pauer ([info]pauer) wrote,
@ 2007-05-29 21:07:00
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FJAWRWP CX LXMN-KANJTNAB! MX WXC NWM DY URTN CQRB PDH!
Today I heard from a fellow in PA who'd found a mistake; he was right, I'm afraid. When i asked him what kind of puzzles he liked, he said 'really hard cryptograms, preferably without word breaks.' Apparently, he finds them too easy with the word breaks. Wowza. I have an odd feeling that this man may be the death of me.

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ACA
(Anonymous)
2007-05-31 09:55 pm UTC (link)
I've seen these and even solved some, but never without having a plaintext word given to me.

The American Cryptogram Association calls them Patristocrats (and regular, spaced and punctuated crypts Aristocrats -- this is all they do, they need different names somehow). They tend to require different skills: I can usually get a spaced crypt with a pattern word (PEOPLE, BEGINNING, . . .) or by spotting something about the distribution that gives me a leg up (having I in third to last position in a lot of long words is a favourite -- see ING, ION, IVE, ITY, IFY, IST, IAL, . . .) With unspaced, you rely a lot more heavily on a frequency count of the letters and contact frequency. (Crossword constructors love words that go CVCVCVC... Cryptogram writers have a hard time getting away from it too.)

-- Dart

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