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CRYPTOSOLVE VERSION 1.5
Copyright 1996-1998 James A. Parsly


CRYPTOSOLVE is a WINDOWS based cryptogram solving utility. At its
most basic level it allows you to type in a cryptogram and handles
the chore of letter substitution for you. However, the real point
of the program is the underlying expert system that provides hints
and can even make a stab at automatic solution.

New features in this version:

Several hundred new rules.
Improvements to the user interface.
More control over filtering.

Check out my web site for the latest links and program updates:

http://www.public.usit.net/jparsly/

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SYSTEM REQUIREMENTS

This program requires Microsoft Windows

If you plan to use the Hints at all, I recommend at least a
486-66. A Pentium is even better.
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INSTALLATION:

If you downloaded CRYPTOSOLVE, it probably came in the form of
a .ZIP file, CSOLVE15.ZIP. Use PKUNZIP to Un-ZIP the files onto
a floppy disk. Get into WINDOWS and from the Program Manager
menu select FILE and then RUN.  In the Command Line box enter
A:\SETUP or B:\SETUP and then click OK. This should install
CRYPTOSOLVE and create a group containing the CRYPTOSOLVE icon.

FILE LIST:

A complete installation of CRYPTOSOLVE includes the following
files:

CSOLVE.EXE
CSOLVE.INI
VBRUN300.DLL    Required for Visual Basic. Goes in WINDOWS/SYSTEM
THREED.VBX      Required for Visual Basic. Goes in WINDOWS/SYSTEM
PATT.DAT        Pattern database
PATT2.DAT       Rule database
WORDLIST.*      Word counts for various word lengths
README.TXT      This file
REGISTER.TXT    Registration form

This is the complete version of CRYPTOSOLVE and is not crippled in
any way.

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REGISTRATION

It costs $10 US Dollars to register.  This gives you the right to
complain and make suggestions.  See REGISTER.TXT. My address is
also given at the end of this document.

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How CRYPTOSOLVE works (and why it sometimes doesn't)

CRYPTOSOLVE's hint system is based on patterns and rules.  It uses
the patterns and rules to identify individual words (or author names).
Each pattern or rule maps to a particular word, so CRYPTOSOLVE cannot
directly identify any word that doesn't already have a pattern or
rule in the database.  To fill in "unknown" words the letters must
be cross-referenced in "known" words.

This means that a cryptogram containing a large number of "unknown"
words will be difficult for CRYPTOSOLVE to solve.  Someone suggested
that I type in part of Jabberwocky (a nonsense poem: "TWAS BRILLIG
AND THE SLITHEY TOVES....") and of course the hint system was
pretty much a complete failure.

When you start a new puzzle and don't know any of the solution yet,
there are often many candidates for each word in the puzzle.
CRYPTOSOLVE ranks the candidates based on historical frequency of
occurrance. Suppose the puzzle contained the word "XABZZQ". Two
words that would fit, all other things being equal, are "JOHNNY" and
"REALLY".  CRYPTOSOLVE knows that REALLY is about 6 times as likely
to occur as JOHNNY and so the autosolver is more likely to come up
with X=R than it is to come up with X=J.  If the X=R is wrong and
X=J is right, then the autosolver will fail.

I have been training the expert system for about 6 years (1
cryptogram per day) and there are over 10000 rules in the system.
The cryptograms I have been using are quotations, so the rules
reflect word usage in ordinary speech and writing.

Cryptograms that are purposely designed to be difficult by use
of uncommon words are going to give the autosolver problems.

Given all that here is how you use the CRYPTOSOLVE hint system:

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SOLVING A PUZZLE USING THE HINTS SYSTEM

If you are given a starting letter, click the letter tile
corresponding to the puzzle letter and then click the solution letter.

Bring up the HINTS page by clicking the HINTS button.

Search for PATTERNS by clicking the PATTERNS button.  PATTERNS are
word or author names that can be recognized because they contain
patterns of repeated letters.  A common pattern would be WXYWZX
which usually is the word PEOPLE.  If any patterns are found a
list will appear. You can single click a candidate to see how it
looks in the puzzle. If a candidate looks good to you, either
double click the candidate or hit the accept button.

