Quoth the puzzle website, with an implied invitation to solve:
RQ EYH OMYVT VE KHV EFV MYJ TVML EFV EQ JHGV ZH TZEFWJ MAV ZRT OMKH
A good way to solve these short monalphabetic substitutions is to guess a word, and then see if that guess yields impossible words elsewhere in the cryptogram, narrowing down the options until you get the right one.
This approach is akin to reductio ad absurdum proofs and the theory of mathematical discovery that it is contradictions that teach us the most. It is something that ChatGPT, Gemini, and Claude have yet to demonstrate, either directly or by an alternate method that is equally effective. In my previous note I described how I used this same cryptogram to test those systems, and how miserably they failed.
Now, instead of prompting robots to look like idiots, I want to illustrate how simply and directly a human like you can solve these kinds of puzzles. And it is not just a pastime which is involved here; if you practice the “guess, look for contradictions, guess better” with puzzles, I think you’ll find it a valuable skill if you end up doing things like accident analysis.
We start by looking at the whole cryptogram, and note the repeated word EFV and an interesting pair of words RQ/EQ. Focusing on them, we go looking for a pair of two letter words that share the same second letter, the first word being a plausible candidate for the first word of a sentence. When I first went at the example cryptogram, this search took the bulk of my time, and yielded multiple impossibles like the one resulting from an/in:
an iYH OMYVT Vi KHV iFV MYJ TVML iFV in JHGV ZH TZiFWJ MAV ZRT OMKH
Which is knocked out by the improbable two-letter word Vi. I finally arrived at if/of, which turned out to be golden:
if oYH OMYVT Vo KHV oFV MYJ TVML oFV of JHGV ZH TZoFWJ MAV ZiT OMKH
We turn to Vo, which yields a small number of options for V: d, g, s, t, for example. Guessing t gives us:
if oYH OMYtT to KHt oFt MYJ TtML oFt of JHGt ZH TZoFWJ MAt ZiT OMKH
Now we’re on the home stretch: oFt is clearly out, which yields:
if oYH OMYtT to KHt out MYJ TtML out of JHGt ZH TZouWJ MAt ZiT OMKH
And gives us the gift of TZouWJ, which is most likely should:
if oYH OMYts to KHt out MYd stML out of dHGt hH should MAt his OMKH
This illustrates a frequent inflection point in the process, where you are encouraged by each guess yielding more and more plausible words; in this case hH gives us he and a lot more:
if oYe OMYts to Ket out MYd stML out of deGt he should MAt his OMKe
now we kick in the afterburner by recognizing phrases as well as words, in this case get out and stay out:
if one Oants to get out and stay out of deGt he should aAt his Oage
Clean up wants and debt, yielding wage:
if one wants to get out and stay out of debt he should aAt his wage
And since we are human we recognize the pun on “act his age” and finish:
if one wants to get out and stay out of debt he should act his wage
And that’s a way you can do it.