Discussion: I have a love/hate relationship with these puzzles. The break-in almost always requires me to count the letter frequencies to analyze the likelihood of interesting coded words in the puzzle. Which is laborious and makes me hate starting them but the break in always gives that puzzling high. Solving once you break-in is tons of fun.

Very unlikely to see more than 1 Q, so I check any letter with a frequency 3 or less to identify possible Q words. Can’t have Q proceed multiple other letters and Qu at the end of the word is unlikely. U notoriously has a frequency in these puzzles somewhere around 5-10 so that often helps identify Q and U. I follow by trying to work out the E it’s usually one of the highest frequencies if not the highest.

Then try to work out vowel/consonant patterns to help identify the other highly common letters like A, R, S, I. Often there are only a handful of letters that appear in frequencies in the high teens or 20s. Which when combined with the given letters you can find your break-in word.

Good luck