#1 has loved looking at comic strips since before she could read. She would look at pictures and just laugh. Once she could read, she started laughing at some funnies and would ask about the random comics.
She's bumped up a level again. This morning after breakfast she was reading the usual comics and asked if I'd help her with the Cryptoquip in the bottom right corner of the comics page. I said yes, even though I'd never succeeded at solving one. How do I learn new things lately? The internet. I found something about an applet Edgar Allan Poe wrote to teach how to solve Cryptoquips but #1 was anxious to get started so I went to the next Google search for clues.
The question was: What Strategies do you use to solve Cryptoquip?
There was just one answer:
Do you mean where one letter is substituted for another?
If so, I try to start with the smaller words. Look for words that have an apostraphy, such as won't can't don't, she's, etc. The letter following ' can only be a t or s and d and m. If two letters follow, it could be I've, I'll.
Also look at the word 'the'. You may find similar words; there, their, they, or them.
Does the sentence ask a question? It most likely starts 'Do' or Would.
With this brief explanation, we went to the daily Cryptoquip she found:
ORO AROM RB MZZQFD BQD DQ WRXJM ZQFMJD ZLFMJ. UM WGRLAMO LD'J BQD BLWM DQ ZXMG AZDUMF BRDXFM.
Clue: O equals D
From there we filled in all the D's then found the apostrophe and figured it was 'it's'. It took some work but she worked it out pretty much on her own. She kept track of what letters equaled. When we got stuck, we wrote the alphabet the opposite way and filled in the empty spaces with unmatched letters. She got some laughs with some letter substitutes. The most surprising part was when I thought I was helping quite a bit and she piped up without any guidance from me to figure out what z equals. It was amazing! And we had fun. We'll have to do that again. :-)
When you solve the puzzle, you'll know the Title.
3 comments:
That is fun! I wish I got the paper just so I could do the Cryptoquips! Question though: on the second to last word it says "AZDUMF" but should it be "AQDUMF"?
I figured out most of the puzzle till the second to last word which doesn't make anything with the letters I figured out, I did figure out the title.
Yes, yes, part of the puzzle is us messing up the last word. The trick is to account for human error. :)
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