Solved cryptogram
Chlorine is a poisonous green gas, and yet bonded to sodium it becomes ordinary table salt.
Chemistry Facts, sourced to Royal Society of Chemistry.
What it means
This is the clearest lesson in chemistry that a compound is not its ingredients. Chlorine gas was used as a weapon in the First World War and sodium metal burns on contact with water, but the two of them together make a stable crystal you sprinkle on food. The reason is that the pair swap an electron and stop being reactive at all.
The claim comes from Royal Society of Chemistry, 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This is not the kind of claim that goes out of date, which is why it was set as a puzzle rather than a fact with a shelf life.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 18 different ones, graded medium.
- SourceRoyal Society of Chemistry
- CollectionChemistry Facts
- Difficultymedium
- Length74 letters, 18 of them different
Nearby in the collection
The facts either side of this one.
- Royal Society of Chemistrymedium, 68 letters
- Royal Society of Chemistrymedium, 71 letters
- Royal Society of Chemistryhard, 76 letters
- Royal Society of Chemistrymedium, 72 letters
About as hard as this one
Scored closest to it by the model behind our guide to solving cryptograms.
- Royal Society of Chemistrymedium, 73 letters
- Royal Society of Chemistrymedium, 77 letters
- Royal Society of Chemistrymedium, 74 letters
- Royal Society of Chemistrymedium, 77 letters