How to play Unquote

The rules

• Every letter in the quotation has been swapped for a different letter, the same way all the way through. If coded G means E once, it means E everywhere.
• No letter ever stands for itself.
• Spaces, apostrophes and punctuation are left as they are, which gives you word lengths and shapes to work with.
• Before you press Start you are told whether the line is from a film, a TV show or a book, the year, and how many words and letters it has.
• One letter is filled in for free when you start.

Tap a coded letter, then tap the letter you think it really is. It fills in everywhere that coded letter appears. When every letter is filled in, press Check. Check only tells you whether the whole thing is right; it never says which letters are wrong. The clock runs on our server from the moment you press Start, so refreshing the page does not stop it.

How scoring works

You start on 1,000 points and lose:

• 100 for each hint (up to five).
• 25 for each wrong Check (only the first ten wrong checks count).
• 1 point for every two seconds on the clock.

A solve always scores at least 100. Giving up scores 0 and shows you the answer. With no hints and no wrong checks, a five-minute solve scores 850.

A hint fills in the most frequent letter you do not yet have right. If one of your guesses is wrong, a hint can correct it, which makes hints a good way out of a solve that has gone wrong somewhere.

Tips and strategy

Start with the tiny words

A one-letter word is almost always A or I. Two-letter words come from a short list: OF, TO, IN, IT, IS, BE, AS, AT, SO, WE, HE, BY, OR, ON, DO, IF, ME, MY, UP, AN, GO, NO, US. The most common three-letter words are THE and AND, then FOR, YOU, NOT, ARE, BUT and WAS. A three-letter word that appears twice is very likely THE.

Apostrophes give the game away

After an apostrophe you almost always find S, T, D, M, RE, VE or LL. A word ending apostrophe-T is usually DON'T, CAN'T, WON'T, ISN'T or DIDN'T. Film and TV lines are full of contractions, so look here early.

Use letter frequency

In English text the most common letters run roughly E, T, A, O, I, N, S, H, R. The coded letter that appears most often is a strong candidate for E or T. A coded letter that ends lots of words is often E, S, D or T, and one that starts lots of words is often T, A, S or W.

Look at doubles and patterns

A doubled coded letter in the middle of a word is usually LL, EE, SS, OO, TT or FF. Repeated patterns help too: a word coded XYZZY has the same letter in the third and fourth places, which narrows it a great deal. Remember that no letter stands for itself, so you can rule out the coded letter as its own answer.

Check sparingly

Each wrong Check costs 25, a quarter of a hint. Fill in everything, read the quotation through once, and only check when it makes sense as a sentence.

A worked example

This is a made-up line, not a real puzzle:

Z'XX GCR RTH NHRRXH AQ, JQI EAC WJQ RHXX PH JXX JFACR ZR.

1. Z'XX starts with a one-letter stem before an apostrophe and ends in a double letter. That pattern is I'LL, so Z is I and X is L.
2. ZR is now I-something. With R also starting RTH, the two-letter word IT and the three-letter word THE fit, so R is T, T is H and H is E.
3. RHXX is now TELL and JXX is A-L-L, so J is A. JQI is AND, so Q is N and I is D.
4. NHRRXH reads as ?ETTLE, which is KETTLE. AQ is ON, so A is O, and the rest (PUT, YOU, CAN, ME, ABOUT) falls out quickly.

The answer: I'll put the kettle on, and you can tell me all about it.

Every finished quotation, with who said it and where, is in the Unquote answers archive. For the other daily games, see the dailies page.

Frequently asked questions

What is a cryptoquote?

A cryptoquote is a quotation written in a simple substitution code: every letter has been swapped for a different letter, the same way throughout. Spotting short words, apostrophes and repeated letters lets you work the code out.

Where do the Unquote quotations come from?

They are short, well-known lines from films, TV series and books. Each is checked word for word against a reliable source and credited with the character, work and year when you solve it.

How is Unquote scored?

You start on 1,000 points. Each hint costs 100 (up to five), each wrong check costs 25, and every two seconds on the clock costs 1. A solve always scores at least 100; giving up scores 0.

Does Check tell me which letters are wrong?

No. Check only says whether the whole quotation is right. A hint, though, fills in the most common letter you have not got right yet, which can fix a wrong guess.

Is Unquote free?

Yes. Unquote is free to play in any web browser, on a phone or a computer. There is nothing to install and no account to make.

What time does the new Unquote quotation come out?

At midnight UK time (GMT in winter, BST in summer). Everyone in the world gets the same quotation on the same day. If you already have the old puzzle open at midnight, you have 30 minutes to finish it and still have it count.

Can I play past Unquote puzzles?

Yes. Tap the calendar (Past puzzles) button in the game to replay any of the last seven days. Archive plays are scored with the same rules but are just for fun: they are not ranked and do not count towards your streak.

Where can I see yesterday's Unquote answer?

The Unquote answers archive shows every finished puzzle with its solution. Today's answer never appears there until the day is over.