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Cryptle #30 · Tue 29 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 Cryptle

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 Playfair, and the key is keyword QUARRY. 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.

Playfair

keyword QUARRY

VG DX FK GK OF YQ

Q U A R Y
B C D E F
G H I K L
M N O P S
T V W X Z
Need a nudge?

Letters travel in pairs across a 5×5 square. Same row, step right; same column, step down; otherwise swap corners. I and J share a cell.

Learn the method: how to solve playfair

The answer

THE WELL IS DRY

How it works

This is the kind of cipher that turns up inside real treasure hunts, where the encoding is a layer rather than the whole puzzle. This one is Playfair. The key: keyword QUARRY. Letters travel in pairs across a 5×5 square. Same row, step right; same column, step down; otherwise swap corners. I and J share a cell. Apply the key to the first three letters and they resolve to T H E. The answer was THE WELL IS DRY.

Today’s cipher →

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These are the same techniques our monthly hunts are built on

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