Early attempts to thwart frequency analysis attacks on ciphers involved using homophonic substitutions, ie. some letters map to more than one ciphertext symbol. The earliest known example of this, from 1401, is shown below:

[Source]

One variant is the nomenclator, where codewords are used to substitute many common words and names. The example below was used by Mary Queen of Scots in 1586.

[Source]

According to Wikipedia,

By the late eighteenth century, when the system was beginning to die out, some nomenclators had 50,000 symbols.

What is the best way to go about cracking those kinds of ciphers as the number of symbols used increases?

Early attempts to thwart frequency analysis attacks on ciphers involved using homophonic substitutions, i.e., some letters map to more than one ciphertext symbol.

The earliest known example of this, from 1401, is shown below:

[Source: “Quadibloc” cryptography blog]

One variant is the nomenclator, where codewords are used to substitute many common words and names. The example below was used by Mary Queen of Scots in 1586.

 
[Source: Simon Singh]

According to Wikipedia,

By the late eighteenth century, when the system was beginning to die out, some nomenclators had 50,000 symbols.

What is the best way to go about cracking those kinds of ciphers as the number of symbols used increases?

Early attempts to thwart frequency analysis attacks on ciphers involved using homophonic substitutions, ie. some letters map to more than one ciphertext symbol. The earliest known example of this, from 1401, is shown below:

[Source]

One variant is the nomenclator, where codewords are used to substitute many common words and names. The example below was used by Mary Queen of Scots in 1586.

[Source]

According to Wikipedia,

By the late eighteenth century, when the system was beginning to die out, some nomenclators had 50,000 symbols.

What is the best way to go about cracking those kinds of ciphers as the number of symbols used increases?

Early attempts to thwart frequency analysis attacks on ciphers involved using homophonic substitutions, ie. some letters map to more than one ciphertext symbol. The earliest known example of this, from 1401, is shown below:

[Source]

One variant is the nomenclator, where codewords are used to substitute many common words and names. The example below was used by Mary Queen of Scots in 1586.

[Source]

According to Wikipedia,

By the late eighteenth century, when the system was beginning to die out, some nomenclators had 50,000 symbols.

What is the best way to go about cracking those kinds of ciphers as the number of symbols used increases?