Solved cryptogram
A wave carries energy across the sea, not water. The water itself just circles and stays put.
Earth Science Facts, sourced to NOAA.
What it means
Watch a gull sitting on the swell and it bobs up, forward, down and back, returning to roughly where it started. Each parcel of water traces a small circle as the wave passes through it. What travels is the disturbance, which is why a storm thousands of kilometers away can send a swell to a beach without sending any of its water. Only when a wave breaks does water actually move along with it.
The claim comes from NOAA, 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This is not the kind of claim that goes out of date, which is why it was set as a puzzle rather than a fact with a shelf life.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 20 different ones, graded medium.
- SourceNOAA
- CollectionEarth Science Facts
- Difficultymedium
- Length74 letters, 20 of them different
Nearby in the collection
The facts either side of this one.
About as hard as this one
Scored closest to it by the model behind our guide to solving cryptograms.
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- U.S. Geological Surveyhard, 78 letters
- U.S. National Park Servicehard, 72 letters