A symbol cipher replaces each letter with a mark — a shape, a pattern of dots, a pair of flags. Nothing is scrambled and nothing is shifted, so once you have the key you can read the message straight off.
You can see at a glance that it isn't letters. That is the whole tell, and it is also why these are the friendliest ciphers to learn: the difficulty is looking the marks up, not reasoning about them.
Pigpen Each letter sits in a grid. The shape around it — and whether it holds a dot — is the letter.
All twenty-six letters and the mark that stands for each. This is the same table our puzzles are drawn from, so anything you decode here will match anything you decode on the daily cipher.
TREASURE MAP
Each letter has become a mark. Nothing is scrambled and nothing is shifted: find the key to the symbols and you can read it straight off. This one is Pigpen. Each letter sits in a grid. The shape around it — and whether it holds a dot — is the letter. Match the first three marks against the key and they resolve to T R E. The answer was TREASURE MAP.
Work with the alphabet table below open in front of you. Copy the marks out in order first and translate second — most mistakes on a symbol cipher are transcription mistakes, not decoding ones.
One a day, three guesses, and a streak that breaks the moment you miss one. Today’s is cipher #1.