A strange letter delivered by an Animal Crossing villager had one player stumped until the community offered an explanation. Animal Crossing: Wild World has many ways to interact with villagers, and one of them is through letters. Players can send and receive letters to and from their favorite villagers. Sometimes, like in the case of one particular player, these letters can leave fans scratching their heads in confusion.

"Any explanation for this one?" asks Reddit and Animal Crossing fan, CryptographerOk1267. The letter had been given to them by Patty, a peppy cow villager, and depicts a series of seemingly nonsensical letters. The note looks almost like players are supposed to fill in the blanks. It contains the following letters, oddly spaced out and scattered across all four lines of the paper: "I c n n u O O a t L m e C." The bottom text reads simply "Reply by tomorrow!"

When read from left to right, the letter makes no sense. However, reading it across from the top to the bottom and from left to right reveals its hidden message: "I am cute," followed by a face with eyebrows and a nose making an open-mouthed "C" expression.

Strange Animal Crossing: Wild World Letter Is A Lesson In Perspective

The Trick Is To Read It In The Right Direction

This odd letter in Animal Crossing: Wild World suddenly makes a lot more sense once it becomes apparent what to look for. Reddit NullifiedPresence is the one to officially decipher the letter in the comment section, stating, "I believe it says 'I am cute' on the left and the right is a face." A few comments took note of the original poster's name and make jabs at it. "I gotta ask - are you sure you’re a cryptographer?!" asks starinmelbourne, to which Key-Pickle5609 responds, "They didn’t say they’re a good cryptographer."

The original Redditor who posted the image had some takeaways from the experience: "Lesson learned: LOOK at the bigger picture, ALWAYS (I read the letters standalone as words, and was confused)." They note that they hadn't even realized the theme of the letter, which is a cutesy light blue color with little butterflies at the corners, hinting at its general content. Being able to look at the message from a different perspective might have helped them to understand it sooner.

Animal Crossing Has Many Other Odd Letters

From Existential Dilemmas To Just Plain Weird

The formatting of the letter from Patty becomes clear once you that Japanese is often traditionally written vertically rather than horizontally. But this message from Patty is not the only weird letter that Animal Crossing villagers have sent to players. Many other strange letters have wound up in players' in-game letter boxes. Some are silly, like the letter shared by infernoseph26 on Reddit, where the villager wishes the player a happy birthday, then devolves into what sounds like an older person trying to figure out technology for the first time.

Other notes from villagers delve into more unsettling territory, like a letter where the villager asks if the player likes the letter's smell, since they "dipped it in gravy then licked the gravy off" and sent it to the player. The oddities of these characters contribute to them feeling incredibly real, especially in older games from the Animal Crossing franchise, like Animal Crossing: Wild World. After all, who doesn't have that one strange friend who sends the most unhinged texts?

Source: CryptographerOk1267/Reddit, NullifiedPresence/Reddit, starinmelbourne/Reddit, Key-Pickle5609/Reddit, infernoseph26/Reddit