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Cryptogram generator

Type a phrase. Every letter is swapped for a different one, and the solver puts it back. Print it with as many starting letters as you want to give away.

How to use it

1. Type or paste a phrase. A quote, a message in a card, a line from a poem, a fact you want somebody to remember.
2. Choose how many letters to give away. None is the hardest. One is the usual kindness — it hands over the commonest letter in your phrase, which is almost always the foothold a solver needs.
3. Print it. The answer key, with the full alphabet and what each letter stands for, prints on its own page unless you say otherwise.

The puzzle updates as you type. There is no Generate button because there is nothing to wait for — the cipher is built in your browser.

What a cryptogram is

A cryptogram is a phrase written in a substitution cipher: every letter of the alphabet is swapped for a different one, consistently, all the way through. If A becomes Q then every A in the phrase becomes a Q, and no other letter does. The solver's job is to work out the swaps and read the phrase back.

Nobody solves one by trying all the combinations — there are more of those than there are atoms in a person. It is solved by pattern: a one-letter word is A or I, a three-letter word that turns up four times is probably THE, a letter that appears far more than any other is probably E. That is why the spaces, the apostrophes and the full stops are all left exactly where they were. Hiding them would not make a harder puzzle, it would make an unsolvable one.

No letter ever stands for itself here. That is a rule this page enforces on every puzzle it builds, and it matters more than it sounds: a letter that enciphers to itself is a free answer the solver has no way of telling apart from a guess, and on a short phrase it can leave a whole word sitting there in plain English.

Making one people can actually solve

Longer is easier

The opposite of what people expect. A long phrase gives the solver far more repeated letters and far more word shapes to work from. A six-word quote is a pleasant ten minutes; a four-word one can be genuinely impossible, because there is nothing to count.

Ordinary words beat clever ones

A phrase full of common English words solves itself once THE and AND fall. A phrase of proper nouns and unusual spellings gives the solver nothing to lean on, and the same letter-frequency instincts that normally help will actively mislead them.

Give a letter away

One given letter changes a cryptogram from intimidating to inviting, and costs almost nothing in difficulty — a competent solver would have worked out E in the first minute anyway. Give two or three for a children's sheet.

Read your own puzzle before you print it

The one test that catches everything: if you cannot make a start on your own cryptogram with the hints you chose, nobody else will either.

Printing it

The answer key gets its own page by default — it carries the solved phrase and the whole alphabet with what each letter stands for, which is exactly the page you do not want handed out with the puzzle.

The working alphabet is the strip of letters with a blank under each one. It is where a solver writes what they have worked out so far, and doing that on the sheet rather than on a scrap of paper is most of the pleasure of solving one. Switch it off for a tidier sheet.

Large print makes the cipher letters and the writing blanks genuinely bigger, which matters here more than on most puzzles: a solver has to write a small letter under every large one, and a cramped grid of boxes is unusable to anyone whose hands are not steady.

Common questions

Will the same phrase always give the same cipher?

Yes, as long as the settings match. The cipher is built from your phrase rather than from a random number that changes every second, so a sheet you print today and the same phrase typed next month give you the same puzzle. Two different phrases never share a cipher, which matters if you are making a set — somebody who solved the first sheet would otherwise walk straight through the second.

Is this the same as a Caesar cipher or ROT13?

No. In a Caesar cipher every letter shifts by the same amount, so once you have one letter you have all twenty-six. Here the alphabet is shuffled, so every letter has to be worked out on its own. That is what makes it a puzzle rather than a party trick.

Can it solve a cryptogram for me?

No, and we would rather say so than let you find out after typing. This page makes puzzles; it does not break them. Give it a phrase and it enciphers it. It cannot take somebody else's cryptogram and tell you what it says.

What happens to numbers and punctuation?

They stay exactly where they are. Only letters are enciphered. Apostrophes and hyphens stay attached to their words, because a word ending in apostrophe-S is one of the best clues a solver gets.

Is anything I type sent to a server?

No. The cipher is built in your browser and stays there. Nothing is uploaded, nothing is logged, and the page keeps working with your network disconnected once it has loaded.

Is it free?

Yes, with no account, no limit and no catch.

There is a daily version of this

If you would rather solve one than make one, Decode is a new enciphered line every morning, and the printable pack collects the whole day's puzzles onto paper. Both free, no sign-up.