Puzzles

Wordles is not a fancy site. There are no flashy graphics; in fact, there are no graphics whatsoever, but then none are needed. If you only have a couple minutes and need a quick, free cryptography fix, this site will give it to you.

Click on "Get a Cryptogram" to get a random short quotation that's been encrypted using basic letter substitution. Answers are not included; if you can't solve it on your own, you're out of luck. "Get a SwiftoCrypt" gets you an encrypted Tom Swiftie. And that's about it, as far as puzzles go. These challenges are very short, which makes them more difficult and also more addictive.

Wordles also has a couple of handy tools to help you solve cryptograms and other word puzzles. "Word Search" lets you find English words containing any subset of letters you care to look for - particularly useful when stuck on a crossword answer that's only half filled in. "Words in Words" gives you all the words contained within a search phrase. Okay, so that's not so useful, but it's kinda neat. I had no idea that "Puzzle Monster" contained the words "eelpout," "premune" and "zonule" - much less that such words existed!

UPDATE: Although the Wordles website was down for over a year, as of November 2007 it is back up - check it out! Also, if you like cryptography challenges, please try the following:

Daily Cryptoscope
Cryptoquotes
Crypto Word Search