Cipher

Which letter would help most? Cipher hides a familiar word and reveals every match when you guess a letter. You have seven mistakes; repeating a guess costs nothing. Unused letters stay visible so you can consider the next choice.

Press S at the title, then guess with letter keys. There is no Enter after a guess. Enter pauses: C continues, R resets words and scores, and Q quits. Q and R remain guesses during play. At a result, Space chooses another word, R resets and Q quits.

The finished game chooses from twenty-four everyday words. It avoids the immediately preceding word during a session; earlier words can return. Wins and losses carry between rounds. The game runs in Sinclair BASIC on a stock 48K ZX Spectrum, with deliberate silence and no timer.

A word becomes a game

Seven lessons use six runnable programs. Begin with a fixed guess that reveals both Ts in BOTTLE. Read a letter key, remember attempts, count distinct misses and recognise a result. Build the board around those rules, then move the words into DATA and add random selection, a title and replay. Save the complete program and check a fresh load. The last lesson sends every quit through one closing screen that shows the session’s tally, and reads the report the Spectrum prints when a program stops.

The fixed word makes early experiments repeatable. The finished word list introduces uncertainty without changing the guessing rules. Word length alone does not determine difficulty; familiarity and the possible alternatives matter too.

String positions, loops, keyboard input and screen coordinates are explained where they are used. Meet BASIC offers a slower route through entering, editing and saving programs. Other games are optional connections, not prerequisites.