I have a (long) text in two versions, encrypted and plaintext. I think it was encrypted using a substitution cipher method (I'm pretty sure, indeed).  I'm not good in this matter, I know little about it, but I would know if there's a way to know the function/secret used for encrypt that text.  I'm ready to study, anyway :)
We had a quiz in class today where we had to break the ciphertext with the key given, but not the algorithm. Suffice to say that I wasn't able to decrypt it within the allotted time of 12 mins and will probably get a 0% score on the quiz.  So, I was just wondering if there are some kind of standard techniques that are followed when decrypting a simple substitution ciphertext.
We had a quiz in class today where we had to break the ciphertext with the key given, but not the algorithm. Suffice to say that I wasn't able to decrypt it within the allotted time of 12 mins and will probably get a 0% score on the quiz.  So, I was just wondering if there are some kind of standard techniques that are followed when decrypting a simple substitution ciphertext.