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3 unusual facts about Letter frequency


Letter frequency

The use of letter frequencies and frequency analysis plays a fundamental role in cryptograms and several word puzzle games, including Hangman, Scrabble, Bananagrams, and the television game show Wheel of Fortune.

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One of the earliest description in classical literature of applying the knowledge of English letter frequency to solving a cryptogram is found in E.A. Poe's famous story The Gold-Bug, where the method is successfully applied to decipher a message instructing on the whereabouts of a treasure hidden by Captain Kidd.

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Likewise, Modern International Morse code encodes the most frequent letters with the shortest symbols; arranging the Morse alphabet into groups of letters that require equal amounts of time to transmit, and then sorting these groups in increasing order, yields e it san hurdm wgvlfbk opjxcz yq.



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