Overview

NSA helps defend the Nation and our allies through two clear missions: foreign signals intelligence (SIGINT) and cybersecurity. Cryptology is at the core of what NSA does, and the Agency is home to some of the world’s best codebreakers and codemakers—breaking the codes of our adversaries while securing our own codes to safeguard systems, networks, and sensitive information from prying eyes.

In the history of NSA, employees have often created puzzles—such as the Headline Puzzle in the NSA Newsletter, the CryptoScramble in the Dragon Seeds publication, various puzzles in the Cryptolog publication, and the Daily Puzz—to keep their minds sharp, develop their skills in thinking differently, and discover new and inventive ways of approaching various problems.

NSA makes these unclassified challenges from our puzzling community available to those who want to test their minds, hone creative thinking skills, and perhaps learn a thing or two about the importance of cryptology in history along the way.
 

No Such Puzzle

No Such Puzzle is created by current NSA employees, some of which are derived from—or occasionally inspired by—old puzzles in the Cryptolog publication or the Daily Puzz. Cryptolog was an internal NSA publication for the interchange of ideas on technical subjects from August 1974 to the summer of 1997. The Daily Puzz started in 2009 and continues to be published internally for the workforce.
 

Headline Puzzle

The Headline Puzzle was started in 1964 by Paul Derthick, a longtime research analyst in NSA’s Operations Organization, as an interesting way to keep his mind sharp outside of his cryptanalytic work. In November 1964, NSA’s internal newsletter began accepting Derthick’s puzzle and it’s been published internally ever since for the workforce to solve.

Each Headline Puzzle contains five headlines from recent daily newspapers. Each of the five is a different monoalphabetic substitution, and all five are derived from the same mixed alphabet at different settings against itself. A complete solution includes recovering the plaintext of each HEADLINE and three key words, the SETTING, the KEY and the HAT.

We've also made tutorials available to help you solve the Headline Puzzle:

• So you want to solve the Headline Puzzle, by Bob Bogart
• A method for solving Headline Puzzles, by Dave Smith

Though the creator has changed over the years, members of NSA’s puzzling community—including current author Bob Bogart—have carried on the legacy of the Headline Puzzle and we’re proud to share it with those interested in a cryptologic challenge.
 

Need Help? 

Even the best codebreakers need an assist from time to time—email Puzzles@uwe.nsa.gov if you're stuck, stumped, or need a hint!
 

Recent Puzzles