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Well, ladies, gentlemen, and kiddies.  Before we begin our first 'actual' lesson, I want to kind of introduce you to the format I'm going to use.  Here in a second, I will be giving an example cryptogram, but first I want to discuss it with you.  If you want to write it down and solve the practice puzzles as you read through the text, you're more than welcome to.  However, once we uncover possible solutions, I will add them above the original problem as we go along.  So, if our puzzle was

F RFPA FMA MDACQ (I like ice cream)

our ongoing solving will look like this, keeping in mind that in our actual lessons, I won't give the answer right next to the problem:

*text:

i.e. what we're gonna look at, what other parts of the puzzle might go along with this (where applicable)...  Well, let me elaborate for you.  Let's say we're looking at a relatively large sentence/phrase. Now, especially with the bigger puzzles, there are probably going to be parts of the cryptogram that might help solve another part.  For instance, let's say we spy a pattern that looks familiar, but there could be more than one possibility (for example, the word "that" where there could be other words fitting that pattern, such as "else". Notice the two end letters¿).  When this happens, we'll look at another part of the puzzle, and see if there isn't anything that can clear a few things. More on that later.

*equivilants:

When we have a letter we want to try, even if we're not certain it's right, I'll recap with
F=I

Then, I'll take the puzzle and translate:

I     I       I
F   R F P A   F M A   M D A Z Q

Then, I'll go along with the lesson using the same format.

Another thing to keep in mind, is that in my tutuorial, and also if you decide to purchase puzzle books from the local store, any given letter will not stand for itself. For instance, if you have a letter "a" standing by itself, (as in a ofrd; the first two words in a variation of the I like ice cream example), then it will always be an "i", since a letter will not stand for itself and because there are only two letters that make up a word in themselves ("a" and "i").

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