If you find acceptable patterns, then try the RULES button
to see if there are any exact matches in the RULES database.
RULES will not work if there are no known letters. Actually you
need to have enough known letters to match a rule in the rule
database, so you usually need more than one known letter.

A rule tells CRYPTOSOLVE how to infer unknown letters in a word
based on known letters. For example, if you have the puzzle word
"XYZX" and you know that Y=H and Z=A, then the rule "_HA_=THAT"
tells you that X=T. RULES will not work unless you know one or
more letters in the puzzle, and even if you do there still may be
no matches with the DATABASE.  If matches are found, a list will
appear showing candidates which you can try out and accept by
clicking and doubleclicking, respectively.

The next step is to try for a statistical solution using the
AUTOSOLVE method.  This works by examining multiple puzzle words.
For each puzzle word examined, all possible solution words from
the rule database are found.  Some candidates are eliminated by
looking at what would happen in cross-referenced words (for example
if the solution would create a cross-referenced word that didn't
have any vowels in it).  Remaining candidates are assigned weights
based on historical frequency of occurrance and on how closely the
rule that produced the candidate was met (Buzz word: fuzzy logic).
The candidate is then broken down into letters and statistics are
kept on the total weight counts for all possible puzzle letter/
solution letter pairs.  When all of the words have been factored in,
letters that get 80% or more of the total weight for a given
puzzle letter are incorporated into the solution.

AUTOSOLVE can then perform another iteration taking into account
any new letters in the solution. You keep running iterations until
no more progress is made.  Rather than proceed automatically
to a new iteration, CRYPTOSOLVE requires you to hit the GO button.
This gives you a chance to SET or EXCLUDE letters before proceeding.
The SET box allows you to enter a puzzle letter/solution letter
pair that you have figured out. The EXCLUDE box is used to inform
CRYPTOSOLVE that a puzzle letter/solution letter is not possible.
This is useful when the autosolver assigns a letter based on a
high probability that is nevertheless incorrect.  You must exclude
the puzzle letter/solution letter pairing to override the
probability and allow assignment of a different letter.

The PATTERNS-->RULES-->AUTOSOLVE method doesn't usually require
much input from you, except to click the buttons. I was curious to
see how well the program would do on its own, so I bought a puzzle
book and tried out 40 cryptograms.  Using just the 3 steps,
CRYPTOSOLVE was able to solve 25 out of the 40. I considered a
puzzle solved if I could tell what the solution was, even if one or
two letters weren't filled in. (This happens where there are 2 or
more candidates for a letter and none have enough weight to be
included in the solution; for example you can't decide if _E is
WE, ME, BE, etc. if there are no cross-referenced words to factor
into the decision.)  It actually did better on the first puzzles,
solving 23 out of 30, but the last 10 were more difficult puzzles
that didn't use common words.  On its usual diet of quotations
which are not purposely designed to be difficult, I am sure
CRYPTOSOLVE does at least as well as the 23/30 figure.

I was actually able to solve the remainder of the puzzles (except for
the 40th "CHALLENGER" puzzle which turned out to be mostly
unfamiliar words), just not automatically. How? See below.

So what do you do if the AUTOSOLVE method doesn't work? This is where
you come in.  The POSSIBILITIES method allows you to doubleclick a
puzzle word and look at candidates, sorted by probability.
Once again you are presented with a list and you can single click
a candidate to see how it looks in the puzzle. If you like a
candidate, double click it (or hit the ACCEPT button).  You can
then go back to RULES or AUTOSOLVE and see what you get.
If you click the multilevel check box, you can click two or more
words and get pairs, triplets, etc. of words that will work
simultaneously in the puzzle.  At each level of the multilevel
search, up to 500 candidate words are considered and up to
2500 multiple word sets are saved.  You should pick words
you click carefully or the number of candidates will overwhelm
this method.  Don't start with 4, 5 or 6 letter words that
have no repeated letters.  Start with longer words or words
that have repeated letters.  Also if one of the words picked
is not already in the dictionary, this method will fail.

FILTERING

FILTERING is used to reduce the number of candidates for puzzle words
in the AUTOSOLVE and POSSIBILITIES methods.  Most of the filtering
is automatic, although there is a VOWEL/CONSONANT filter that you
can control in the possibilities method. Here are some of the
filtering techniques:

Candidate words must match known letters.  This would seem pretty
obvious, but I have seen a program (CRYPTO95) that doesn't take
known letters into account in its possibilities method.

