You got me a substitution cypher for the occasion? You really are top-notch.
[And it's with an unusually indulgent bit of glee that she sits down to look over the birthday riddle she's been presented with, already mentally rubbing her gloved hands together in preparation for setting to her puzzle. If she really wanted to longhand it, there are a few telltale clues that would give away certain letters right from the start — the fact that most likely letter to stand alone, immediately followed by an apostrophe, would be I (appearing in the cypher twice as an O, most likely), or the frequency of the letter K appearing in the cypher both in pairs (ykk) and as the second and fourth letters of a four-letter word (nkxk) means it's probably an E. From there she could start making guesses, plugging in other ideas — the letter combination "EUA" appears four times in a relatively short message, and once as an "EUAX", and the letter represented by E also appears frequently at the end of words, which rules out most consonants, and if E is already the letter K then the three-letter word probably isn't "THE" —
That's how she could solve it. If she wanted.
But there's a riddle there, too, and it just wouldn't feel right if she didn't solve the whole of it, so she considers. Today's date is the sixth, of course; that much is easy. And if it's okay to be negative...
Whimsically, she starts at the letter O, and counts backwards — negative — six spaces in the alphabet. N, M, L, K, J...I.
Well, well.
But the real gift isn't the fun of solving the puzzle, no matter how much of a thrill she gets out of it. It's at seeing the words underneath appear one by one, like a jigsaw puzzle coming into focus, and —
no subject
[And it's with an unusually indulgent bit of glee that she sits down to look over the birthday riddle she's been presented with, already mentally rubbing her gloved hands together in preparation for setting to her puzzle. If she really wanted to longhand it, there are a few telltale clues that would give away certain letters right from the start — the fact that most likely letter to stand alone, immediately followed by an apostrophe, would be I (appearing in the cypher twice as an O, most likely), or the frequency of the letter K appearing in the cypher both in pairs (ykk) and as the second and fourth letters of a four-letter word (nkxk) means it's probably an E. From there she could start making guesses, plugging in other ideas — the letter combination "EUA" appears four times in a relatively short message, and once as an "EUAX", and the letter represented by E also appears frequently at the end of words, which rules out most consonants, and if E is already the letter K then the three-letter word probably isn't "THE" —
That's how she could solve it. If she wanted.
But there's a riddle there, too, and it just wouldn't feel right if she didn't solve the whole of it, so she considers. Today's date is the sixth, of course; that much is easy. And if it's okay to be negative...
Whimsically, she starts at the letter O, and counts backwards — negative — six spaces in the alphabet. N, M, L, K, J...I.
Well, well.
But the real gift isn't the fun of solving the puzzle, no matter how much of a thrill she gets out of it. It's at seeing the words underneath appear one by one, like a jigsaw puzzle coming into focus, and —
Oh.]
nuc jgxk eua sgqk sk ysork roqk znoy, eua nuxxohrk hue.