Lewis Copeland Company - “Cipher Stories Puzzle Book”

Brent Price

Nov 30, 20213 min read

Updated: Apr 30, 2024

Photo above is property of Lewis Copeland Company

Company: Lewis Copeland Company

Game:. Cipher Stories Puzzle Book

Country: USA 🇺🇸

Language: English

Type of Game: Puzzles By Mail 📬

Genre: Cipher Puzzles

Date Played: November 30, 2021

Difficulty (based on 1 player): 4/10

Size of Team: 1 Player

Time: Approximately 6-24 Hours of Play

Price: $15 (Out of print)

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Published Feb, 1928

“Consisting of Twenty-five Original short Stories, Dealing With Life, Love, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness; Each Story Containing at Least Two Vital Cipher Puzzles.”

As one of the earliest publications of the Progenitor Age of Mystery Puzzle Games, I was excited to try out the Cipher Stories Puzzle Book. Knowing that it was geared more towards kids and that ciphers and similar puzzles were just becoming popular at the time, I went in with fairly low expectations expecting simplistic puzzles, and stories that would seem quaint and clues that may not make much sense to someone in the year 2021. So, how did it fair? Pretty much as I expected, and that is a good thing.

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Each of the chapters is based on real figures from the time or history, such as Charles Lindburgh, Darwin, presidents, actresses, and more. This makes for a fun concept, but would probably be much more appreciated in the time this was written. Each puzzle also tries to be funny in the writing and whimsical with the art with cute elves adorning the puzzles.

Photo above is property of ESCAPETHEROOMers

My favorite line from the book is from puzzle 18: The Story of a Philosopher, “Can’t? I can, Kant.” This is an example of the humor being mixed through the book. Much of the humor was probably funnier in the 1920s and 30s, but some of it holds up, like this. It also contains words and phrases that I needed to look up (since I don’t live in the 1920s)...like scarehead, or to be “Heinzed” -- which I think means drunk, but I can’t find it. This book is definitely a product of the times and the writing suffers from it, but the puzzles hold.

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The puzzles are a “simple” deciphering where you figure out which letter might belong to which letter or number and plug them in, try some more, erase some, add more, figure a few out, etc., until you get to the very satisfying “AHA!” moment when the words start to fill in and make sense. This moment is really what this puzzle book is about.. multiple “A-ha” moments where your hard work falls into place and you feel you can rest.

Each puzzle story chapter stands on its own with no overall meta-puzzle, making each chapter a game by itself.

Photo above is property of ESCAPETHEROOMers

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Each of the ciphers used in this book is the “simple Transposition Method” where each letter is represented by one, and only one other letter or number. The preface does a great job of walking the reader through the process of solving the ciphers and using them in the crossword puzzle-style format to finish the solve, which gives the answer to each story. At the end of the book is a section explaining this and several other types of similar ciphers. The book contains 25 chapters, each with two main puzzles and a hint puzzle that all key off the same cipher.

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This is not the type of puzzle book to pick up and finish in one or a few sittings. It really is designed to do a puzzle or two, by hand, every now and then. Pick it up on a rainy day and stretch your brain manually solving the ciphers...they are not technically difficult ciphers, but can take a while sometimes as you work on the substitutions. I found this fun, relaxing, and a good way to pass some time!