What is GlyphGrid?
GlyphGrid is a manual cryptogram workbench designed for solving and creating substitution ciphers.
It's perfect for puzzle enthusiasts, ARG (Alternate Reality Game) players, cipher font users, and anyone who enjoys
the art of decoding secret messages.
Everything runs 100% locally in your browser — no data is uploaded, tracked, or stored on any server.
Your puzzles and solutions remain completely private.
How to Use GlyphGrid
🔹 Solving a Cryptogram
- Paste ciphertext into the "Ciphertext" section, or click "Surprise me" to generate a random puzzle.
- Click on any cipher slot to start typing your guess. Type A-Z to map that cipher symbol to a plaintext letter.
- Mappings update everywhere — all instances of that cipher symbol change at once.
- Use arrow keys (← / →) to move between slots quickly.
- Press Space, Backspace, or Delete to clear a mapping.
- Toggle highlights (bigrams, trigrams, doubles, word lengths) to spot patterns.
- Open "Analysis" to see frequency tables and n-grams, or "Hints" for English letter frequencies.
- When solved, you'll see a congratulations message!
🔹 Creating a Cryptogram
- Type your plaintext in the "Plaintext" section.
- Click "Encrypt my text" to generate a cryptogram from your message.
- The ciphertext appears below, ready to share or solve.
- Click "Answer" to reveal your original plaintext.
🔹 Saving & Loading Keys
- Save current key — Export your cipher-to-plaintext mappings as a
.txt file.
- Load key — Import a previously saved key to continue solving or verify a solution.
- Save cleartext — Export the solved plaintext once you've completed the puzzle.
Use Cases
🎯 For Puzzle Enthusiasts
- Solve daily cryptograms from newspapers or puzzle books
- Practice pattern recognition and letter frequency analysis
- Create custom puzzles for friends or puzzle clubs
- Learn cryptanalysis techniques in a hands-on way
🎮 For ARG Players
- Decode secret messages hidden in ARG clues
- Solve ciphers found in images, videos, or audio spectrograms
- Work collaboratively — share ciphertext and partial keys with teammates
- Handle unusual cipher fonts with mixed case and symbols (see Extended Character Set below)
🎨 For ARG & Puzzle Creators
- Create cryptograms to embed in your ARG or escape room
- Test homophonic substitution ciphers (see below)
- Use NQR Labs cipher fonts to create visually styled puzzles
- Export keys and ciphertext for documentation or answer sheets
Extended Character Set Mode
What is it?
By default, GlyphGrid works with standard cryptograms (A-Z uppercase only). When you enable
"Use Extended Character Set", GlyphGrid supports 94 different cipher symbols:
ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZabcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz
1234567890`~!@#$%^&*()-_=+[{]}\|;:'",<.>/?
Why use it?
-
NQR Labs Cipher Fonts: Some cipher fonts from NQR Labs
use uppercase letters for the regular alphabet, while lowercase letters, numbers, and symbols display cipher glyphs.
Extended mode lets you paste text rendered in these fonts and solve it properly.
-
Homophonic Substitution Ciphers: These ciphers map multiple cipher symbols to the same plaintext letter
(e.g.,
a → E, 1 → E, ! → E). This makes frequency
analysis harder and creates more secure ciphers. Extended mode fully supports many-to-one mappings.
-
Case-Sensitive Ciphers:
A and a are treated as different cipher symbols,
allowing for more complex puzzles.
How highlighting works in Extended Mode:
- Cyan outline: All slots with the same cipher symbol (e.g., all
a slots)
- Green outline: All slots with the same cleartext letter (e.g., all slots mapped to
E)
- When you click a slot, you see both highlights simultaneously, making it easy to track homophonic patterns.
Homophonic Substitution Ciphers
A homophonic substitution cipher is a type of cipher where one plaintext letter can be represented by
multiple different cipher symbols. This flattens the frequency distribution and makes traditional frequency analysis
much harder.
Example:
Plaintext: H E L L O
Ciphertext: 3 a 9 ! 2
Where both 'a' and '!' can represent 'E' and 'L'
GlyphGrid with Extended Mode lets you:
- Map multiple cipher symbols to the same plaintext letter
- Encrypt plaintext with randomized symbol selection (e.g.,
E → randomly picks from a, 1, !)
- Visually track which cipher symbols share the same cleartext mapping
- Analyze frequency across all unique symbols (not just A-Z)
Keyboard Shortcuts
- A-Z — Assign a plaintext letter to the focused cipher slot
- Space / Backspace / Delete — Clear the mapping for the focused slot
- ← / → — Navigate between cipher slots
Tips for Solving
- Start with 1-letter words: Almost always "A" or "I"
- Look for common patterns:
THE, AND, ING, TION
- Check double letters:
LL, EE, SS, OO
- Use frequency analysis: In English,
E is most common, followed by T, A, O
- Toggle highlights: Bigram and trigram highlights reveal repeated sequences
- Work iteratively: Make educated guesses, refine as patterns emerge
About NQR Labs
NQR Labs creates free tools and resources for puzzle designers, ARG creators, and cipher enthusiasts.
Check out arg-fonts for
downloadable cipher fonts designed for use in games, videos, and puzzles.
Privacy & Offline Use
GlyphGrid runs entirely in your browser using JavaScript and Web APIs. No data is sent to any server.
You can even use it offline once the page has loaded. All files you save (keys, cleartext) are downloaded
directly to your computer.
Happy solving!
If you use GlyphGrid in your ARG or puzzle project, we'd love to hear about it.
