An outgrowth of technical writing has been to learn Visual Basic. I wrote the Cryptoquote program described below out of frustration at not being able to solve the puzzle one morning.

A cryptoquote, or rebus, is a sentence where one letter stands for another.

Have you ever stared at the Cryptoquote in the newspaper, on the page with the comics, right next to the crossword puzzle, and known that you could figure it out, if you just had a couple more minutes. And an eraser.

A Visual Basic program can provide the forum to figure out the cryptoquote, without an eraser. The essence of the program is the REPLACE command,
where NEWTEXT = REPLACE (OLDTEXT, OLDLETTER, NEWLETTER).

Basic Rules:

Enter the phrase you want to solve, for example ozxxs mpg spzk!. (Clue: you might say this on December 31.) Select Done Entering Quote. Enter a lower-case letter to replace in Old Letter. Enter the upper-case replacement letter in New Letter in upper case. Select Replace Letter Now. Continue entering replacement letters until you know the answer. Select Help at any time for instructions. Select Done Entering Quote to start all over again, same quote. Select Reset to try another quote. Select Quit to end the game.

Try it! size = 28KB