'Encrypted Spelling Test' Is Stumping the Internet

A new "encrypted spelling test" on Playbuzz is stumping the internet.
The quiz replaces letters with numbers and challenges people to choose the correct spelling of words.
There are no trick questions, but it might make your brain hurt.

You may be able to ace a basic spelling test, but how about an encrypted one?

Terry Stein, a contributor on the interactive storytelling platform Playbuzz, has created a quiz to test people's knowledge of commonly misspelled words. But there's a catch — some letters are replaced with numbers.

If you can read the coded text in the image above, you'll see that Playbuzz gave this quiz to 100 people and claims that not one of them passed. See if you can decode these encrypted spelling test questions.

Which is the correct spelling?

encrypted spelling test calendar — Which is correct? Courtesy of Playbuzz

By glancing at the options, your brain might be able to tell that the word in question is an object that keeps track of days of the week, appointments, and holidays. But you might have to stare a little harder to figure out which numbers are filling in for which letters. Is it "CALENDAR"? "CALANDER?" "CALENDER?"

The correct spelling is "calendar," which means "C4L3ND4R" is the right answer. The number 4 functions as "A" and the 3 is "E."

Can you tell what word this is?

playbuzz encrypted spelling sense — Which one? Courtesy of Playbuzz

This one is a bit trickier since there's only one letter, so it may be hard to tell what the word is even supposed to be. Look carefully — if you squint, the 5 looks like an "S." And from the previous question, we know that the number 3 = E. So the options are "SENSE" or "SENSSE."

The correct answer is "53N53," which spells out "SENSE" in code.

Let's try another one.

Now we know that 5 = S and 3 = C. The number 1 is pretty straightforward as an "I." Hence, the options presented are "LISENCE" and "LICENSE."

"L1C3N53" ("LICENSE") is the correct spelling.

Now comes the ultimate spelling challenge.

Ironically, "misspell" is a commonly misspelled word. How many "S"s? How many "L"s? Who knows?

We've seen these numbers before: 1 = I, 5 = S, and 3 = L. The choice is between "MISSPEL" and "MISSPELL," and the correct answer has two "L"s.

If you're still stuck, the letter-to-number replacements are consistent throughout the quiz, so here's a helpful index:

0 = O

1 = I

3 = E

4 = A

5 = S

6 = G

7 = T

If you want to try all 14 questions and see how well you do, you can take the full quiz here.