Solving CryptoQuotes with PVM:

Parallel Virtual Machine

by Ko-Ming Chang

Introduction

Cryptoquotes are those less than well-known puzzles found alongside crossword puzzles in the morning paper. While they are neither particularly difficult to solve nor unique in any way, they nevertheless represent a task which can be solved by a coarse grained parallel algorithm. Such algorithms are ideally suited to PVM, a form of parallel programming which is optimized by minimizing message passing.

Essentially, a cryptoquote consists of a popular (but not always familiar) quote by a famous person. In this quote, the letters are scrambled; that is, "one letter simply stands for another." Here is an example:

CWIA IA OG KBOJSTK XP HWOC O CRSINOT NQRSCXUMXCK JIYWC TXXF TIFK

Unscrambled, the above cryptoquote reads:

THIS IS AN EXAMPLE OF WHAT A TYPICAL CRYPTOQUOTE MIGHT LOOK LIKE

Typical strategies for solving such a puzzle take advantage of the word placement, word length, punctuation, and grammar in the quote. Due to the complex nature of most of the grammatical strategies, this program focuses exclusively on only two main tactics: examining word lengths and word patterns. As will be shown, this in fact is enough for quotes containing words of at least moderate length.

Contents of this Report

Strengths and Weaknesses

Written by: