January 23, 2006
Forum
We have a basic forum set up using Drupal and you can try it out at
www.maths.soton.ac.uk/drupal
I'm afraid you will need to register to use it. Let me know how it works out there or here. Meanwhile here are the names of the Challenge 8A winners. Well done to everyone whether or not you won a prize this year!
Matthew Newcombe, Brendan Donnelly, Tom Fuller and Stuart Craft from Hills Road Sixth Form College, Cambridge
Ruth Franklin from Manchester High School for Girls, Greater Manchester, Manchester
Frances Bennett from Bedford High School, Bedfordshire, Bedford
Steven Lamerton from The Corsham School, Corsham
Kahil St Aimee, Rui Abrunho and Micheal Rodrigues from St Francis Xavier Sixth Form College, London
Nick Mcglashan Chris Cherng, Edward Oram, Dave Sankey from Reading School, Reading
Chris Moore Chay Paterson, Martin Ramsdale from Devonport High School for Boys, Plymouth
Jane Aston from Longslade Community College, Leicester
Philip Davies Anthony Price, Charles Donaldson from Heart of England School, Coventry
Robert Thompson Robert Thompson from Torquay Boys' Grammar School, Torquay
We also decided to send everyone who submitted a correct decryption of Challenge 8B a free copy of Flutter by Bonobo from the iTunes store (once we have figured out how to do it!)
Harry
Posted by Harry at 03:28 PM | Comments (5)
January 16, 2006
Feedback
We can't make any promises to implement your suggestions but here is your chance to brainstorm ideas for improvement, comment on this year's challenge or just sound off. Try not to be too savage about our failings though or we might be too depressed to post them! Harry
Posted by Harry at 02:19 PM | Comments (13)
January 13, 2006
Winners and Thanks
At last we can announce the winners of the 2005 National Cipher Challenge. We have three main prizes to award this year:
The IBM Prize (a thinkpad laptop and accessories) has been awarded to Tom Long of The Gryphon School, Dorset. Lying in a distant 8th place at the end of Round 7 he finished the final challenge in great style to win the overall Challenge.
The GCHQ Prize (£1,000) is awarded to Naomi Miller, Laura Bowlby, Chloë Brown, Karina Morrison, Natasha Morrison, and Abi Schultz of Oxford High School. With a team that talented the future of British Mathematics seems assured.
The Trinity College Prize (£700) is awarded to Benjamin Caller of The King David High School, Manchester. Ben is an old hand at the National Cipher Challenge and this award is well deserved.
It has been another fantastic year for the National Cipher Challenge and I hope you have all enjoyed it as much as we have. I would like to express my thanks to Rebecca, who some of you will know has been handling the Prize cheques this year and to Jim Renshaw who kept the website going against your onslaught. My Applied Mathematics colleague Chris Howls suggested many of the interesting historical nuggets which gave the story some life, though all the errors in it were mine. The story itself was of course complete fiction. In the 1960's satellite tecnology was insufficiently advanced to develop a Global Positioning System. Beyond that the technology of GPS is astonishingly complicated and uses Special Relativity and General Relativity to get the clocks sufficiently in sync for it to work. The mathematics behind it goes back to Riemann's invention of differential geometry in the nineteenth century, another great example of the power of blue skies research. If anyone asks what's the point of pure mathematics it is a beautiful example. The boat was named the Michael Five by B, J and E. They know who they are. Thanks guys.
The Challenge is generously sponsored by the EPSRC, the main research funding body for Mathematics in teh UK and we should record our gratitude to their Public Partnerships for Awareness Programme. funding for the Challenge lasts one more year so we can promise at least that we will be back inSpetmebr 2006, beyond that I can't make promises. If you or someone you know might be able to support the Challenge in the future please let us know.
The Prizegiving ceremony will be at Bletchley Park on the afternoon of March 31st and I hope to see some of you then. There is still time to put your name down for entry into the ticket lottery which will be held on Froday 20th January, so email us if you would like to be considered. The afternoon will include a tour of the Bletchley Park museum of Cryptography which is always good fun.
There will be some part A prizes for Challenge 8, watch this space for the announcement.
Finally we are still trying to organise a National Cipher Challenge forum to run throughout the year, but in the meantime will keep this site open for comments.
Oh, and as Steve Jobs would say: "One more thing". We are always scouting for talent in the School of Mathematics at the University of Southampton. If you are thinking of studying for a mathematics degree get in touch we have open days in the summer and we will be announcing a Cipher Challenge party here on our campus sometime in late spring, It would be great if you could come down.
Thanks again to all of you for your enthusiasm, and I hope to see you again for the next Challenge. Keep in touch,
Posted by Harry at 09:45 AM | Comments (11)
January 12, 2006
Fialka Excel spreadsheet
The CipherTIgers have kindly provided us with an Excel spreadheet which can be used to explore the Fialka machine. We did take a look and didn't notice any viruses or problems with the spreadsheet, but it does include Macros so we can't give any guarantees or warranty against problems. If you would like to use it you can download from here. Thanks to the CipherTigers!
Posted by Harry at 03:09 PM | Comments (9)
January 02, 2006
Rotor turning
If you imagine the pins of the rotors numbered 0 to 35 with 0 standing for 0, 1 for 1 and so on, 10 for A, 11 for B and so on, then rotor 1 turns so that the numbers increase while rotor 2 turns so that the numbers decrease.
Posted by Harry at 08:33 PM | Comments (49)