Codebusters Links

A Note

Codebusters is about pattern recognition and repetition. Its important to be good at seeing patterns in words. The best way to get better at this is to practice practice practice, the cryptograms in the ABQ Journal are a good start, as they are easy to solve and easy to find, then you should move on to the ones in the local paper. When you are ready for some harder ones you can practice on the links above.

Another quick way to sharpen your word skill is to play wordle or redactle. Since there is only one wordle per day, I created a knock off version so I could practice, "Wordle" (when I made this is was more focused on functionality than mobile support and appearance so it might look odd).

There are also some ciphers that use morse code (Morbit, Pollux), while there is usually a morse code key, learning morse code can save a lot of time. I tried several different ways to learn morse and found that the google morse trainer was the easiest for me.

There will also be a xenocrypt which is usually in Spanish, in which case it might help to have a team member with some fluency in Spanish, but we never had one and we did just fine. Don't forget to divide and concur on the test. With the exception of the timed question, you should all be working on separate problems. This will ensure that you cover as many questions as you can in the short amount of time that you are given


Useful Stats

Letters in the english language in order of frequency
e t a o i n s r h l d c u m f p g w y b v k x j q z

The most common first letter in a word in order of frequency
T, O, A, W, B, C, D, S, F, M, R, H, I, Y, E, G, L, N, O, U, J, K

The most common second letter in a word in order of frequency
H, O, E, I, A, U, N, R, T

The most common third letter in a word in order of frequency
E, S, A, R, N, I

The most common last letter in a word in order of frequency
E, S, T, D, N, R, Y, F, L, O, G, H, A, K, M, P, U, W

More than half of all words end with
E ,T, D, S

Letters most likely to follow E in order of frequency
R,S,N,D

The most common digraphs (2 letter combos) in order of frequency
TH, HE, AN, IN, ER, ON, RE, ED, ND, HA, AT, EN, ES, OF, NT, EA, TI, TO, IO, LE, IS, OU, AR, AS, DE, RT, VE

The most common trigraphs (3 letter combos) in order of frequency
THE, AND, THA, ENT, ION, TIO, FOR, NDE, HAS, NCE, TIS, OFT, MEN

The most common double letters in order of frequency
SS, EE, TT, FF, LL, MM, OO

The most common two-letter words in order of frequency
of, to, in, it, is, be, as, at, so, we, he, by, or, on, do, if, me, my, up, an, go, no, us, am

The most common three-letter words in order of frequency
the, and, for, are, but, not, you, all, any, can, had, her, was, one, our, out, day, get, has, him, his, how, man, new, now, old, see, two, way, who, boy, did, its, let, put, say, she, too, use

The most common four-letter words in order of frequency
That, with, have, this, will, your, from, they, know, want, been, good, much, some, time, very, when, come, here, just, like, long, make, many, more, only, over, such, take, than, them, well, were

The most commonly used words in the English language in order of frequency
The, of, and, to, in, a, is, that, be, it, by, are, for, was, as, he, with, on, his, at, which, but, from, has, this, will, one, have, not, were, or, all, their, an, I, there, been, many, more, so, when, had, may, today, who, would, time, we, about, after, dollars, if, my, other, some, them, being, its, no, only, over, very, you, into, most, than, they, day, even, made, out, first, great, must, these, can, days, every, found, general, her, here, last, new, now, people, public, said, since, still, such, through, under, up, war, well, where, while, years, before, between, country, debts, good, him, interest, large, like, make, our, take, upon, what