Candidate words must not re-use letters already used in other words. Ditto.

Puzzle letters must not map to themselves. This sometimes happens, although
I consider it to be "bad form".  You can turn off this assumption using
the filters menu.

Any letter occurring elsewhere in the puzzle as a 1 letter word
(except in the AUTHOR box) will be assumed to map to an A or an I.  This
will sometimes backfire when a proper name (with middle initial) occurs
in the body of the puzzle.  Once again, you can turn this off from the
filters menu.

Certain pairs of letters don't occur next to each other.  Additional
pairs of letters don't ever occur at the beginning or words, and
some pairs never occur at the end of words.  If letters from a candidate
word occur in other puzzle words, see if these letters would create
an invalid letter pair. If so, the candidate is eliminated.

The number of two and three letter words is a reasonably small set.
If letters from a candidate word occur in 2 or 3 letter words elsewhere
in the puzzle, there must be a 2 or 3 letter word that can be formed
using the letters from the candidate word.



The other way that you interact with the program is by entering
new rules and patterns.  As you work puzzles you will come across
new words and author names that contain patterns that will be
recognizable in future puzzles. I usually want at least two
sets of repeated letters before I consider a pattern to be
unique enough to be included in the PATTERN database.  This is
entirely up to you. Similarly, as you look at partial solutions
you will see opportunities for new inference rules.  The hint
pages all have a ADD NEW RULES button that pops up a form
for entering RULES and PATTERNS.  This is your chance to make
the program smarter, to be the expert behind the expert system,
so USE IT!

Patterns are just words and author names. If you think that the name
RONALD REAGAN has enough pattern to be identified in the future, RONALD REAGAN
is what you enter. You can look at the pattern database. It is stored
as a standard text file called PATT.DAT.

Rules are a bit more complicated. There are two distinct formats. The
first type of rule is used when the known letters in a word allow you
to infer the unknown letters. The left-hand side of the rule shows
the letters that must be known and uses the underscore character "_"
in positions that are unknown.  The rule then has an equal sign "="
and a right-hand side which must be just like the left-hand side, except
that the "_" characters are replaced by the correct letters.  Examples
of this type of rule:

_HA_=THAT
CO__ITT__=COMMITTEE
V_C__M=VACUUM

The second format of rule is used when there is only one unknown
letter left in a word, but there are multiple letters that would fit.
The left-hand side of this type of rule gives the known letters and
an "_" character in the position where the unknown letter will go.
The rule then has a "*" character followed by all of the possible
letters. Examples of this type of rule:

_F*IO
GOA_*DLT

You can look at the RULE database. It is stored in the text file
PATT2.DAT
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WORD COUNTS

When you have completely solved a puzzle, you should click the
WORD COUNT button so that the program will update the frequency of
occurrances.  This will automatically happen if you try to exit the
program after solving a puzzle.  You will see a list of all of the
words in the puzzle. If NEW WORD appears beside a word, this
word is being seen for the first time.  It is important that you
create RULES or PATTERNS for any new words. AUTOSOLVE gets candidate
words using the rule database, so if there is no rule for a word,
AUTOSOLVE will not consider it. The WORD COUNT feature was the last
major feature added to the original DOS program, so the word counts
are still a bit low.

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If Wishes were Fishes......

I wish that the program were faster. The original DOS version
which was written in compiled QuickBasic 4.0 is MUCH faster than
the VISUAL BASIC for Windows code. Didn't have a very good user
user interface, but it did the job.  Of course the machines keep
getting faster and I hear rumors about there being REAL compiled
code (as opposed to p-code) in a future version of Visual Basic,
so maybe time will solve all of my problems. Either that or I get
a C Compiler and start writing DLL's (or maybe that new POWERBASIC
compiler).

The Visual Basic 5 compiler is out now, but I don't have one yet.
I have great hopes for this, and I plan to get one soon.

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The ABOUT Screen

View the ABOUT screen and be amazed!  I am rather proud of it.

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Any Problems? Contact:
James A. Parsly
[e-mail]
423-966-4131
624 Summit Lake Court
Knoxville TN 37922