Replies

Best Answers from yesterday:

Someone sent the survey answers to my private replay:

TODAY’S CRYPTOGRAM SURVEY

1. HOW OFTEN DO YOU SOLVE TODAY’S CRYPTOGRAM

A-DAILY, CAN’T START THE DAY WITHOUT IT. I GET PI*SED AND BEAT THE DOG IF IT’S NOT POSTED BEFORE 7AM!

2. ON AVERAGE HOW OFTER DOES IT TAKE YOU TO SOLVE THE WORD SCRAMBLE?

D-UNDER 3 MINUTES. AND IF I CAN SOLVE IT UNDER 90 SECONDS I WILL BUY 5 SCRATCH OFFS THAT DAY AND ALWAYS WIN.

3. DO YOU EVER SWIPE FOR LETTER CLUE?

B-NEVER. THAT’S CHEATING.

4.ARE YOU ON THE PING LIST?

A-YES. ISN’T EVERYBODY? I LIKE IT DELIVERED TO MY DOOR STEP, SO I DON’T HAVE TO WALK OUT TO THE MAILBOX IN MY UNDERSHORTS TO GET IT.

5. DO YOU PLAY ALONE?

B-YES, WITH MY WIFE. IT’S THE ONLY TIME WE TALK TO EACH OTHER ALL DAY ESPECIALLY IF I BEAT HER WHICH IS RARE, THEN SHE’LL MAKE ME SLEEP ON THE COUCH AND WON’T MAKE ME DINNER.

I work on solving the cryptogram every day. If I like the crytogram, I save the puzzle and FR link in a Cryptogram Helper I made using MS Visual Foxpro.

20 years ago I saved a corpus of the words from 100+ Fortune magazine stories, calculating frequency of use for each word.

I then added a huge corpus of English words (for which I had no frequency of use data) and that at least gives me a chance to scan all possible words, though it's often tedious to do that.

Almost any word in a crytogram having two repeating letters in it I can discover in seconds. And a word of say 9+ letters with only one repeating letter is usually readily solved too.

The bells and whistles of my crypto baby:

Automatically creates a cryptogram-solving diagram after the puzzle letters are copy/pasted into a text box.
If I widen/shrink my application window, the puzzle diagram instantly changes to create more or less lines of cryptogram text.
I sort the unsolved cryptogram letters into a frequency chart which colorizes each letter solved.

Since I live in Japan, I don't need to be on the ping list. Cryptograms appear around 3 AM Los Angeles time when only vampire FReepers are posting.

More FReepers should visit Japan. Among the delights are exploring the local grocer and trying to read the labels and signs. My Japanese wife sends me out by myself to shop. And I savor the variety of mushrooms on display, including the delicious maitake (also known as the "hen of the woods").