Last updated on January 16th, 2026 at 08:46 pm
Cryptogram – Word Game Review
Cryptogram is a Word/Puzzle/Education game from Norman Basham, first launched in 12th July 2010.
It’s rated 4+ and currently has 1,201+ ratings on the App Store.
What Makes Cryptogram Stand Out
FEATURE PACKED!
• No ads
• Over 1,900 puzzles
• Handpicked quotes
• Optionally show incorrect answers
• Optionally include author in puzzle
• Unlimited hints
• Landscape & portrait
• Puzzles include punctuation
• Puzzles size to screen, no scrolling
• Light and dark mode
• Auto advance after guess
• Perfect game recognition
• Show letter usage counts
• Collect quotes with built in Quote Book
• Search and share quotes (Messages, email, Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, etc.)
A cryptogram is a quote that has been encrypted using letter substitution where each letter stands uniquely for another letter in the alphabet. Your job is to decode the message in the least amount of time by substituting each letter.
This Word game offers engaging gameplay and regular updates for mobile players.
Player Feedback
As a newer release, Cryptogram is building its player community. Early feedback suggests .
Recent Updates & Development
Latest Update: 13th January 2021
Recent improvements include:
Improved support for new devices.
Fixed intermittent crash.
Download & Availability
Cryptogram is available through the official App Store for iOS devices.
Requirements: Requires iPhone 5s / iPad Air / iPad Air (Cellular) / iPad Mini 2 (Retina) / iPad Mini 2 (Retina, Cellular) / iPhone 6 / iPhone 6 Plus / iPad Air 2 / iPad Air 2 (Cellular) / iPad Mini 3 or later.
Compatible with iPhone and iPad devices.
Player Experience Highlights
Community Insight:
This app is extremely well designed, fitting landscape mode on the iPad. Exceptionally readable, especially in dark mode. App design makes it a pleasure to use. Excellent selection of puzzles. Solving process/display makes solving cryptograms fun, relaxing, and enjoyable. Obviously a labor of love by the author. Very highly recommended! Thank you for all your efforts and time spent perfecting this exceptionally designed app.
Love this game (solved 583 of 1912 so far). In the past, if you got a perfect game, you would see confetti fly down the screen. But recently, we get confetti if we miss more than one letter and none after a perfect game. Not sure when this started, but it may have been when we upgraded our iPad and IOS to18.x. But this wont stop us from getting to the 1912th game.
Love, love this app! Almost donegreat brain food.
We are accustomed to the Cryptoquotes published in the newspaper. Im going to change to an e-newspaper and was hoping to find a replacement puzzle. This one is excellent. The quotes are interesting and meaningful. They are reasonably challenging. And are quicker to solve than doing it on paper. We hope the creator is developing a new set of cryptograms so we wont run out.
A great app overall. No data collected is a plus and worth the price for a good interface and thousands of phrases. But if you get all the way to the last 25-30-ish phrases, the app crashes at launch. Double-tap of letters happened a little too much (sometimes ruining a perfect game status for the phrase). Otherwise, the app was rock solid and stable.
We solve a couple every night. Love cryptograms.
We love this game ALMOST as much as we love the fact that you do not collect ANY information on your customers! One suggestion or request, please? Can the app show us the percentage of puzzles we have solved without any errors? Or just how many? Im terrible at math but love to try to beat our own records. Thanks for making such a fun game and for respecting our privacy. Will definitely be looking at your apps first every time from now on! Edit 2/26/2022: Not only is this game fun and addicting, its creators are great people, too. They respond almost immediately to an email and are helpful and friendly when they do! Im going to cry when we finish the final puzzle! We hope youll be able to come up with additional quotes before then.
Brilliant, Amazing, Outstanding, Buy it you will love we cant express how much we just love love this game. We will play this game for hours. We like the challenge of solving cryptograms. Our need to find that common denominator in each quote. Our determination to solve it. We are our own worst enemy as we try to beat our own score. We have been playing cryptograms for 30 years and of the many puzzle games we have tried very few come even close to this one. We did play several very cool puzzle games, sent to us our this Developer, but we always return to this game for a mind challenge. We are super fussy about games and we only play certain ones. We just love this Cryptogram, the developers Norman Basham and Black Labs Consulting. They have created an amazing game full of features. Tons of Quotes that will keep you busy for hours. If you get stuck you can just hit the hint button. Or you can solve it all at once. Cryptogram has over 1,900 Quotes, you can customize it with quotes no quotes. You can share it with friends or family. Include the Author or no Author. Hints or no hints. Show incorrect answers. Use dark mode or light mode. Another favorite is we can tag the Quotes we love. You can curtail the game to your liking. After you play all 1,900 quotes contact the Developer they will give you new quotes. One more feature, when you first open the game that clock will not start until you press the first key. This game is beautifully put together. Our favorite is, the elimination of each letter you use to guess your Quote. We have been playing all of Black Labs games for a long time check out all of the games they have, they are all great and fun to play. We highly recommend this game and any game under Black Lab Consulting, you will not be disappointed. If your like us and you like a challenge this game is for you! So have fun.
