On May 26, 2009, at 8:38 AM, Harry Kakueki wrote:
> On Tue, May 26, 2009 at 12:59 PM, lith <minilith / gmail.com> wrote:
>> On May 26, 1:34 am, Joshua Ball <Joshua.B... / microsoft.com> wrote:
>>> Check out this link to understand what a cryptogram is:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cryptogram
>>
>> I was wondering if the blanks represent actual word breaks or not. If
>> this were the case and if we were dealing with a normal cryptogram,
>> the word "FFYJM" would begin with two times the same letter. English
>> isn't my mother tongue but this seems rather unlikely to me which is
>> why I have concluded that is isn't a normal cryptogram, which is  
>> about
>> the point where I stopped.
>>
>> Also, there already was a rubyquiz about solving cryptograms, which
>> made me suspect that we are dealing with something else here. Was I
>> wrong?
>
> "FFYJM" could be ["oomph", "oozed", "oozes"] but "PQPQY" could be
> ["cacao", "cocoa", "dodos", "lulus", "mamas", "mimic", "tutus",
> "vivid"].
>
> Looking at these, there is no common letter for "Y".
> So, I don't think these are just a bunch of five letter words.
>
> Harry
>
> -- 
> A Look into Japanese Ruby List in English
> http://www.kakueki.com/ruby/list.html


Come on people! This is a standard technique to prevent things like  
lone letters or letter pairs providing too much help. The whole  
cryptogram is likely a simple substitution (one letter stands for  
another) with possible "filler" letters at the end (to make a multiple  
of 5). You need to find word breaks after you apply a substitution.

Martin is probably on the right track with comparing frequency counts  
between English and the cryptogram, but that's only a start. Once you  
have a candidate substitution, you have to see if you can pull letters  
off the cryptogram to form words.  If you get a series of words that  
leaves fewer than 5 letters at the end, then you very likely have a  
solution.

-Rob

Rob Biedenharn		http://agileconsultingllc.com
Rob / AgileConsultingLLC.com