🎖️ Every November 11, Canadians pause at 11 o'clock to remember. This cryptogram hides the opening verse of the poem read at Remembrance Day ceremonies across the country. Every letter has been swapped for a different one — crack the code and the familiar words will start to appear. Typical solve time: 20–35 minutes — hit Start below and see how you do. The answer key sits at the bottom — fold it backward along the dotted line before you start.
Write each decoded letter in the box beneath its coded letter. To start you off: Q = W.
This is a straight substitution cipher: 32 words and 139 letters, every letter swapped for a different one, and a single free letter to get you going. It's the longest cryptogram on the site so far — and the most generous, because a long message gives you more repeats and more patterns to work with. Here is the fastest way in:
In The Crypt-o-Gram, counting letters led you astray. Here it pays off: the most common coded letter turns up 17 times, and in this message it really is E. Longer messages behave more like the textbook, so a quick tally is worth doing before you start guessing. For more cipher-breaking approaches, see our guide to solving cryptograms.
Lest We Forget is our first Remembrance Day puzzle. The hidden text is the opening verse of “In Flanders Fields,” written by John McCrae, a doctor from Guelph, Ontario, serving with the Canadian artillery in Belgium. During the Second Battle of Ypres his close friend, Lieutenant Alexis Helmer, was killed on May 2, 1915. With the chaplain away, McCrae conducted the burial service himself, and the poem was written at the front the next day.
The Spectator in London turned the poem down, but Punch printed it — without McCrae's name — on December 8, 1915, and it soon became one of the most popular poems of the war. Its poppies became the symbol of remembrance: Moina Michael, an American working with the YMCA, began wearing one in 1918, and Frenchwoman Anna Guérin persuaded the Great War Veterans Association, forerunner of the Royal Canadian Legion, to adopt the poppy on July 5, 1921. McCrae did not live to see it. He died of pneumonia in France in January 1918, while still serving.
The title comes from “Lest we forget,” the line repeated in Rudyard Kipling's 1897 poem “Recessional” and spoken at Remembrance Day ceremonies to this day. The cipher alphabet was scrambled at random, no letter stands for itself, and the answer key on the fold strip lists every swap used.
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Puzzle Pack: Logic & Code-Breaking