S H
Q D M
J L W I L
L U I D O S B R
U K Z R K U D R J
I F
Y O U
S T A R T
T H R O W I N G
H E D G E H O G S
U N D E R
M E,
I
S H A L L
T H R O W
A
C O U P L E
O F
P O R C U P I N E S
U N D E R
Y O U.
Based on the cryptogram solution, we can reconstruct almost all of the cipher alphabet as follows:
P: A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z
C: W . Y Z K H R U S . . V A B D F . I J L M . O . Q .
The P: indicates that the upper alphabet is the original
plain text alphabet.
The C: indicates that the lower
alphabet is the cipher text alphabet.
The cipher alphabet is filled in letter by letter based on the solution. For example, the first plain text letter in the cryptogram is I and it enciphers to S. Other ways of saying this are I->S or I:S. Fill in the cipher alphabet by writing S on the C: line directly beneath the I on the P: line. Place the cipher text letters for all plain text letters you find in the solution. The result will appear as above.
Now we examine the cipher text portion of the reconstructed cipher alphabet for letter sequences and possible words or phrases.
On first observation we note that Y and Z; A and B; I and J; and L and M form pairs of letters in sequence. This indicates a key word or phrase was used to construct the cipher alphabet since a random assignment of letters would not show such a pattern.
Note that W.YZ is a possible sequence where X is the missing letter. As X has not yet been recovered we tentatively assign cipher X to plain B:
P: A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z
C: W X Y Z K H R U S . . V A B D F . I J L M . O . Q .
Moving on we see that KHRUS is composed of letters out of the normal sequence. This may be part of a key word or phrase. Moving on we note that LM.O.Q is a possible sequence where N and P are the missing letters. As neither N nor P has yet been recovered we tentatively assign cipher N to plain V and cipher P to plain X:
P: A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z
C: W X Y Z K H R U S . . V A B D F . I J L M N O P Q .
At this stage we have only 4 cipher letters to recover, namely C, E, G and T. As G seems to fit nicely between F and I we tentatively assign cipher G to plain Q:
P: A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z
C: W X Y Z K H R U S . . V A B D F G I J L M N O P Q .
It now appears evident that that we are dealing with a key word or possibly a phrase beginning with K and extending through V, with the remaining letters assigned following the V and wrapping around to conclude at the start of the cipher alphabet. The key word or phrase must be KHRUS..V with C, E or T taking the remaining two unknown positions in the key. One way to go about this is to try all possible combinations:
KHRUSCEV
KHRUSCTV
KHRUSECV
KHRUSETV
KHRUSTCV
KHRUSTEV
If nothing pops out to the eye at this point one might decide to concentrate on the EV combinations for further study.
One might also refer back to the cipher alphabet and attempt to assign C, E or T to plain Z. This provides cipher T to plain Z as T is the only one of the three possibilities that meets the pattern for the assignment of the non key letters when the key was constructed. This also eliminates four of the six possible combinations just examined and leaves only:
KHRUSCEV
KHRUSECV
And finally, it hopefully becomes apparent that the original key is the author of the quote, Nikita Khruschev.
P: A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z
C: W X Y Z K H R U S C E V A B D F G I J L M N O P Q T