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How to solve cryptograms

Start with the short words and the most common letters. A one-letter word is almost always A or I, the most common three-letter word is THE, and E and T are the two most common letters in English. Pencil in one guess, see what it does to the other words, and take it back if it turns them into nonsense.

By Emre Özen, updated October 8, 2026. The letter table comes from Robert Lewand's Cryptological Mathematics, as printed on Wikipedia's Letter frequency page. Every other count on this page is from the 495 quotes in our own online cryptogram game, worked out when the page is built.

What you're solving

A cryptogram is a quotation in a substitution code. Each letter of the alphabet has been swapped for another, and the swap never changes inside one puzzle: if G stands for E once, every G is an E. Spaces, apostrophes and punctuation stay where they were. In our puzzles no letter stands for itself, and no two code letters share an answer.

So you're never really guessing a sentence. You're guessing 26 letters at most, and every one you get right fills in several squares at once.

Step 1: count the code letters

Some letters turn up far more than others. Robert Lewand measured it across a large sample of English, and our quotes follow a very similar pattern:

Rank	English text (Lewand)	Our 495 quotes (28,023 letters)
1	E: 12.7%	E: 12.6%
2	T: 9.1%	T: 10.4%
3	A: 8.2%	O: 7.8%
4	O: 7.5%	A: 7.8%
5	I: 7%	H: 7.4%
6	N: 6.7%	S: 6.6%
7	S: 6.3%	I: 6.5%
8	H: 6.1%	N: 6.5%
9	R: 6%	R: 5.8%
10	D: 4.3%	L: 4.5%
11	L: 4%	D: 3.6%
12	C: 2.8%	U: 2.8%

Count every code letter in your puzzle and write the totals down. The top one or two are good bets for E and T. Don't trust the order past that: a short quote is a small sample. H comes higher in our list than in Lewand's (7.4% against 6.1%) because so many of our quotes use old words like hath, doth and thee. At the bottom, J, Q, X and Z together make up less than half a percent of our letters.

Step 2: read the short words

Short words are where most puzzles crack open. Here are the most common ones in our quotes:

Length	Most common (times seen)
1 letter	A (263), I (28), O (3)
2 letters	IS (232), OF (189), TO (159), IN (99), HE (94), BE (83), IT (80), AS (42), DO (35), NO (25)
3 letters	THE (398), AND (203), BUT (101), NOT (85), HIS (78), MAN (63), ARE (59), FOR (58), ALL (41), THY (36)
4 letters	THAT (135), THAN (52), WITH (46), WILL (35), GOOD (34), HAVE (29), THOU (26), LOVE (24)

A one-letter code word is A or I in nearly every case. The only other one in our bank is O, as in Shakespeare's "O, how full of briers". THE is the most common word of any length: 398 times in 6,855 words. If a three-letter code word shows up two or three times in one quote, try THE first.

Two-letter words come in families. IS, IN and IT start with the same letter, so two different code words that share a first letter are worth a look. OF, TO and BE are next most likely.

Watch the shape of four-letter words too. THAT starts and ends with the same letter, which makes it easy to spot: a code word like XQBX is very likely THAT. In our quotes it's the most common four-letter word, 135 times.

Step 3: apostrophes, double letters and endings

A letter after an apostrophe narrows things down fast. In our quotes the endings after an apostrophe are 'S (32), 'D (5), 'T (5), 'LL (2), 'ER (1), 'RE (1). A single code letter after an apostrophe is usually S. T, as in DON'T, comes next, and so does D, because old texts shorten words like crack'd and quarrel'd.

Doubled code letters inside a word are worth noting. Our most common pairs are LL (208), OO (120), EE (93), TT (71), SS (68), RR (31). A doubled code letter at the end of a short word, like WILL, ALL or TELL, is a strong hint for LL.

Word endings repeat as well. Across our longer words the most common last three letters are ETH (152), ING (124), ALL (59), TER (50), ERE (37), HER (37). The old ending ETH, as in maketh and goeth, is everywhere in the King James quotes.

