Easy cryptograms

Where to start on a easy cryptogram

These are the long ones, and length is help rather than work. A longer saying repeats its letters more often, and repetition is the only thing a solver has to reason from. E is the most common letter in English by a wide margin, so the symbol you see most often is worth trying as E before anything else. T, A, O, I and N follow.

Three letters are given on these, which is usually enough to break a word open. Look for a one-letter word first: it is A or I and nothing else. A three-letter word that turns up more than once is almost always THE, and cracking it hands you three of the six most common letters at a stroke.

Whatever you try, remember the rule that makes the puzzle finite: one symbol stands for one letter throughout, and no two symbols share a letter. If a guess forces the same plain letter into two different symbols, it is wrong regardless of how well it reads.