Winners, prizes etc.

Congratulations to the overall winner and IBM Cipher Challenge Champion, 2004, David Simner of Nottingham High School. Some of you will remember that David was the Champion last year as well, and no doubt will be relieved to hear that he will be too old to compete again next year!

The committee was very impressed by the efforts of everyone who cracked Challenge 8 and decided to award two runners up prizes, one to the team Universally Challenged (Nick Purdon, Spiros Adams-Florou, Chris Braun, Alastair MacLellan) from King Edwards High School in Bath, and another to Yanmei Chen of St. Anne's Convent School.

The fifty pound prize winners this week are:

The Whizz Kidz (Paul Tinton, Gavin Williams) from Bishop Rawstorne C Of E Language College,
Year 11 Sda1 (Carmen Pun, Queenie Leung, Candy Sin) from St. Dunstan's Abbey School
The Frogs (Frances Bennett) from Bedford High School,
Sarson Bros (Jon Sarson, Will Sarson) from Gillotts School /Reading School,
Abhilash Sarhadi from King Edward's School

The following entrants will win an autographed copy of Practical Cryptography by Niles Ferguson and Bruce Schneier:

James Lloyd of Portsmouth Grammar School
Paul Jeffreys of Berkhamsted Collegiate School
The Two Cipherers (Colin and Duncan Love) of Hampton Community College,
Jonathan Lee of Nottingham High School
Marlwood Cracker (Andrew Ryrie) of Marlwood Secondary School

In addition everyone in a team appearing in the top 234 places on the final Leader Board (that makes the top 500 individuals down to and including Melanie Page of St Anne's Convent School) will receive a Cipher Challenge badge, sponsored by GCHQ the real-life codebreakers who work with British intelligence services. They are always looking for talented mathematicians and (particularly) programmers, and have undergraduate schemes that you may wish to look at. They have a website at www.gchq.gov.uk.

IMPORTANT: If you have qualified for one of these prizes and your team has not registered a contact address with us (one per team please - all prizes will be sent to that one address) you should go to the registration page and do so as soon as possible.