Cryptogram from Frankenstein; or, the modern prometheus, chapter 20
The first of eleven cryptograms from chapter 20 of Frankenstein; or, the modern prometheus. Every letter below stands for a different one, the same way all the way through, and no letter ever stands for itself.
DncOvomdx,rpvfhpuygzyzrox,xpoyrsoqxxdokqjvkzjwpyzazvsnkxoymmzyzvnxopyk?
- Written byMary Wollstonecraft Shelley
- Taken fromFrankenstein; or, the modern prometheus
- Difficultyhard
- Length68 letters, 21 unique
Where it comes from
Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley wrote it in chapter 20 of Frankenstein; or, the modern prometheus. Here is the prose either side of it, with the sentence you are solving left out.
I sat one evening in my laboratory; the sun had set, and the moon was just rising from the sea; I had not sufficient light for my employment, and I remained idle, in a pause of consideration of whether I should leave my labour for the night or hasten its conclusion by an unremitting attention to it. As I sat, a train of reflection occurred to me which led me to consider the effects of what I was now doing. Three years before, I was engaged in the same manner and had created a fiend whose unparalleled barbarity had desolated my heart and filled it for ever with the bitterest remorse. I was now about to form another being of whose dispositions I was alike ignorant; she might become ten thousand times more malignant than her mate and delight, for its own sake, in murder and wretchedness. He had sworn to quit the neighbourhood of man and hide himself in deserts, but she had not; and she, who in all probability was to become a thinking and reasoning animal, might refuse to comply with a compact made before her creation. They might even hate each other; the creature who already lived loathed his own deformity, and might he not conceive a greater abhorrence for it when it came before his eyes in the female form? She also might turn with disgust from him to the superior beauty of man; she might quit him, and he be again alone, exasperated by the fresh provocation of being deserted by one of his own species.
The sentence you are solving goes here.
I trembled and my heart failed within me, when, on looking up, I saw by the light of the moon the dæmon at the casement. A ghastly grin wrinkled his lips as he gazed on me, where I sat fulfilling the task which he had allotted to me. Yes, he had followed me in my travels; he had loitered in forests, hid himself in caves, or taken refuge in wide and desert heaths; and he now came to mark my progress and claim the fulfilment of my promise.
Text from the Project Gutenberg edition, which is in the public domain in the United States.
Want the answer?
Have a proper go at it first. The solution is on a page of its own, so you won’t run into it by accident.
Nearby in the book
The puzzles either side of this one in the novel.
- Chapter 19easy, 80 letters
- Chapter 19medium, 63 letters
- Chapter 20medium, 72 letters
- Chapter 20medium, 79 letters
About as hard as this one
Scored closest to it by the model behind our guide to solving cryptograms.
- Chapter 11hard, 59 letters
- Chapter 2hard, 56 letters
- Chapter 10hard, 52 letters
- Chapter 6hard, 59 letters
Every Frankenstein; or, the modern prometheus cryptogram · About the collection · More by Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley