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I am finding I am stumped by alot of the quotes in the difficult category - not all of them - but most of them. They do not have alot of the easy giveaways - like ' the ' and ' that ' - they tend to have alot of longer words. What should I do?
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Well...
In my opinion, as you are not going for a 100 percent solve rate at this time, I would pass on them...get more comfortable with the easy and average puzzles. Then do a difficult one as you feel, but if you find you are spending an inordinate amount of time on it...move on.
By working the easy and average it will help you in a short time to be able to solve the difficult ones.
That's what I did for the first month, just did what I could. And sure enough, the more difficult ones came a little easier to me. And be assured that even the fastest and most competent players still get "stuck" every now and then.
Things to look for double letters at ends of words; look for the most used letter under letter frequencies and start with e,i, t, and n.
Again, there is an older posting in this forum called help for newcomers which is really helpful. -
western, i have not been playing here long enough to give advice, except to say that you should listen to pootie!
my first month playing i just resigned myself to the fact that i would never be able to compete with these cryptogram nerds!
i still can't, but as time went on i got better and i felt less and less stupid! i think at this point i am almost at 'magoo' level ! ha
just keep playing, what the heck, it's fun!Comment
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Pattern Recognition
Hi there,
It's all about recognizing the patterns of letters that form English words.
We all start with "that," "the," "there," "then or they or them"...
"and" (especially after a comma)
"-ess" at the end of a word (look for letter frequencies and remember that "e" may be the most common letter in longer quotations).
"Success" and "nothing" you will also recognize. "If you can..." begins many motivational quotes.
After that... it's all a matter of practice, practice, practice... training your brain. Then one day you will start "seeing" words before you've filled in a single letter, and those words will fit together into phrases and sentences.
It does take large amounts of practice and time. At least it did for me. Not sure that anyone should aspire to the lifestyle of a "crypto nerd" or "online junkie" (speaking as one myself and probably I should speak for myself alone).
Some of us seem to mainline these things.
Just have fun and don't sweat the results. It's a great game for people who enjoy verbal puzzles.
AndreaComment
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P.S.
Single letter words will be "a" or "i" (with rare exceptions... e.g., the poetic "o").
"ing" is easy to recognize at the end of words.
Trial and error (hit or miss): "tion" at the end of a long word. Except at times the word will end in "ties" (and so it goes).
Another frequent flier: people. Two p's, two e's, in predictable positions.
"Never" should never go undetected. The "e's" in positions 2 and 4 will have a high frequency while the "v" occurs infrequently (once or twice in a short to medium quote).
After an apostrophe, you will usually find "t" or "s." A contraction (don't, can't, isn't, wouldn't) often ends with "n" apostrophe "t".
"He who" and "No one" often begin quotations. Watch for that repeating "h" or the reversal of "no" to "on."
One more long word to recognize: everything (everybody, everyone). Look for the high frequency "e's" and low frequency "v" in the first positions.Comment
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1313 Mockingbird Lane
Very sage advice, munchlet. Always look for keywords that have repeated letters, such as "always," "anyone," "without," "within," "afraid," "thought," "throughout," "themselves," or "against." And here's one of the best keywords of all: "TRISKAIDEKAPHOBIA." This is such a perfect keyword. I know of no other 17-letter word in the English language in which the third, seventh and sixteenth letters are represented by the same character. If you can recognize this pattern in a crypto, you are sure to get a record solve time!
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what is that?
what is triska....whatever?Comment
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