A worked example

Here's one puzzle from our bank, solved one step at a time. It's coded exactly the way the game codes puzzles, with no letters given at the start. New letters at each step are in red.

The puzzle

EHFKLFSMJQJESLFRVGKMJMVGFSMJQHXRJ.

Count. The code letters that appear most are J (5 times), F (4 times), M (4 times), S (3 times). The quote is short, so the counts are close together and don't settle much by themselves. Keep them in mind.
The one-letter word. E stands alone at the start, so it's A or I. As a one-letter word, A turns up about 9 times as often as I in our quotes, so pencil in A.

After this step
AEHFKLFSMJQJAESLFRVGKMJMVGFSMJQHXRJ.
THE. The three-letter word MJQ appears twice. That's the classic sign of THE. It also explains why J is the most common code letter: it's H, and this quote has five of them. So M is T, J is H and Q is E.

After this step
AEHFKLFSTMHJEQHJAESLFRVGKTMHJTMVGFSTMHJEQHXRHJ.
The two-letter words. FS appears twice and FR once. They start with the same code letter, and IN and IS are both on the common list. With A already used, F is I, S is N and R is S.

After this step
AEHIFKLIFNSTMHJEQHJAENSLIFSRVGKTMHJTMVGIFNSTMHJEQHXSRHJ.
Fill a nearly finished word. JESL now reads HAN and one blank. "In the han_" can only be HAND, so L is D.

After this step
AEHIFKDLIFNSTMHJEQHJAENSDLIFSRVGKTMHJTMVGIFNSTMHJEQHXSRHJ.
Let the phrase help. HFKL reads _I_D: it could be BIND, KIND, MIND or WIND, but "a _I_D in the hand" is a saying most people know. Try BIRD, which makes H B and K R.

After this step
AEBHIFRKDLIFNSTMHJEQHJAENSDLIFSRVGRKTMHJTMVGIFNSTMHJEQBHXSRHJ.
Check the guess against another word. VGKMJ now reads __RTH. EARTH won't do, because E and A are already used elsewhere. WORTH fits, and it gives V = W and G = O, which turn MVG into TWO. Two words agree, so BIRD was right.

After this step
AEBHIFRKDLIFNSTMHJEQHJAENSDLIFSRWVOGRKTMHJTMWVOGIFNSTMHJEQBHXSRHJ.
The last letter. HXRJ reads B_SH. The one code letter left, X, is U.

After this step
AEBHIFRKDLIFNSTMHJEQHJAENSDLIFSRWVOGRKTMHJTMWVOGIFNSTMHJEQBHUXSRHJ.

The answer: "A bird in the hand is worth two in the bush." It's a traditional proverb. Notice that no step needed a lucky guess. Each one either used a common word or was confirmed by another word straight after.

Mistakes that cost the most time

Using a letter twice. If you've put E under one code letter, it can't go under another. Our game warns you the moment you try, and shows where E already is.
Forgetting that no letter stands for itself. If the code word is THE, the answer isn't THE.
Holding on to a bad guess. If a guess leaves a word that can't be English, like a Q with no U or four consonants in a row, take it out early.
Reading old spelling as a mistake. Thou, hath, doth, ye and words ending in ETH are all normal in our older quotes.

Hints and Check in our game

When you're stuck in the free cryptogram game, Check marks every wrong letter in red and counts as one mistake if it finds any. Hint fills in one correct letter everywhere, up to 6 per puzzle: the code letter you picked, or the most common one you haven't got right yet. Easy puzzles start with three letters in place, which is a gentle way to practise the steps above. When you're ready for a test, try the daily cryptogram or print a large-print cryptogram sheet for the kitchen table.

Sources

"Letter frequency", Wikipedia: the table of relative letter frequencies in English texts, from Robert Lewand, Cryptological Mathematics (Mathematical Association of America, 2000).
Back Porch Games quote bank: 495 public-domain quotes, each checked against the text named in its source line. All counts from the bank are computed from those quotes when this page is built.