CipherdayLines you half know
These are some of the best-known lines in English, which makes them good cryptograms: a few letters in, the line starts to sound familiar. The old forms help too. An apostrophe in AR'E marks a dropped letter, as in in't.
A first move for puzzle 1
Puzzle 1 is all short words. WD and IZ each appear twice, with DH and MDW between them. Two-letter words that repeat are usually TO, OF, IN, IS or BE, and here the pattern "__ __, __ ___ __ __" is the most famous line in Hamlet.
Questions people ask
Which plays are these lines from?
Hamlet, Romeo and Juliet, Richard III and Julius Caesar. Each puzzle names its play when you solve it.
Can I print Shakespeare cryptograms for a class?
Yes. Print all five on one sheet, with the answers on a separate page.
Do apostrophes stay in the puzzle?
Yes. Punctuation is shown as it is, which helps: a letter after an apostrophe is often S or T.
Is there more Shakespeare in the daily puzzle?
Sometimes. The daily puzzle draws on many authors, Shakespeare among them.