Practice English with cryptograms

Decoding cryptograms is a great way to sharpen your English. A cryptogram with a simple substitution code is fairly easy to decipher, but it forces you to think carefully about spelling and vocabulary. As your English improves, you can move on to harder codes, like ones that don't put spaces in between the words so you have to figure out yourself where one word ends and the next begins.

This simple code uses the English alphabet. Letters are swapped for letters:

Decode this sentence:  "B l f   x z m   g l g z o o b   w l   g s r h !"

Did you get it right? The answer is in the last discussion question.

Were you aware that you practiced English spelling, vocabulary, and colloquial expressions by decoding that saying?

When I was kid, a code that my sisters and I used a lot comes from the Sherlock Holmes mystery story, "The Adventure of the Dancing Men", published in 1903. The mystery begins when a character starts receiving messages written in a code made of stick figures. The code was so popular with readers that it's been used ever since. It looks like this:

Can you decipher the sentence above the code? (The answer is also in the last discussion question.)

There are lots of other kinds of word puzzles you can use to practice English: jumbled words or sentences, word search (finding words from a list in a grid of letters), Words with Friends, and on and on. No matter what your level of English is, you can find games to play. When practicing is fun, you'll want to do it all the time!