T is 20.........Andrew Jackson...........from Tennessee............synchronicity........


In most cases, when someone creates a puzzle for a contest or competition like MIT's Mystery Hunt, the solution to that puzzle is a piece of text, either a word or a phrase, perhaps an instruction. (Some other solutions are numbers, and I suppose some could be pictures.) But when a puzzle is number-based, how does one get from a number or group of numbers to a word or phrase?
The most useful tool is a substitution cipher where each letter of the alphabet is represented by a number which corresponds to that letter's position in the alphabet. In simplest terms, this can be written as A=1, B=2 ... Z=26. Since A is the first letter of the alphabet, it is represented by the number 1. B, the second letter, is represented by 2. Z, the last of the 26 letters in the alphabet, is represented by 26.

A	B	C	D	E	F	G	H	I	J	K	L	M	N	O	P	Q	R	S	T	U	V	W	X	Y	Z
1	2	3	4	5	6	7	8	9	10	11	12	13	14	15	16	17	18	19	20	21	22	23	24	25	26

So if, upon solving a puzzle, you find yourself left with a series of numbers as an apparent "solution," try the A=1, B=2 ... Z=26 cipher on it to see if a word or phrase is represented by the numbers.
For example, here's a simple puzzle: