Cryptography Challenge »
I started this puzzle like I did the last, with the single character words. That search yielded O and Q, meaning those had to be either A or I. Unfortunately, nothing really jumped out at me this time that would help out, so I moved on.
Using one of the pages I found in the last challenge, I started looking for words with two letters next to each other - especially short (three letter) words. I found only one, which was QSS. As it included one of my one-letter options, I figured that Q must be A, making this word ADD or ALL. I actually thought it was ADD. Still not much help, so I kept going.
The next thing I did was check out all of the three-letter words. I found an amazing number (5, actually) of ZIT. I decided this must be THE. This was really all that I needed, as soon after I had solved for T (Z), H (I) and E (T), I made a stab at A (Q) and I (O) as well. This left me thinking until I noticed QD and DT. I knew Q was A, so QD had to be either AM or AN. Since I don't know of any two-letter words other than NO that start with N (NI doesn't count, even if you like Monty Python), I went with D = M.
Then I stumbled, replacing the SS I found earlier with DD, and that just messed up my piece entirely. After recovering to where I was, I looked again. TDQOS had been rendered TmaiS at this point. There was also TDQOSL later, which had by now been rendered TmaiSL. So I plugged ?mai? into the crossword solver I had found previously. Not many words, but email stood out, as I could easily make it into emails for the second word. I replaced SS with LL instead, and that made all the difference. The rest were solved in rapid fashion simply by looking for words that needed just a letter or two to solve. Voilá!
I enjoyed this puzzle a bit more than the last, as it took more brainpower to solve, even though it was actually completed faster. Last time I had to figure out which letters were 12 apart from one another! In any case, here's the solution...
WELL, FIRST OF ALL, I NEED TO SAY "THE QUICK BROWN FOX JUMPED OVER THE LAZY DOG." IF YOU WONDER WHY I PUT THAT IN HERE, JUST TAKE A LOOK AT THE CIPHER ITSELF. I WOULD HOPE YOU MIGHT BE MILDLY AMUSED. ANYWAYS, I AM STILL FAIRLY ANGRY ABOUT THE WHOLE MASSIVE AOL SPAM FORGED EMAIL THING THAT HAPPENED OVER THE WEEKEND CAUSING ME TO RECEIVE APPROXIMATELY THIRTY FIVE THOUSAND BOUNCED EMAILS IN RESPONSE. NOT MUCH I CAN DO ABOUT IT THOUGH.
Sorry for all the spam David!
