Sending a Message

I love meta-puzzles, and I was inspired by Jack Reuter's "Hidden Tactics" chess-themed puzzle on July 7, 2019. I wondered if it was possible to embed a cryptogram — a different newspaper column puzzle — into a crossword.

I succeeded through a combination of stick-to-itiveness and luck. I had the idea to use an Alan Turing quote from the beginning, along with the four theme entries that aren't part of the cryptogram. (Lofty ambitions to use additional entries like BENEDICT CUMBERBATCH (19) went away quickly once I started the grid.) The quote couldn't be too long (preventing finding a crossword-friendly encoding) or too short (not viable as a solvable cryptogram). I liked the reference to puzzles and games in this movie quote.

Finding an encoding scheme that translated to crossword entries brought me back to the pencil-and-paper days; I came up with the final cryptogram during an airplane flight while my laptop was put away. I hadn't initially imagined blocks of five — a traditional ciphertext construct — for the encoding, but that was what somehow worked. Luckily, the quote I'd chosen had exactly 40 letters.

BY SEX was the key entry I needed to get the encoding to work; the two new grid entries cross at the X. Interestingly, the final cipher has room to be different. For example, the P could be a Z or W, which would let the C be a P. Or otherwise, the L (two locations) could be an H.

I hope this puzzle encourages more creative meta-puzzles out there!

I love codes. In our household, we don't wrap presents, but rather hide them and give clues to their whereabouts. My poor kids have no idea that they're learning while having fun, decoding alphanumerics (A=1, B=2, C=3, etc.), up-down ciphers, Pigpen, and even CRYPTOGRAMS.

Sadly, they haven't cracked my homemade ENIGMA MACHINE yet, so their 2019 Christmas presents are still under the floorboards.

There have been several cryptogram crosswords, like one that laid out the deciphering key in an easy to read display (unlike today's Note, ugh!). Another one employed the Caesar Shift, and yet another featured words that become other words after shifting.

And the piece de resistance: one that encrypted ALAN TURING into another enigmatic figure, HR HALDEMAN. The fact that the letter patterns happen to work out — letters 1 and 3 are the same, and letters 4 and 9 are the same — is the stuff of legends.

There's a lot to admire about today's implementation. Like the ALAN TURING / HR HALDEMAN puzzle, Addison had to adhere to consistent letter substitutions. There are a ton of Es in the decrypted quote:

CODES / AREAP / UZZLE / AGAME / JUSTL / IKEAN / YOTHE / RGAME

So each E must map to the same letter of the encryption key — the fourth letter in the first encrypted word has to be the same as the third letter in the second encrypted word, etc.

Some letters are freebies, like the J of JUSTL, since it doesn't repeat within the quote, but so many repeating letters force a huge amount of inflexibility. Cool that Addison found a set of eight five-letter words that work.

It would have been way more impressive if the quote had been broken down into ten-letter entries, especially if some of them provided more snazz than CLUNK or PINGS. I don't know if that's possible, but now I'm curious ... down the rabbit hole goes Jeff …

I forget most Sunday puzzles five minutes after solving, but I enjoyed chewing on this one afterward.