Scramblegrams

      Scramblegrams are a new type of cryptoquote puzzle that cryptograms fans should love. The missing letters of the quotation are arranged in rows indicated by open boxes. Spaces are marked with black boxes. The letters in each column are a random ordering of how they actually occur in the column. Your object is to crack the code. Here is a sample puzzle and the solution.

      There are some hints to solve the puzzles. When the quotation is shorter it is simpler to solve the scramblegram, but harder to solve the corresponding cryptogram. This is part of the fun since long cryptograms are too easy. Try to solve puzzles with four rows until you get good at it since these are the easiest. You can try to find the combinations for short words of one, two, or three letters. There are usually only a few combinations of paths through the letters that lead to words. Once you have a word locked in you can circle the letters above the puzzle to help sort through the rest to find the other words. It is often easier to solve the right side of the puzzle first because there are not as many rows used there and less combinations. If you find a long word there is a very high probability it will fit into the puzzle. Just match the number of letters of the word you found to the number of boxes. Punctuation marks usually occur at the end of a word except for dashes before the author of the quotation which is at the front. Take advantage of apostrophes to find words also. Sometime multiple words use the same letters in a certain position so you can fill that in even though you don’t yet know which word is which. Scramblegrams are designed to be faster paced action than cryptograms. Let me know what you think about them (jackmerrin@gmail.com).