stuck you can take up to three hints, and a reset button clears your key. The fewer hints you use, the more stars you score.

The puzzles are numbered by day from 19 June 2024, a new quote arrives at midnight on your own clock, and an archive holds every earlier day, with a button for a random one. A stats page keeps your games, wins, current streak and star counts on your device, and a Share button copies your result and time. The game is free and carries ads: a banner sits under the keyboard on a phone. It suits anyone who solves the cryptoquote in the paper, and players of Cyphr or codeword puzzles who like breaking a code with no other clues.