Today
Archive
Guides
Leaderboard
Cryptle
#17
· Wed 16 Sep 2026
This one is from the archive. Play it for practice — past puzzles never
count toward a streak. Today’s cipher is here.
3 guesses to crack the cipher.
One cipher each day.
How to play »
The block on the page is an ordinary English sentence with a cipher laid
over it. Every letter is still in there. Your job is to read it.
We tell you which cipher it is
Today it’s Scytale, and the key is
4 columns .
The work is the decoding, not guessing what you’re looking at.
Type the decoded message
Capitals, spaces and punctuation are all ignored —
the third stone and
THETHIRDSTONE both count.
3 guesses, then the day is done
A wrong guess tells you whether your answer is even the right length,
and which part of your method to doubt.
Solve it and your streak grows
Miss a day, or run out of guesses, and it goes back to zero. That’s
the whole prize — there’s nothing to win but the run itself.
A new one lands at midnight
Past days stay playable in the
archive ,
but practice never counts toward a streak.
Never solved one before? The
guides
walk through every cipher we use, one at a time.
Got it
Scytale
4 columns
Need a nudge?
Write it into 4 columns, reading across. Then read down.
Learn the method:
how to solve scytale
The answer
HE BURIED IT AT LOW TIDE
How it works
Every letter of the answer is already in front of you — they are simply in the wrong order. Counting the letters is the first useful thing you can do. This one is Scytale. The key: 4 columns. Write it into 4 columns, reading across. Then read down. Rebuild the grid, read it back in the original order, and the first letters come out H E B. The answer was HE BURIED IT AT LOW TIDE.
Today’s cipher →
Ready for a real one?
These are the same techniques our monthly hunts are built on
One hunt a month, a real prize pool, and puzzles that take more than a
coffee break. Members get every monthly hunt included.
See membership