I am a newbie to cryptography and am stuck on decrypting a message. This message was received from a friend and I would like to crack it in order to respond. I have decrypted part of it but am unable to complete the rest due to my incompetence.
This is the message:
"ITKT'L Q LTEKTZ, O SGCT VHAHIGV!"
This is what I have decrypted so far:
"HERE'S A SECRET, I ...E ....H..!"
Firstly, I used the apostrophe as a guide to what the letter could be. The word itself is too long or too short to be a 'can't' or 'would't' word and therefore I thought it was an 's' instead of a 't'. This means that the letter 'l' is 's'.
Next, the most common letter used in the English alphabet is 'e'. The letter 't' appears more times than any other so I presumed that this was and 'e'. Thus meaning that 't' is equal to 'e'.
After that, I took a stab in the dark and guessed the first word as 'here's'. The next word is a single letter which has to be either 'i' or 'a'. With the first word now being 'here's', I assumed that the single letter after had to be 'a' and therefore the next single letter is 'i'.
This is as far as I have got and I am now stuck on the ending. I have realised that the final word contains two 'v' (one at the start and end). Also there is two 'h'. There is also a 'g' which, once cracked, could help to reveal the the other word.
I cannot determine the type of cipher this message has used and I am unable to crack the final words simply because I am a newbie and don't really know what I'm looking for.
Any help is greatly appreciated!
