Newspaper Cryptogram Puzzles

Written and checked by hand. Last reviewed July 25, 2026.

Most people who solve cipher puzzles do not call them cryptograms. They call them "the one in the Post-Gazette" or "the Newsday one", because the puzzle arrived as part of a paper rather than as a thing with a name. That habit is why it can be surprisingly hard to work out what you have been solving for twenty years, or to find it again when it disappears.

How to identify the puzzle in your paper

Nearly every cipher puzzle in an American newspaper is one of three features. You can tell them apart in a few seconds:

Identifying a newspaper cipher puzzle from what is printed around it.
If you see…	It is	Distributed by
A clue line such as Today's clue: D equals C, and the answer is a pun	Cryptoquip	King Features Syndicate
No clue line, and the answer is a quotation with the speaker named	Cryptoquote	King Features Syndicate
A quotation from a well-known figure, credited to Luis Campos	Celebrity Cipher	A different syndicate from the two above

The copyright line printed in the smallest type near the puzzle is the definitive answer. King Features features carry a King Features line; Celebrity Cipher carries Luis Campos's name. A fuller comparison, including how the solving experience differs, is on our page on cryptogram versus cryptoquote versus cryptoquip.

Why the same puzzle appears in papers that share no owner

Newspapers rarely make their own puzzles. They license them from syndicates, which sell the same feature to hundreds or thousands of papers, non-exclusively by market. That is why a reader in Pennsylvania and a reader in Florida can be working the identical cipher on the same morning while their papers have nothing else in common, and why a paper's puzzle page can change completely when its business office renegotiates a package.

It also explains something that puzzles a lot of readers: your paper can carry the Cryptoquip and not the Cryptoquote even though both come from the same syndicate. They are separate features with separate prices.

When your paper drops the puzzle

This has been happening steadily for years. Print pages get thinner, syndicated features are a line item that can be cut without cancelling anything readers subscribed for, and the puzzle page is usually where the cutting starts after comics.

What tends to happen, in rough order of likelihood:

The feature is dropped and replaced with a different puzzle from a cheaper package. This is the common one.
The print edition keeps it and the website does not, or the reverse, because print and digital rights are licensed separately.
The whole puzzle page moves to a different day or a different section, and regular solvers assume it has gone when it has only been relocated.
The paper is bought and standardises on the new owner's feature package.

If you want it back, write to the paper and name the feature. Editors track reader response to puzzle pages closely, but "bring back the puzzle" is not actionable and "please restore the King Features Cryptoquote" is. It genuinely does work sometimes, and it works better in small papers than large ones.

What to do in the meantime

We are not going to pretend a website is the same as a newspaper on a kitchen table. It is not. But the parts that matter can be replaced, and a couple of them can be improved on.

A new puzzle every morning, one per day, on its own dated page. Not an endless generator — one puzzle, the way a paper does it. The archive keeps every previous day, which the recycling bin does not.
Type you can actually read. Newspaper cipher puzzles are set in small print on grey stock, and that is the single most common complaint we hear from long-time solvers. Ours is set large by default, with three text-size settings on every page.
Something to print. If solving on paper with a pencil is the point — and for a lot of people it is — the printable sheets give you the puzzle on letter-size paper with an answer key on the second page.
The source of every quotation. Newspaper cryptoquotes give you a name and nothing else. We print the year and the work as well, because a quotation with no source is a rumour.

What we will not do

We do not publish answers to the syndicated puzzles. Cryptoquote and Cryptoquip belong to King Features; Celebrity Cipher belongs to its own syndicate and its author. Sites that post those answers are republishing someone else's product, and we are not going to run our own puzzle business on the back of theirs.

If you are stuck on today's paper and want it broken rather than answered for you, our solver does the work in your own browser, on the text you type in. Nothing is uploaded, nothing is published, and no one else's answer key is involved.

If you keep solving on paper

You are in the majority, and nothing here assumes otherwise. Every puzzle page on this site is laid out to print cleanly on US Letter paper in black on white, with the answer on a separate page so it does not stare at you while you work.

Questions we get

My paper dropped the puzzle. Can I ask them to bring it back?

Yes, and it is worth doing. Puzzle pages are one of the most-read parts of a local paper and editors know it, but syndicated features cost money per feature per paper. A letter naming the specific puzzle carries far more weight than a general complaint about the puzzle page.

Can I read the puzzle in the paper's online edition?

Sometimes. Syndicated puzzle rights are sold separately for print and digital, so a paper can carry a feature in print and not online, or the reverse. If it is not on the website, that is usually a licensing gap rather than an oversight.

Do you publish the answers to my paper's cryptoquote?

No. Those puzzles and their answers belong to their syndicates. We publish our own puzzles and our own answers. If you want yesterday's syndicated answer, the paper that printed the puzzle is the place it is meant to come from.

Is the puzzle the same in every paper on the same day?

For a given syndicated feature, usually yes on a given release date, though papers can and do run features a day or several days behind. That is why two people comparing notes sometimes find they are on different puzzles.

What is the difference between the puzzle in the paper and the one here?

Mechanically, none. Editorially, ours names the source of every quotation, the type is much larger, and every past puzzle stays available instead of going out with the recycling.