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October 27, 2005
Winners for Challenge 4
Congratulations to this week's lucky winners for Challenge 4 part A:
Sarah Humphreys from Manchester High School for Girls, Manchester.
Jazz, Hanna and Fishy, the 3.141592 team from The Mount School, North Yorkshire, York, North Yorkshire.
George Schofield , the from Brighton College, Brighton.
Emma Burrows, (EmmaGHS) from Guildford High School, Surrey, Guildford, Surrey.
Amy Leung and Sumayya Shahid, team SA from The Latymer School, London.
Tom and Ted, Tom's Titans from High School for Girls, Gloucester.
Isabelle Pan, Danielle Avital, Maya Patel, Laura Mclean and Nicole Drake, (MLIND) from The Henrietta Barnett School, London,
Josh Williams from Richard Lander School, Truro.
James Cook Rohit, Emanuele and James Piper, the 8Acers from Northolt High School, Northolt, Middlesex.
David Christopher Ragusa 1 from The London Oratory School.
Posted by Harry at October 27, 2005 09:02 PM
Comments
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Well Done Jack! Keep Up The Good Work. :)
I forgot the challenge was for two weeks and started cracking the same cipher again! Silly me.
Posted by: Robert at November 3, 2005 11:07 PM
I think it would be cool to work at GCHQ but the thing is you're working in secret and if you move jobs, you can't tell anyone about all the clever things you've done and experience you've had. So that sucks :( I think it would be cool to be a lingust there. Languages are cool :)
Posted by: mumpo at November 3, 2005 05:28 PM
Thanks for your help everyone; I have now completed 5B using a mixture of Word and Excel!
Jack
Posted by: Jack at November 2, 2005 04:39 PM
I did it in Word but got confused and some "t"s were left as 1. I could correct most of them but there were some sequences of letters that I did not recognise and made a fresh new start. When I knew what I was doing, it took very little time at all.
As for putting in spaces, I recommend (I hope Harry doesn't mind) submitting before putting spaces in, then looking at it, spacing and parsing it then trying again if it doesn't make sense.
Laura, that was what confused me!
Posted by: cecil at November 2, 2005 06:53 AM
if you look at the cipher text, you will notice that certain groups of numbers are separated. this may give you a little help as to the length of the rows...
Posted by: laura at November 2, 2005 12:05 AM
Jack
You can do it all in MS Word with judicious use of the 'replace' facility and then 'convert text to table' and back again. You can do it all in less than an hour and know it's error free.
Posted by: Mike at November 1, 2005 08:58 PM
There is actually a quicker way - but thats for me to no and you to forget about :)
[No? Harry]
Posted by: Robert at October 31, 2005 07:58 PM
To get the text from part B into Excel 2002 easily (after converting it from 1s and 0s into letters), split it into chunks about the length of a line in Word. Make sure there is the same number of letters (and digits) in each chunk. It helps to have the cipher text in a fixed-width font, like Lucida Console. Select and copy all of the text to the clipboard, and switch to Excel. Use Edit > Paste Special... , select "Text" in the As box and click OK.
The cipher text will now appear in rows of varying length. Before you do anything else, look for the little clipboard icon at the bottom ("Paste Options"). Choose from the menu the option: Use Text Import Wizard...
This brings up the (surprise, surprise) Text Import Wizard. Choose Fixed Width and click Next. Put in the break lines at regular intervals (I'll leave you to work out how big). These represent where data will be split and put into the next cell. On the last step, you can change the format of each column (General is fine). If there are spaces at the end of each group, put the spaces in their own group (in 2nd step) and use the Skip "format" (in 3rd step).
It is possible to start the Text Import Wizard without Pasting the cipher text in. Use: Data > Import External Data > Text File...
Select the file (i.e. copy the cipher text off the page, paste it into Notepad and save it), and complete the text import wizard. Place the text in the current sheet. Note: Excel will LINK the data in the spreadsheet to the data in the text file, so you may have problems changing it.
Posted by: Alex at October 31, 2005 04:43 PM
I saw the GCHQ building at the weekend. Wow. I so want to work there. It was incredible the way it looms over Cheltenham. Oh well only GCSE's A Levels and Oxford to go!!!!
Posted by: Steve Lamerton at October 31, 2005 10:39 AM
In the version of excel we've got (2000 I think) you can have the characters seperated by anything you want(e.g. - or * or a space) and you just tell it where to go into the next cell.
Posted by: cecil at October 31, 2005 06:37 AM
@Andy
Another way to get it into excel is to write it as thus:
a,b,c
d,e,f
in a text file, and save it as .CSV (Comma Separated Values). This will open in excel and will make new columns at commas, and new rows on newlines.
Much <3 for macros too :P. Those commas and newlines would take ages otherwise.
Posted by: Jack at October 30, 2005 05:10 PM
for 5b draw a diagram of arrows, seriously it helps
Posted by: F at October 30, 2005 10:47 AM
Jack - try doing it using a combination of Word and Excel.
If you want a letter per cell in Excel; make sure that in word you have a tab between each letter you want in the same row; and use return when you want a new column :)
That should help I think...(is how I did it :))
Posted by: Andy at October 29, 2005 08:13 PM
Jack - there is a faster way, which I worked out in the last cipher. But, sorry I can't tell you, it'll be more rewarding if you work out a way yourself.
Posted by: Rob at October 29, 2005 05:05 PM
I have worked out what kind of cipher 5B is, but is there a faster way of working it out without having to do it all by hand!?
Please help....it's taking ages this way!
Posted by: Jack at October 29, 2005 03:14 PM
OK. And on leader board 0, how are all the =1s ordered: by time of submission, alphabetical or random?
[I'm not saying (and there is no point in trying to guess)! Harry]
Posted by: harry de voil at October 29, 2005 12:03 PM
Sorry, Nick, I'm a little confused - what is that challenge leaderboard thing? Is it the cumulative scores? It seems odd, because in that one there are 50 people joint first, and in the leaderboard after challenge 4 there are 80 people joint first. Also, everything is in a very different order in the two. You've confused me!
[OK, just to clarify. The leader boards numbered 1-8 give the scores obtained for each individual challenge in parts A and parts B. Leader board 0 gives the cumulative score for the overall (part B) Challenge. So you can share top position with 80 people for your performance in Challenge 4 part B but not be in shared first position overall (board 0) if your previous scores were lower. Does that clarify things? Harry]
Posted by: gnome at October 28, 2005 10:41 PM
Nick,
Thanks for this
Harry,
Would it be possible to actually see the scores and how far behind person 51 onwards are?
Posted by: Mike at October 28, 2005 10:33 PM
Bexx, have you done part A? I was stuck until I read A.
Posted by: Ruth at October 28, 2005 09:49 PM
Mike,
try: /honours-board-2005
Posted by: Nick at October 28, 2005 09:13 PM
help who can actually do challenge 5b? Harry please give us a clue we really need your help!
Posted by: bexx at October 28, 2005 03:17 PM
Harry,
Can we see a cumulative leaderboard, so we can actually see how far behind people who aren't equal first are point/percentage wise, instead of just seeing their scores for the latest challenge only
Thanks
Mike
Posted by: Mike at October 28, 2005 02:21 PM
i was just interested to know, but how do you choose the winners for part a of each challenge??
[At random. Harry]
Posted by: Martyn Compton at October 28, 2005 11:58 AM
WOW we won somtin !!!!!WOO!!!!
Posted by: MLINDROX at October 28, 2005 11:29 AM
wow, i actually won something :P
thanks for the birthday present harry!
chidders
Posted by: chidders at October 27, 2005 09:55 PM