You might think, because of the odd appearances of punctuation
within words, that this is a keyboard change puzzle (like
QWERTY-Dvorak) but it is just an arbitrary cryptogram in which
punctuation is encoded just like any other letter. The key below
was in the provided solution, with quirks: Cipher a, supposedly
encoding underscore, is not used in the puzzle, q represents
itself, and no character represents v. The puzzle appears to have
an uncorrected error, that w's are used instead of s's to encode
what ought to be an ellipsis at the end of the message.
Key:
Plain: _ ; o k b h u x z g m d i y e j q n . s a f " ! r ' t ? , l p c w
Cipher: 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 . , ; ' " ? !
it was a dark and stormy night. rain pounded against the windows of the
m. !ut u luyd url t.cykn rmjf.s yumr "cgrlol ujumrt. .fo !mrlc!t cv .fo
bus. lightning crashed; thunder roared; i jumped quickly through the doors
egts 'mjf.rmrj ?yutfolb .fgrloy ycuyolb m pgk"ol qgm?d'n .fycgjf .fo lccyt
and onto the sidewalk and nearly collided with a pedestrian. "excuse me!"
url cr.c .fo tmlo!u'd url rouy'n ?c''mlol !m.f u "olot.ymurs woh?gto koxw
yelled the man. i apologized profusely. "i'm only a tourist," i explained,
no''ol .fo kurs m u"c'cjmiol "ycvgto'ns wmzk cr'n u .cgymt.;w m oh"'umrol;
"and i'm a little lost. how do you get to carnegie hall?" the stranger
wurl mzk u 'm..'o 'ct.s fc! lc ncg jo. .c ?uyrojmo fu'',w .fo t.yurjoy
replied"""
yo"'molwww
The answer to the riddle is the answer to the puzzle: PRACTICE.