Well, what a fantastic effort! It is the biggest Cipher Challenge we have ever run, with thousands of you taking part and hundreds getting to the finish line. The standard of entries is amazingly high and our least favourite job is choosing winners. As with all the best ceremonies we will start with the small prizes and work our way up. Carry on reading to see if you won a prize. Challenge 7 part A winners - each team to get a cheque for £25 David Tilby of The John Warner School, Hoddesdon Marc Jeffreys of Hut 11, Woodbridge School, Suffolk Aquila, (Yusuf and Sarah Tr) of Alcester Grammar School Jamie, Joe and Alex of "Lumpy potatoes! OH NO!, Harry", Cokethorpe An old friend, Jonathan Agg aka TVUZPLBY VLBM from George Abbot, Guildford More Cheese, lad? We're Crackers!, (Callum Dunster and Alex Vaughn) Headlands School And Community Science College, Bridlington Phil Burtenshaw of Hills Road 6th Form College First Team of Cranbourne Business And Enterprise College, Basingstoke. Challenge 8 part A winners - each team to get a cheque for £25 J. Thompson of Alderbrook Leading Edge School And Arts College, Solihull Tamsin and Adele Spelman of Henrietta Barnett School Alex Padmore (the Padder) from Strodes College, Egham The firrhill ciphers, John Dalgarno, Craig Bald, Megan Mcpherson, Callum Cameron, Alastair Bartlett, Katie Vokes, Fergus Mcnab, Finlay Steven, Arend Koeditz and Euan Dunnett of Firrhill High School, Edinburgh The cipherqueen, Hannah Davies of Alderbrook, Solihull Peak Hours, (Dan Peacock, Tom Waters and Alex Lockard) from Park House, Newbury The Surds: Florence Driscoll, Jack Barratt, James Gan, Ross Johnstone, Wesley Wroe, Finlay Watkinson, Jonathan Lyne, James Crichton, Tristan Rogers, Athena Ross-michaledies, Wai-chuen Cheung, Chris Dennell, Tristan Rogers, Julia Zhu, Jordan Walter, Kyriacos Paplouca, Nehal Joshi and Rhuari Faherty of Dame Alice Owen's School, Potters Bar St Bede's PR's (Alistair Crook, Chloe Kitteridge and Patrick Hopper of St Bede's School, Cambridge Of course the names you are all waiting for are the names of the overall winners of our three main prizes: This year the Trinity College Prize of £700 goes to the team Aqueous Cloud Juice from Torquay Boys' Grammar School, congratulations to Ian Fraser and Matt Freeman. The GCHQ prize of £1000 goes to Four Eyes, Abigail See, Ruoxi Huang, Lucie Dawkins, Rachel Norris and Karen Chan of The Perse School For Girls. The overall championship prize, a ThinkPad laptop provided by our sponsors IBM goes to the Teddies of King Edward VII Sheffield. Ewan Davies and Joe Macmahon came through with an amazing last round performance to share top points in Challenge 8 with the girls from Four Eyes, but pipped them at the post to steal first place. Finally a little surprise. We have a new sponsor this year, Cambridge University Press who have kindly donated ten copies of the book "The Mathematics of Oz" by Clifford Pickover. We have decided to award these to the schools attended by the top teams who didn't win a major prize this year, and each book will contain a dedication to the winner(s), so these go to: Heart Of England School, Quest For Pi Cedars Upper School, Team Hall and Vicky Simons Truro College, The Feathery Squirrel City Of London School, Andrew Lawson and Joshua Cockcroft Chislehurst And Sidcup Grammar School, Harald Carlens and Shaneel Patel, Mike Rawlings and Todd Cutting Hills Road Sixth Form College, Katriel Cohn-Gordon North London Collegiate School, Katrina Spensley Alcester Grammar School, David Edey Oxford High School, Eep and Chloe Brown Naomi Miller Natasha Morrison Abi Schultz Alton College, Bryn Horsfield If you have won a prize please contact us asap so we can make arrangements with you. Congratulations again to all of you. If you didn't win this year, there will be another chance in the autumn!. Meanwhile keep on reading the site for news about the prizegiving day at Bletchley, and for other competitions. Best wishes, Harry

The University needs to carry out a major upgrade of its electrical supply and as a result the website will be offline on the 2nd, 3rd and part of the 4th of January. Sorry for any inconvenience.

So many hints! I seem to have spent the last few days just trying to decide which hints to block, and which to publish, but now it is time to be a little (only a little) more generous. You really do need to crack 8A to do 8B. First because Trinity tells you something crucial about the encryption method in 8B and second because even when you figure out what she is talking about, and even after you work out exactly how it was done, you will still need 8A from time to time. Maybe more later, but not today! Harry

Congratulations to the following winners of the £25 team prizes for part A in the fifth and sixth rounds. Challenge 5A The UGS Crackers, Catherine, Naomi, Ashley, Sasha, Matthew, Peter and Kate, from Urmston Grammar School The Cyphoids, James and Jessica, from William Edwards School, Grays Awaiting Allocation, Julia and Caroline from Horsham Emma 'n' Sam from Wycombe High School Those Boffs at the Front, Vicky and Leah from Tonbridge Grammar School The Cipher Smashers, Rob and John, from Torquay Boys Grammar School STAIRS - James and Michael from Torquay Boys Grammar School 100100001001001100011111CodeCracker10010010100100000111110010, Vickym Bishop Wand 6th Form College (It doesn't look like a random selection I know, but the way to think about this is that this IS what happens when you select at random, you get clustering.) Challenge 6A the calculator,Rachel and Karen from The Perse School For Girls Tapton Crackers Eigen and Michael from Tapton School Mark Brown from Hills Road Sixth Form College, Bikini Bottom United,Jenny and Catherine from Westcliff High School For Girls Cipher-delic,Naomi,Raza, Hugh, Max, Jamie and Charlie from Highgate School Btnrule, Ashleigh Newman-jones form Brighton College Mr Jevons,Greensward College cania Curtly from St Francis Xavier, London