Answer To The Sunday August 19 Cryptogram Puzzle

I’m glad you made it!  My husband (my Ace puzzle tester) requested one with no unusual words from a fantasy realm such as Middle Earth.   What realm could be more grounded in this world than Secret World Legends?

The puzzle:

RNP KSZH GDHOOHL WFDN S GHHTWFVJR SXSFLNFHL ESQWJWDR. GDYSFVH HTXJHTG NE S QYWTGNF EWGD QSF XH GHHF NF ZSYWNPG USJJG SFL QYSDHG. OYNQHHL UWDK QSPDWNF, SG DYSOG SFL PFGHHF DKYHSDG SYH JPYAWFV SYNPFL HSQK QNYFHY.

The answer!   From the Quest Blood-Starved Beasts

YOU HAVE STEPPED INTO A SEEMINGLY ABANDONED FACILITY. STRANGE EMBLEMS OF A CRIMSON FIST CAN BE SEEN ON VARIOUS WALLS AND CRATES. PROCEED WITH CAUTION, AS TRAPS AND UNSEEN THREATS ARE LURKING AROUND EACH CORNER.

A Blaugust Sunday Cryptogram

From deep within a game I play (not so deep in this case), here’s a Cryptogram for you to try.  It’s the entire quest text.  I think it captures the game world’s atmosphere nicely.

To get started, write out the alphabet on a piece of paper and look for recurring letters in the sentences below.  Once you get a few recurring letters, it’s all easy! Make educated guesses as to what the words might be as you go along. Then ponder what makes sense in a sentence for the rest of the words.

Answer will be up Friday August 24.

The Cryptogram Puzzle

RNP KSZH GDHOOHL WFDN S GHHTWFVJR SXSFLNFHL ESQWJWDR. GDYSFVH HTXJHTG NE S QYWTGNF EWGD QSF XH GHHF NF ZSYWNPG USJJG SFL QYSDHG. OYNQHHL UWDK QSPDWNF, SG DYSOG SFL PFGHHF DKYHSDG SYH JPYAWFV SYNPFL HSQK QNYFHY.

Welcome To Blaugust, Time to Have Some Fun!

I’m going to make my 31 posts this month, I’m going to do it!   It’s all Fun and Games, remember, so here are some ways for you to keep the Fun part rolling.

In case you’re not artistic like I certainly am not, you can add some things to your blog that aren’t just screenshots.   Bonus! When you post a puzzle, then the answer on another day, you’ve got two posts! 
 Note, these are just examples below, I’m not planning to add the answers to anything 🙂

Word Search

Make Word Searches from the games you play.

http://tools.atozteacherstuff.com/word-search-maker/wordsearch.php

Tie them into your post topic or they can surely stand alone.   Like this old one I did:

Crosswords

Create A Crossword on any blog topic, or with terms from a favorite game.   Here I haven’t a game related example, but both of these Crossword Makers work really well for taking your clues (clue writing is the tough part!) and words and making a fun puzzle.   Perhaps I’ll make a game one myself for Blaugust.

https://www.armoredpenguin.com/crossword/

http://puzzlemaker.discoveryeducation.com/CrissCrossSetupForm.asp

Cryptograms

My husband loves these, but I do caution that occasionally the Cryptogram maker doesn’t quite get things right.   Proof that it is right before posting.   I used in-game quest texts for my Cryptograms.

To get started, write out the alphabet on a piece of paper and look for recurring letters in the quest text below, then make educated guesses as to what the words might be.  The words will soon form intriguing sentences.

UZBKRNRE HK UBX VTR XDBKRE UBX KBDJHCQ BSTYK, B LBC IBDDRW SRBYLTCK XRRLX KT ZBNR HK HC ZHX ATXXRXXHTC. ZR XKHDDRW KZR XTCQ BCW LTNRW KZR LGXKREHTYX HKRL KT B XBMRE ADBIR, SYK ZR IBC’K YXR HK GRK. ZR IBDDRW HK B JRG, SYK ZR ZBX GRK KT DTIBKR KZR DTIJ, BCW ZR IYEXRW KZR HDDYLHCBKH BCW KZRHE DBSGEHCKZX.
 

Rebus

These are the fun little pictograms made from sentences everyone loves.  There are two sites.  I like the big pictures from Festisite, but the My Rebus one has a bit more challenge to it, and even has a challenge mode beyond the basic one.

https://www.festisite.com/rebus/

http://www.myrebus.com/

Here’s a sample from Festisite.  The sentence was grabbed from an old blog post of mine. Short sentences are good!  Make sure you uncheck “Use emoji characters instead of images” to get a proper puzzle.

Reasonably Clever Mini-mizer

How I love this fun little tool.  There are lots of options for creating a mini-you.

http://www.reasonablyclever.com/mm2/mini2.swf

Word Clouds

Tagxedo   http://www.tagxedo.com

You can put in your url to get a cloud, or text from a particular post to add illustration.

Wordle (Paste in some text)   http://www.wordle.net/

Add Text to Pictures

There are million ways to so so.   I just use roflbot.

http://wigflip.com/roflbot/

Make a Post It Note

You may have noticed I have a fondness for these.

http://wigflip.com/superstickies/

Comics

In case you’re a Laff Riot like someone we know, but you are a failure at even Stick Figures  these might give you a way to express your humor.   Toondoo is supposed to let you insert pictures into panels, such as your characters, but I haven’t gotten it to work.

http://www.toondoo.com/

https://www.storyboardthat.com/storyboard-creator

http://www.wittycomics.com/

https://www.makebeliefscomix.com/

I Write Like

https://iwl.me/

You can get a good post out of this one.   You type in text from your blog and it will let you know what famous writer “You Write Like”.

