A sentence hidden one letter at a time
Each letter has been swapped for another, consistently throughout. Work out the substitution and the line appears. The lines were written for this puzzle — they are not quotations from anybody.
Generated on this device
Where the lines come from
Every line in this puzzle was written for it. None is a quotation, and none is attributed to anyone — which is deliberate on two counts.
The first is licensing: quotation collections are compiled works, and helping yourself to one is not something to do casually. The second matters more. Sites in this genre routinely put words in the mouths of people who never said them, because the collections they copied from were already wrong, and a misattributed line then travels further every time somebody solves it. Writing them outright means there is nothing here to get wrong.
They are observations rather than advice, on the grounds that a cryptogram resolving into a motivational slogan is a small disappointment after twenty minutes of work.
What makes a line work as a puzzle
Not the same thing as what makes it read well. Three properties are checked on every line before it ships, and on any text you supply yourself.
Length. Under about forty letters there is often more than one sensible decoding, and you end up guessing rather than deducing. Much over ninety and it stops being satisfying and becomes clerical.
Short words. A one- or two-letter word is the foothold everything else hangs from — in English a single letter standing alone is almost always A or I. A line without any is far harder than its length suggests. Three lines here failed that check when it was first applied and were rewritten.
Letter spread. Enough distinct letters for frequency analysis to bite on, without a solitary Q or Z that collapses a whole word the moment it is spotted.
One convention is enforced in the cipher itself: no letter ever stands for itself. That is partly because a letter left in place is a free giveaway, and mostly because a solver who relies on the convention and finds it broken will distrust every deduction they have made.
How to start
Begin with the shortest words. A single letter on its own is A or I, and there are not many two-letter words in English — of, to, in, is, it, on, be, as, at, so, we, he, by, or, an, do, if, up, no, my covers most of them.
Then count. The letters shown beneath the puzzle are ordered by how often they appear, and in ordinary English prose the commonest are roughly E, T, A, O, I, N in that order. The most frequent letter in the puzzle is very often E — and if a word ends in that letter twice over, you have found a double E and probably a word like seen or been.
Apostrophes are worth their weight. A letter after one is nearly always S or T, and a two-letter ending is almost certainly re, ve or ll.
When you get stuck
The hint tells you the most frequent letter you have not yet placed, because filling that one opens more of the line than any other would. If one of your existing letters is wrong, it says that first instead — a single mistaken letter turns every word containing it to nonsense, and hunting for it by eye is the least enjoyable part of the whole exercise.
Related
Logic grids and nonograms for elimination of a different kind, or the puzzle hub for everything else.
Questions people actually ask
Who said these lines?
Nobody — they were written for this puzzle. None is a quotation and none is attributed, which is deliberate: sites in this genre routinely put words in the mouths of people who never said them, because the collections they copied from were already wrong, and a misattributed line travels further every time somebody solves it.
Does a letter ever stand for itself?
Never. It is the usual convention and it is enforced here, partly because a letter left in place is a free giveaway, and mostly because a solver who relies on the convention and finds it broken will stop trusting everything else they have deduced.
Where do I start?
The shortest words. A single letter standing alone is A or I, and English has only about twenty common two-letter words. After that, count: the letters listed under the puzzle are ordered by frequency, and the commonest in ordinary prose runs roughly E, T, A, O, I, N.
Can I use my own text?
The engine accepts it and holds it to the same three checks it applies to its own lines — long enough to have a single sensible decoding, short enough not to become clerical, and with at least a couple of short words to give a solver a foothold. If it fails, it says which.
What does the hint do?
It fills in the most frequent letter you have not yet placed, because that one opens more of the line than any other. If one of your existing letters is wrong it says so first instead — a single mistaken letter turns every word containing it into nonsense, and finding it by eye is miserable.
Is my progress saved?
In your browser, on your device. There is no account and nothing is sent anywhere. Clearing your browser data clears it.