Friday, March 16, 2012

Friday favorite time

Cryptogram puzzles have long been a favorite of mine.  Give me a variety book of puzzles, and cryptograms are the ones I turned to first.

Crypto puzzles are phrases, quotes, or lists that have substituted different letters for the correct ones.  They've jumbled up the alphabet, and started writing.   Each puzzle has it's own code, and there's definitely a challenge there.  But as with anything, practice makes the process easier.  You learn to recognize patterns of words or usage, such as "the" being used frequently, and "I" and "a" as the one-letter words.  Then there are contractions, which are easy to spot with their apostrophe, as in "can't" and "didn't".  I was real proud of myself the first time I saw "people" in crypto form and recognized it just by looking at it.  :) 

You can imagine my excitement when I spotted my first puzzle book that was dedicated solely to cryptograms.  I've only seen them on the shelves a couple of times, so its not a monthly publication.  In fact, the one I'm looking at now says its the vacation issue.  That's not surprising, since vacations are typically the time to sit back, relax, and enjoy a good  book.  This book just happens to need a pencil to go with it.  

I looked online to see if they still put this out, but sadly all I found is this.  They've ceased production.  I guess this is an example that we need to let companies know immediately if we like their products so they will know to keep on making them.  In the meantime, the variety books will let me continue to enjoy my cryptograms.

1 comment:

suz said...

Cryptograms are a lot of fun, and like you, I would have listed them as my favorites. While I still like them, I must admit I have been seduced lately by Sudoku. Is this just a passing fancy, or is it true love? Only time will tell. Sorry to hear the crypto books are no longer being published, though.