The First Challenge

And so it starts. The first Challenge will be posted in The Black Chamber at 3.15 this afternoon. The website will go offline at approximately 2.45pm to allow us to upload the ciphers. From that page you will be able to download a pdf of the Challenge to work on offline. You will also see a link to the entry form which you will need to complete to submit your entry. There is no rush to submit this first Challenge. Any correct submission before 11.59pm on Friday 6th Oct (tomorrow) will get full marks. After that the marks available go down slowly (see the Standing Orders for more info). So do not panic if the site is busy or slow when you want to submit. The same goes for obtaining the Challenge. If this site is unresponsive (we have a LOT of people looking at it today) then you can obtain the pdf version of the Challenge directly from this backup. You might want to bookmark this link now in case there are problems later. We will send out feedback on your submission by email overnight. If you have made a mistake you can resubmit, but please do not send lots of attempts at the same time. This strains the system and is against the rules.