A Lifetime's Supply of Cryptarithms!

Introduction to a Lifetime's Supply of Cryptarithms

Thank you for choosing a Lifetime's Supply of Cryptarithms, and welcome! This CD has over 4 million cryptarithm puzzles. If you solve one a day, you'll finish them off in about 11000 years. Hopefully by then we'll have another CD ready. This is, truly, a lifetime's supply of cryptarithms!

Cryptarithms are sometimes called cryptarithmetics, alphametics or letter or verbal arithmetic. Whatever you call them, they're the same fun, challenging puzzles! 

For the puzzles on this CD, the following rules apply -

  • Each letter corresponds to a different digit
  • There are no leading zeroes

So, suppose you grew up by the ocean, and every time you see it, you are reminded of all your old friends. Then, you might try to solve the puzzle SEE + SEA = MISS. Then

  • You know M is not 0, since there are no leading zeroes. So you figure out it must be 1.
  • Then, you know E is not 1, since each letter corresponds to a different digit. In fact, none of E, I, S and A are 1.

Then, you continue solving the puzzle!

Using the CD

If you're just itching to solve some puzzles, first think of a word you'd like to see in the puzzle. Suppose you chose 'OX'. Then, click on 'Word Lists' in the menu - this leads to a list of links to lists of words. Scroll down until you find the link to the list containing your word - in this case, ME-SIXTY. Follow that link, and scroll down to the word OX. Following that link leads to links to the 3 puzzles containing OX in this preview. (The full CD has 8631 more, organized into 9 pages.) Explore this list to find a nice puzzle containing 'OX', and try to solve it!

Along the way, you'll see links to lists of other words. One of these might catch your eye. Explore away, and solve whichever ones you like. You have a lifetime's supply of cryptarithms now!

The other menu items are explained below...

  • Home will bring you back to this page...
  • Word Lists, as I've explained, leads you to the puzzles!
  • Help will bring you to a page showing how to use the CD, and how to solve certain rare technical problems.
  • About leads to some general information about cryptarithmetic puzzles.
  • Go Online will take you to the Cryptarithmania website, which includes (among other things) some puzzle-solving tips.
  • Copyrights explains what you are allowed to do with the puzzles on this CD, to ensure that the most people have the most fun solving Cryptarithms!

The CD needs a browser with javascript enabled. For the best experience, make sure the latest java plugin is installed too. For more information, see the Technical Requirements section just below, or read the Help section. Java is needed to see the solutions to the puzzles. If we had tried to fit 4 million puzzles and their solutions onto the CD, we would have had to use a DVD instead! So, we built a simple Cryptarithm Solver and put it on each puzzle page. It can't solve all possible cryptarithms, but it can do the ones now in your hands. On any of the puzzle pages, click 'Show Solution', give the Solver time to work, and hey presto, the solution will appear. Of course, I know you won't cheat! Not too often, at least...

Technical Requirements

The puzzles on this CD are organized as a bunch of web pages. This means the CD should work under any modern operating system, using the web browser of your choice. We tested it under a variety of popular combinations, and it worked fine.

The CD needs javascript to be enabled in order to run. We also recommend that you have the latest java plugin installed in your browser. You can test these requirements here.