This puzzle is interesting, challenging and plain fun. Thank you.
This cryptogram version is very well done. So far the codes are fairly easy to solve. We expect harder levels to come. Hope so.
Plus: So many puzzles that theres always something to do. Minus: Just a we bit too easy.
Open and immediately crashes. The developer website is Facebook and Apple wont let us submit a problem report because apparently it thinks we didnt purchase the app. Ive used this for at least two years and it was a good program until it stopped working with no way to report a bug unless we want to join Facebook. Yeah, right.
Ive completed the 1,912 puzzles. Need an update with more.
We love this game! Its so relaxing after a very long day! Please keep it updated to todays technology so that when we have to upgrade we can have this on our new devices!! Thank you.
This has always been one of our favorites until this week. It will not open. We even deleted it and downloaded it again to no avail. It is permanently deleted now.
This is challenging and accurate… Our favorite game. The visual presentation is very confusing, Though.
We just paid $4.99 for this, it says its downloaded, the icon appears But when we touch on it it just closes back up. WHATS UP.
Paid $4.99 and it wont open on our updated iPad. Go to apps help page and it is a Facebook page.
The app wont work. The only way to reach developers is via Facebook. We dont use Facebook.
Fun to play. And you learn things too along the way.
Have had this app for years & appreciate the puzzles recently added. This remains our favorite cryptogram app because the UI is simple to use. We esp like the option to show a wrong entry in red. The only flaw: Occasionally an authors name requires an accented letter ( ) but the keyboard within the app doesnt allow that option. Therefore, completing the puzzle requires using a hint to auto fill with that letters accent, ruining an otherwise perfect score. Life continues; its a good game.
It is a relief from everyday persistent thoughts.
Our wife and we love solving a cryptogram together every morning. Its great to see this app get an updateand what an update! We look forward to our Quote Book growing and growing, and we especially like being able to share the ones we love. Thanks.
Easy to use this app. Can set up to suit your preferences. Phrases are just right! Best app we have. Easy on your battery. Provides hours of enjoyment.
Will you be updating the above game apps to work with iOS 11.?? For iPads. These games are amazingly brain teasing and fun. We look forward to a positive reply. Thank you for your help sandee.
We love, love, love this app! Is it going to be updated for iOS 11.
One of our favorite apps. We love cryptograms and scrambles but find the ones in the paper too easy. We like that you can make this easier or harder if you want by turning incorrect answers on or off. The option to play against the clock can also make it more challenging. Recommended for puzzle people. Worth the cost.
Great game. Good when you want to play for a minute or two.
We love doing cryptograms and this is an enjoyable way to do them. It's a great way to pass the time.
We have been playing Crypto Familes and it is a great game, but tends toward the easy side often. This one, however, is just super challenging. Of course, one of the great appeals of the game is the look. Heck, we.d love it if they released a note pad app with this design, it is just that great to look at.
Of all the ipad games we've tried over the years, this one keeps us entertained. Thanks for making it.
We love cryptograms. Have worked them for 40+ years. Thank you for all the games we have played waiting in doctors' offices.
This is the best Cryptogram game we've come across. We'd tried several but, this one is by far the best.
We love cryptograms and this app pretty much nailed it. We would like to see cryptograms in other languages.
Good middle-of-the-night activity for insomniacs.
We love this app – like the way it increases in difficulty. Easy to pick up and play anywhere. Highly recommend.
Been playing this game for over a year, and really like it. They seem to have a limitless supply of funny as well as thought provoking quotes. It's easy and intuitive to use, and just challenging enough to be a pleasant diversion.
Works very well on the iPad. We enjoy the quotes.
Lots and lots of puzzles, easy, medium and hard. Quite addicting.
Great interface (like a typewriter). Recommend you turn off the "show incorrect guesses" to make it more fun. Broken into easy, medium, and hard – can move to the hard ones fairly quickly. No complaints.
We love this app. There are some very interesting quotes here.
As always this game is exceptional. Please add harder and longer quotes for us to solve. Thank you so much for a great game.
Not super-challenging but still fun.
If u luv word games and puzzles, u won't regret paying for this excellent app. Extremely well designed.
We did cryptograms in the newspaper but they recently got rid of it. Found this app. Use it multiple times a day.
Great app with tons of cryptograms to solve. Highly recommended. Definitely a 5 star app.
Tons of challenges and a great mechanism for solving them.
This is a fun way to exercise your brain a little while you pass the time.
Recommend this game and color sudoku.
Great fun. Great graphics. Worth the price. You won't regret this purchase.
User feedback from Apple App Store
App Details
- Version: 5.3
- Size: 15.37 MB
- iOS: 12.0 or later
- Languages: EN
- Content Advisory:
- Developer: Norman Basham
Last updated: 13th January 2021 | Genre: Word, Puzzle | Developer: Norman Basham