Oscar Wilde
270 cryptograms in the catalog, every one taken from Oscar Wilde’s own writing rather than from a quotation list.
Mostly The Picture of Dorian Gray, with a scattering from the plays. Wilde built epigrams deliberately and put them in his characters' mouths, giving us quotations that were designed to be repeated before anyone repeated them.
Where they come from
- The Picture of Dorian Gray250
- Lady Windermere's Fan2
- The Importance of Being Earnest2
- A Woman of No Importance1
- An Ideal Husband1
- De Profundis1
- The Happy Prince and Other Stories1
258 of these name the book they came from. The remaining 12 are remarks, letters and speeches, which carry no work.
How hard they are
Graded by the model in our guide to solving cryptograms: 64 easy, 118 medium and 88 hard. Most of Oscar Wilde’s puzzles land in the medium tier.
They average 68.9 letters over 18.8 distinct ones, with 4.3 letters appearing exactly once, which are the letters a frequency count cannot help you with. 14.4% carry an apostrophe, which hands over a letter outright.