A while ago I came across a site that distributed a program that could crack cryptograms, and the guy said he
did it by using a dictionary list of words. I decided to try to make one, I started it in vb but I eventually put the project
off. This year (2005) I decided to make a complete version of it. I wrote it in Java, I know, Java is slower...but I didn't
have any programs that I wrote in Java, so I decided to make one. It solves the cryptograms recursively using a dictionary
to find possible words based off of letter patterns.
Versions:
1.0 Solved some cryptograms, but worked very slowley. You could not enter words with apostrophies or
any punctuation.
2.0 Found an error in the recursive algorithm which was majorly slowing it down. It worked much faster
and solved most cryptograms. Still could not use punctuation or apostrophies.
Newest Version - 3.0 Solves most cryptograms pretty fast (miliseconds for some and
a few seconds for most, although for some cryptograms it may take a while to solve). You can now enter words with apostrophies
and you can enter punctuation; however, you cannot use a dash(-) between words. It allows you to set the percent of words
it can skip over (incase it is not found in the dictionary) and it can read in the cryptogram from user input or a text file.
*Note: The menu has an encrypt option but I have not yet programmed this option. It really dosn't
have any optomizations right now so sometimes it is slow for certain cryptograms. I may eventually add a frequency table checker
to speed up the process. Also, it dosn't print out any results untill it found all the possible results. So even though it
may have cracked it, it will not display it until it has checked all the possibilities based off of the word patterns. If I
make another version in the future it will display them as it cracks them, rather then waiting until it has checked all possibilities.
If the cryptogram has a long word in it it will help it crack it faster.
*Note: If you want to paste any text in to the program you can click the little c:\ icon in the upper
left corner of the program then click edit-->paste. But remember that the cryptogram must not have any new lines in it
{Enter}. The cryptogram must be all on one line. (It may show up in the program as though it were on multiple lines...but
that is only because it dosn't have any more room so it goes to the next line. That is fine.) Basically when you
are pasteing a cryptogram or reading one from a text file make sure it is all on one line in the text file or from the source
that you coppied it from.
*Note: I compiled the java classes into an exe because...well its supposidly faster and I figure
it is easyer to transfer and run(then a .jar file). When I was compileing it to the exe it had a stack limit option. I set
it low...to something like 864kb. Im not sure if that was a limit for the compiler or for the program...so if you are constantly
getting stack overflows, or the program is mysteriously exiting...let me know.
