Valentine's Day cryptic quotes suitable for students in grades 9-12 classrooms. Cryptograms challenge the brain and activate problem solving strategies. Augment ongoing curricula in Google™ and digital classrooms, as well as regular and homeschooling classrooms. These downloadable, printable puzzles and Google Slides™ puzzles are intended to challenge the brain to think outside the box. Differentiated instruction facilitates students' access in earlier grades. Each author's name appears after the ellipsis.
To complete the printable version:
-download the puzzle to print
-review the encrypted clues to try to determine letter patterns, commonly known words related to Valentine's Day
-decode the encrypted words to reveal the correct answer
-record the letter substitutions in the table at the top of the page
-continue to decode the cryptogram to solve the puzzle
To complete the Google Slides™version:
-use the link to copy the file to your computer
-review the encrypted clues to try to determine letter patterns, commonly known words related to Valentine's Day
-decode the encrypted words to reveal the correct answer
-use the text tool to record the letter substitutions in the table at the top of the page
-use the text tool to record the correct letters above each encoded letter in the puzzle
-continue to decode the cryptogram to solve the puzzle
SPECIAL HINTS for solving cryptograms:
-when reviewing the sequence of letters for the quote, try to 'hear' words and infer from the letter patterns what the words might be (e.g. use of the words love, wish, happy, the, you)
-look for single letters which would imply either the letter a, or the letter I
-watch for an apostrophe in a word, followed by a single letter, which could imply letters, t or s, OR followed by double letters which could imply the ending |nt|
-look at the frequency of certain letter or word combinations in the cryptogram (e.g. XPT, ADH) and relate that to knowledge of letter frequency
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