Typealyzer

http://www.typealyzer.com/

Put in your Blog’s url and voila!  All is revealed about you from your scintillating writing.   According to them, this is me:

I will say I ran my kitchen sink blog through and got the same.  With my book blog, I’m The Mechanic!  Eeek.   

Make your screenshots into interactive jigsaw puzzles

https://www.jigsawplanet.com/?rc=createpuzzle

A new favorite toy (cough, cough tool) is Jigsaw Planet.   You can make puzzles of your screenshots and drag the pieces around to solve the puzzle on a little timer.    Too much fun.  You’re supposed to be able to put your puzzle on your page and someone could play it there, but just once.   I’ll save trying that out for later in Blaugust.    Here’s my LOTRO Blockhead Ath puzzle.   You can change how many pieces and whether to allow rotation of pieces.

Cryptogram Answer From Lord of The Rings Online

From an early quest in the game, we present the text of:

Find Malin

Your search for Addie’s missing sons found the remains of Amlach Wheatley clutching his brother’s journal.  The last cryptic entries seem to reveal that Amlach heard fell voices coming from the southern reaches of the Barrow-downs.

EHTL ZISLYJ GHL SKKBI’Z DBZZBOF ZHOZ GHTOK XJI LIDSBOZ HG SDASYJ UJISXAIE YATXYJBOF JBZ MLHXJIL’Z WHTLOSA. XJI ASZX YLEVXBY IOXLBIZ ZIID XH LIPISA XJSX SDASYJ JISLK GIAA PHBYIZ YHDBOF GLHD XJI ZHTXJILO LISYJIZ HG XJI MSLLHU-KHUOZ.

Working on these Cryptograms has me reading the quest text in every game I play now.   I’m finding that I don’t appreciate the straightforward quests that say “go here, do this, come back.”   There are a million of em’ out there, in every game.  When I’ve been thinking of games that tell good stories and have good text writing, it appears I have been linking the stories they tell together in my mind to get an impression of tales well told rather than actually finding any game where each quest text is a sort of mini-gem of writing.

Crypto-Questing 2

Welcome to another fine Cryptogram.  Answer up on December 10.  Best of luck.

To get started, write out the alphabet on a piece of paper and look for recurring letters in the quest text below, then make educated guesses as to what the words might be.  The words will soon form intriguing sentences.

EHTL ZISLYJ GHL SKKBI’Z DBZZBOF ZHOZ GHTOK XJI LIDSBOZ HG SDASYJ UJISXAIE YATXYJBOF JBZ MLHXJIL’Z WHTLOSA. XJI ASZX YLEVXBY IOXLBIZ ZIID XH LIPISA XJSX SDASYJ JISLK GIAA PHBYIZ YHDBOF GLHD XJI ZHTXJILO LISYJIZ HG XJI MSLLHU-KHUOZ.

 

Cryptogram Answer From The Secret World

Last Week’s Cryptogram is from The Secret World.   The Quest is from Dawning of An Endless Night, Tier 7  (I’m not so far along 🙂

Quest Text:

Whatever it was Joe Slater was talking about, a man called Beaumont seems to have it in his possession.  He stilled the song and moved the mysterious item to a safer place, but he can’t use it yet.  He called it a key, but he has yet to locate the lock, and he cursed the Illuminati and their labyrinths.

UZBKRNRE HK UBX VTR XDBKRE UBX KBDJHCQ BSTYK, B LBC IBDDRW SRBYLTCK XRRLX KT ZBNR HK HC ZHX ATXXRXXHTC. ZR XKHDDRW KZR XTCQ BCW LTNRW KZR LGXKREHTYX HKRL KT B XBMRE ADBIR, SYK ZR IBC’K YXR HK GRK. ZR IBDDRW HK B JRG, SYK ZR ZBX GRK KT DTIBKR KZR DTIJ, BCW ZR IYEXRW KZR HDDYLHCBKH BCW KZRHE DBSGEHCKZX.

It’s all clear, right?  I have three more ready and thought I’d put them up every other week since they’re so long.

Crypto-Questing

Inventory Full had a really great post on quests in EQ2 and GW2  A Quest By Any Other Name.  This got me thinking that I really love questing, and that some games have really excellent quest writing and some are just sort of put out by the Quest-A-Matic Machine.

If I were a serious, analytical person (which I ought to be, but dang, it just isn’t me) I could write a nice post about, at the very least—my favorite quests or something. But no. I’m a buffoon from Buffoonville.

Instead, as I was working on a post on my other blog, making the first line of a book into a Cryptogram, something I used to do regularly, I thought BOINK!  I can make Cryptograms from quest text in games I play.

Not only do you, the unsuspecting reader, get to try to solve the Cryptogram, but you get to try to guess what game the quest is from.  OMG.  Laff riot!

I’m a bit stressed, and this is the sort of thing that happens when I’m under duress.  Not pretty.  I’m only drinking ice water, fyi.

Let’s do this!

To get started, write out the alphabet on a piece of paper and look for recurring letters in the quest text below, then make educated guesses as to what the words might be.  The words will soon form intriguing sentences.

The Answer will be posted Tuesday November 22.

UZBKRNRE HK UBX VTR XDBKRE UBX KBDJHCQ BSTYK, B LBC IBDDRW SRBYLTCK XRRLX KT ZBNR HK HC ZHX ATXXRXXHTC. ZR XKHDDRW KZR XTCQ BCW LTNRW KZR LGXKREHTYX HKRL KT B XBMRE ADBIR, SYK ZR IBC’K YXR HK GRK. ZR IBDDRW HK B JRG, SYK ZR ZBX GRK KT DTIBKR KZR DTIJ, BCW ZR IYEXRW KZR HDDYLHCBKH BCW KZRHE DBSGEHCKZX.