Congratulations to everyone. It has been the best challenge ever, and we have really appreciated all the effort that everyone has put in. The forums have been livelier than ever , and special thanks are owed to Smaug and his dragonlettes for all their efforts.
Of course what you want to know is, "who has won?".
First place, and the GCHQ prize of £1,000 goes to The Enigmas from Harrogate Grammar School. With exactly one, perfect submission for each Challenge they showed how it could be done with great style.
Second place and £700 from Trinity College, Cambridge goes to David Edey of Alcester Grammar School. Another great performance with a fast solution to Challenge 8B.
Third place and the IBM laptop goes to Katrina Spensley of North London Collegiate School. She did it with great skill, again submitting just once for each round.
Congratulations to them and to all of you for all your efforts.
These three teams are invited to join us for the celebration lunch on the day of the prizegiving at Bletchley on Friday March 27th.
As runners up, the following teams are invited to join us at Bletchley for the afternoon. We have reserved one ticket per team member plus another for a teacher or parent to accompany each team. If your name is not on this list and you have already applied for tickets we will be in touch shortly. We expect to be able to honour all those requests. We may have an additional 15 tickets to give out so please sign up using the link at the top of the page if you would like to come, and we will see what we can do.
KES Krackers from King Edward's School
Alice Udale-Smith Nora Spicer Giri Kesavan Alan Bowman
Andrew Ryrie from Marlwood School
The Phishers Of Men from Bishop Wordsworth Grammar School,
Kryptonite from Northampton School for Boys
The Wellies from Hills Road Sixth Form College,
EureKa SLam Ink from The Romsey School,
The Ciphernoughts from Woodbridge School
The Wombats from Tanglin Trust School
Team QM from Queen Mary's College
The Teddies from King Edward VII School
Before Midnight 16th Oct: 28 marks
Before 2pm 17th Oct: 26 marks
Before Midnight 17th Oct: 24 marks
Before 2pm 18th Oct: 22 marks
Before Midnight 18th Oct: 20 marks
Before 2pm 19th Oct: 18 marks
Before Midnight 19th Oct: 16 marks
Before 2pm 20th Oct: 14 marks
Before Midnight 20th Oct: 12 marks
Before 2pm 21st Oct: 10 marks
Before Midnight 21st Oct: 8 marks
Before 2pm 22nd Oct: 6 marks
Before Midnight 22nd Oct: 4 marks
Congratulations again to everyone who did so well with Challenge 2. Did you notice that Challenge 2B was an affine shift cipher? If you did, well done, if not, well done for solving it the hard way.
Anyway here are the winners of the prizes for Challenge 2A:
The book prize goes to St. Anne's School, Southampton, for the work of Ms Wheeler and Ms. Day. Well done.
Each of the following teams has been awarded a cheque for £25 by our magic sorting hat:
Mandy Payne and Bob Bell from Bitterne Park Secondary School
Andy Tom from Blatchington Mill
Matt, Matt and Matt from Honywood Community School
Calum from King Edward VI School, Aston
Ralphy, Fluffman, Russ, Sophie, Aide, Ben and Will from Hill's Road Sixth Form College
Arjun, Mark, Sam and Ryan from Smiths Lane School, Windsor
Robert Hoggarth from Queen Elizabeth School, Kirkby Lonsdale
Natasha Strevens from Tonbridge Grammar School
Congratulations to everyone for a fantastic first round. The book prize for Challenge 1 (see the Rules page for details) is awarded to Darton High School in Barnsley to celebrate the achievement of Michelle and Ben from the team Geeks R Us.
We are also announcing 8 special prizes this week each to the value of £25, one prize for each of the following teams:
These, like the book prize, are selected at random from among those submitting a completely correct entry for the part A challenge.
1. Josh, Joe and Simon from Yately School
2. Priscilla, Carmen, Shrestha and Amy from Wolverhampton Girls' High School
3. Chiya Yi and Annemarie from The Mount School, Dalton
4. Dr. Paul and Dr. Tommy (really?) from Honiton Community College
5. Yusuf, Tim and James from Alcester Grammar School
6. Rebecca from South Wiltshire Grammar School
7. Kris, Rateb and Charles from George Abbot School, Guidlford.
8. Kyle E from Somerhill Junior School.
We will email you this week to confirm your contact details if you have won. If you have not heard from us by Monday please get in touch (we are still trying to track down a few winners from last year!) On the other hand, once we have confirmed everything it can take up to 8 weeks for a cheque to be sent out so please be patient.
All the best.
Well done to everyone for all your efforts with the first Challenge! You can now see how you got on at the Leader Boards, and also print out certificates recording your success using the link
http://www.cipher.maths.soton.ac.uk/feedback.php
There are slightly fewer teams taking part this year but the number of people taking part is considerably higher, so the average size of a team has grown. It gave us quite a headache trying to format the certificates. There are two versions, one shows your position in the leader board, but that is a bit misleading as you can have the second highest score and be joint 630th, so the other version says (in that case) that you got the second highest score. You can print either or both - you choose.
Good luck with Challenge 2. Can you do better than you did this week?
Come back and find out at 3.15 this afternoon (Thursday 2nd October)
All the best,