Friday, March 21, 2008

Solution to CRYPTOQUIP

The Puzzle was:

WVOA ZVBWC AEEW H LBNUKGWAF PVFGC GNA MAGNZC HOLVWWHQZA PV WUNGOQZA, PKAC UGM'P QA QAGP!

clue was E is G

How To Solve

See the AEEW in the first row. it should be -GG-. After a little thought, you can see that it has to be the word EGGS. So A is E and W is S. We got two more letters now. So, replace all A's with E and all W's with E. Also see the lone H, it has to be an A or an I. Seeing the sentence structure, the H looks more like an I than an A. So, you can tentatively assigned H to I. Remember, this is a guessing game ; but we need to make educated guesses, rather than just keep guessing( this being called the Brute Force Method).

Look at the QA = Qe. So Q can be B or H. I guessed Q is B(I will explain this later).
The first word WVOA = sVOe. Looks an awful like SOME. Two more letters. So, V is O and O is M.(In general O will not stand for O itself).
PV = Po. Cant be GO(since E is G). So its a TO. P is T

In general an apostrophe is most probably followed by S, E, T or D.Now look at the word UGM'P. You can clearly see that P can be a T(as in a CAN'T, WON'T DON'T); S being ruled out. So, G has to be an A or O. But O is already taken. So G is A. ==> U is C and M is N.

Keep filling the alphabets elsewhere to see how the other words are developing. Now, GNA becomes "ARE". So, it looks like our assumption of P being a T seems to be working!

PKAC = tKeC. Can be THEN or THEY. But M is already N, So C is Y. ==> K is H.

I believe that this gives us enough alphabets to go ahead and solve the rest by trial and error.

The puzzle is still challenging even after knowing almost all the vowels (except U), so if you want to solve it at this stage also, dont read ahead because i am going to spill out the beans.



One more chance. I will just give out a few more letters:
B is U , N is R and L is P




And, finally the solution is :

SOME LOUSY EGGS I PURCHASED TODAY ARE NEARLY IMPOSSIBLE TO SCRAMBLE, THEY CAN'T BE BEAT!


Hope you had fun.






Thursday, March 20, 2008

CRYPTOQUIP - A fun substitution puzzle.

WVOA ZVBWC AEEW H LBNUKGWAF PVFGC GNA MAGNZC HOLVWWHQZA PV WUNGOQZA, PKAC UGM'P QA QAGP!

And the clue is E equals G.

Those who know what to do, go ahead.

For the others read ahead:

  1. Cryptoquip is a substitution cipher in which one letter stands for another.
  2. If you think(guess) that X stands for O, then it will equal O throughout the puzzle.
  3. Single letters, short words, and words using an apostrophe give the clues to locating the vowels.
  4. Solution by trial and error!!!
So, go ahead and try yr luck.

I will post the solution Here!!!