Printable Easy Cryptogram Puzzles (Free PDF)

If you are looking for printable cryptogram puzzles that are easy enough to finish in one sitting, this page has a free PDF with six of them. Each cryptogram is a short sentence of 50 to 57 letters written in a letter code, and each one starts with four letters already filled in. The solutions are at the back.

What is in the printable pack

Download the PDF and you get seven letter-size pages: a title page, three pages of two cryptograms each, a Solutions page and two pages of solutions, three to a page. Every puzzle was made by the same generator that LogikLand uses for its cryptogram books, at its easy level. That means:

• every letter is replaced by a different letter, and no letter stands for itself (A is never written A);
• four letters are given, and they are the four most frequent letters of the sentence;
• spaces and punctuation stay in place, so you can see the word lengths;
• under the sentence, a table of the 26 letters lets you note the codes you find.

The sentences are short observations about rivers, food, friends and travel. None is a quotation, so you will not recognise them from memory, but they are ordinary English that reads naturally once solved.

Four of the puzzles

Here are the first four, so that you can see what the pages look like before you print. The given letters are already written above their codes.

Solving puzzle 1 together

The first puzzle begins with the words THE RIVER WOUND ITS WAY. You do not need to know that: the clues are in the shape of the words. Here is a route that uses only what the page shows.

1. The one-letter word in the middle of the sentence has the code Z. A single letter in English is A or I. The letter I is already given elsewhere with a different code, so Z must stand for A.
2. The three-letter word with the code ANW appears twice, and its last two letters are the given H and E: ? H E. That is THE, so A stands for T.
3. The code LAJ starts with the given I and its middle letter is now T: I T ?. The word is ITS, so J stands for S.
4. With S known, the code JLRXWE reads S I ? ? E R. The word is SILVER, which gives you L and V. The second word of the sentence, RIVER, shares the same V, and you can check it fits.

If you get stuck

Look at the table of 26 letters under the sentence. Given letters are already written in it. Put a pencil dot beside a code you think you have found and a question mark beside a guess. A guess you can erase is better than a guess you cannot. For more patterns, read how to solve a cryptogram or the cryptogram rules.

Printing and using the pages

The pages are US letter size. Print at 100 % ("actual size") with no scaling, because the lines under the letters are thin and a shrunk page can make the code letters too small to read. A pencil with an eraser is the best tool. Our suggestion, not a rule: print the solution pages on the back of the puzzle pages only if your printer is double-sided, otherwise keep them separate so you are not tempted to peek.

Make your own with the free tool

The free cryptogram maker needs no account. You type a message of 10 to 300 characters, choose a letter code or a number code from 1 to 26, give 0 to 5 letters as hints, and download a PDF with the puzzle on page 1 and the solution on page 2. It makes one cryptogram at a time, and each click on the new code button gives a different code for the same message, so you can print several versions. The pages carry a small LogikLand footer and are for personal use.

The pack on this page uses four hints, which is one fewer than the largest number the tool allows. Try the same message with two hints, and then with none, to feel how much the given letters matter.

From one page to a whole book

The tool makes single pages. A whole book is made in the Cryptogram assistant, which you reach after you create a free account. There you choose the level, the themes of the sentences and how many puzzles you want, and the book is built with a how-to-play guide, one puzzle per page and a solutions section. See how to make a cryptogram from your own quote if you prefer to write the sentences yourself, or cryptograms for seniors for the large-print version. Create a free account to try it.

Questions