Solved cryptogram
The instructions for building a person are written with an alphabet of only four letters.
Biology Facts, sourced to National Human Genome Research Institute.
What it means
Adenine, cytosine, guanine and thymine pair off across the two strands of the double helix, and the order in which they appear is the message. Three letters at a time specify one amino acid, which gives sixty four possible triplets for twenty amino acids and a stop signal, so the code carries some redundancy. The same code is used by essentially every living thing on Earth.
The claim comes from National Human Genome Research Institute, and the page it comes from was read on 2026-08-27 to confirm it still says this.
This is not the kind of claim that goes out of date, which is why it was set as a puzzle rather than a fact with a shelf life.
Solve it yourself
This fact is a cryptogram here: 74 letters over 19 different ones, graded medium.
- SourceNational Human Genome Research Institute
- CollectionBiology Facts
- Difficultymedium
- Length74 letters, 19 of them different
Nearby in the collection
The facts either side of this one.
- NCBI Bookshelfeasy, 77 letters
- NIGMSmedium, 76 letters
- National Human Genome Research Institutehard, 67 letters
- National Human Genome Research Institutehard, 67 letters
About as hard as this one
Scored closest to it by the model behind our guide to solving cryptograms.
- MedlinePlusmedium, 68 letters
- NIDCDmedium, 68 letters
- NCBI Bookshelfmedium, 79 letters
- Royal Society of Chemistrymedium, 78 letters