Cryptogram Puzzle 285
Answers

Cryptogram Puzzle 285 decodes to a quotation of 36 words attributed to Merida. It runs to 179 characters and uses 21 distinct letters.

The chart above shows the real letter frequencies of this quote — E×18, O×16, T×16, N×10, I×9. That is the pattern that cracks it: in ordinary English E is the commonest letter by a wide margin, so whichever cipher symbol appears most in the puzzle is the first substitution worth testing. We publish the decoded quote and its author; the game generates its own substitution alphabet per player, so no fixed cipher is shown here.

This quote contains 19 short words of three letters or fewer, which are the other obvious way in — one-letter words are always A or I, and the commonest three-letter word by a wide margin is THE. Fixing one of those typically reveals enough of the text to read the rest.

This puzzle sits in the 201–300 block, with puzzle 284 and puzzle 286 linked at the foot of the page, so you can keep moving without returning to the index.