How do you "substitute randomly"? How did the word between suddenly "suggest itself" like magic? How long did it take you?

 

Either you're an abnormally good guesser' date=' or there's something I'm completly missing. Did you use a decoder at all?[/quote']No decoder. Many years of Cryptograms and Jumbles in the paper. Random substitution, like I knew about the three Ts, the I and the N in ATTRACTION because of BETWEEN THEM and FIFTEEN, so either the letter after or the letter before the TT is a vowel (not E or I), and TION is common so probably A or U. Either works well with TT but A worked better with the TION, which gave me ATT_A_TION. Easy leap from there.

 

I was reading some other threads in between posting with calbiterol, so I'd say I gave it 2 hours.

FD9, check out the link I gave you. Try a few. It gives you word spaces, but the basic concept is the same - if you have no idea whatsoever, look at how often words come up and try letters.

 

Yeah, I tried it out. I understand the overall concept. It just amazes me that you guys were able to do it without so much. First of all, Phi didn't have any spaces to determine word length, no hint, and no convenience of the program's ability to automatically substitute in letters. So yeah, that's pretty darn hard. I doubt I would of ever been able to do it.

At first, it's just plug and chug. But as soon as the "betweenthem" part made itself clear (thanks to Phi), you could see "iei" (coded) next to "teen" (uncoded). The only word in the english language (at least to the best of my knowledge) that goes letter1,letter2,letter1,t,e,e,n, is "fifteen." Make sense?