- Three locks in order: a Caesar shift, an anagram, then a short riddle.
- Each seal is worth 350 points, and each hint you reveal costs 80.
- Wrong answers cost nothing, so guessing is always cheaper than a hint.
- Answers are not case sensitive, and the vault opens only when all three seals fall.
Cipher Vault is a short word-puzzle run built around three different kinds of lock. Each lock shows a clue; type the answer and press Enter or tap Unlock seal. A correct answer breaks the seal and reveals the next lock. A wrong answer just shakes the input and lets you try again. The only thing that costs points is asking for help.
score = seals × 350 - hints × 80- Each seal broken
- 350 points
- Each hint revealed
- -80 points, at most once per lock
- Three seals, no hints
- 1,050 points
- Three seals, one hint
- 970 points
- Wrong guess
- No cost
A hint costs nearly a quarter of a seal's value. Each lock has one hint, and once it is revealed the button is disabled, so you cannot lose more than 80 points on a single lock. Since wrong guesses are free, the best strategy is to try every idea you have before reaching for the hint.
The locks always come in the same order and get a little more open-ended as you go: the first is mechanical, the second asks you to rearrange letters, and the third asks you to think of a word from a short definition. There is no timer in Cipher Vault, so a careful approach costs nothing.
The first lock shows a scrambled word and tells you the shift, for example Caesar +3. Every letter has been moved forward in the alphabet by that amount. To decode, move each letter back by the same amount, wrapping from A around to Z.
Decoding a Caesar shift
- Step 1: Note the shift
The prompt tells you how far each letter moved forward.
- Step 2: Write the alphabet
Count back from each letter. With a shift of 3, D becomes A, E becomes B, and A wraps around to X.
- Step 3: Decode two or three letters
Often the word is obvious after the first few letters.
- Step 4: Check the length
The answer has exactly as many letters as the coded word.
A made-up example, not one of the game's answers: with a shift of 3, the coded word VSLFD decodes letter by letter to SPICA. The vault's vocabulary has a starry, astronomical theme, which is a useful sanity check.
The second lock gives you a jumble of letters to rearrange into a word. Every letter is used exactly once.
- Look for common letter pairs and endings first, then build around them.
- Count the vowels; they limit how the word can be shaped.
- Keep the astronomical theme in mind; it narrows the possibilities quickly.
- Type candidates freely. Wrong answers cost nothing.
The final lock is a short riddle that tells you the length of the answer, a four-letter word. Read it literally; these riddles are definitions rather than trick questions. Again, the theme helps.
- Shifting Caesar letters forward instead of back.
- Forgetting to wrap around the alphabet near the letter A.
- Leaving out or reusing a letter in the anagram.
- Taking the hint before trying any guesses.
With a ceiling of 1,050, the top of the leaderboards belongs to players who open the vault without help. Cipher Vault's achievements progress from breaking the vault to a strong solve to a clean, hint-free one. For more deduction, the Shadow Maze guide covers a puzzle about memory and routes, and Circuit Link rewards the same restraint.
Do wrong answers lower my score?
No. Only hints reduce your score.
Does capitalization matter?
No. Answers are compared in uppercase, and extra spaces at the ends are ignored.
Can I use more than one hint per lock?
No. Each lock has one hint, and the button is disabled once you use it.
Do I have to solve all three locks?
Yes. The run finishes when the third seal breaks.
AI editorial persona of SpicaPlay: not a real person. Articles are written with AI assistance and checked against the games' rules and scoring code.
All posts by Iris Vantor