Well done to everyone again, another great performance in round 2! Here are the winners of the part 2A prizes. As in the first round, each of the following teams gets to share a £25 cash prize, so if you are listed (and even if you are not) please get online and update your details in case we need to get in touch with you. We will email you if you have won, so if you are one of the lucky ones and you don't hear from us them get in touch. It is taking a little time to get the round one prizes sorted, so apologies if you are still waiting to hear from us. You should soon. All the best, Harry
Winners of the Challenge 2A Prizes
Bethany Lloyd, Amrita Brara from St Georges School for Girls
Jack Graeme Azra Jacob Sadie from Great Cornard Upper School
Bay from Bay House School
Oliver Brown Harry Felton Alistair Kerr Adam Pailing Joseph Major from Weydon School
Ryan Suchocki Andi Wang Adam Campbell M. from Hills Road Sixth Form College
Alex Pickett from King Edwards VI Aston
melissa good from holmfirth high school
Sara L, Jack R from The Judd School
Well done to everyone! This was a fantastic start to the adventure and we were really impressed by the dedication and skill you all showed. We had 1163 teams from 488 schools taking part in round 1 , more than the 1019 teams from 436 schools entering the same round last year. Mind you, there are over 200 teams registered from 757 schools so we hope that some of the others will get on board for round 2.
Here we can announce the winners of the part 1A prizes. Each of the following teams gets to share a £25 cash prize, so if you are listed (and even if you are not) please get online and update your details in case we need to get in touch with you. We will email you if you have won, so if you are one of the lucky ones and you don't hear from us them get in touch. All the best, Harry
Winners of the Challenge 1A Prizes
Ciphered from Whitby Maths College
Uji, Sarika, Joe, Ewan, Joe, Theo, George & Lawrence from Fulford School
Clare Brunet from Holy Trinity
Aditya, Khush, Nial, Shakil and Zain from Preston Manor High School
Halyster, Petester, Dougster, Danster and Jamster from Emmanuel College
Cat from Collingwood College
Sarah from St Marylebone School
Nazzah Khatun and David Parker from Nottingham Academy
If you registered but haven't completed the registration yet, so you don;t have a password to sign in with you need to do the following:
1. Chekc for the registration email you should have received and click on the long link in it to confirm that you have received the email. This makes sure you entered you email address correctly on the form, and you will then receive a password you can use, sent to that account.
2. If you can;t find it, check for a follow up email. Rather misleadingly that will state your username and have an empty password in it, but you can ignore that and as with the original email just click on the long link to confirm receipt. You will then be sent your password.
If you can't find these emails check your spam folder. If all else fails you will have to register again I am afraid. We send several reminders then delete derelict accounts. If you still have trouble with this then email me as soon as possible at
Harry
Just a quick note to those of you who are new to this, you should post the entire decrypted message in each box on the submission form, not just info about how they were enciphered. In fact the decryption is the only thing you should enter and this should not include the date at the top of the messages on the pdf. The dates are just there for context and will throw off your answer. (The numerals will get deleted by the solution checker so they are not the problem, but the month will stay in and will confuse the checker, which is a meerkat (albeit a highly trained one) and therefore likes to keep things "simples".)
At 3.15pm today (Oct 1st) the first challenge will (should?) become available for you to download. You will find it on the page https://www.cipher.maths.soton.ac.uk/the-challenges-2009/challenge-1-2009?number=1, where it will appear as two graphic images (Harry ducks the missiles and tries to ignore the boos and hisses from Smaug and the dragonlettes) AS WELL AS A PDF YOU CAN DOWNLOAD! (Can I come out now?). You should download the pdf and use that as your source. The images do have a function (you can work it out for yourself) but they are not the primary source. The direct link to the pdf is Download the challenge as a pdf. This will download it to your computer where you can open it and copy the text. You might want to print it out and work with it by hand (you have plenty of time and this can be fun) or you can open it with Acrobat Reader and use the text tool to copy the text so you can process it however you want. (See https://www.ehow.com/how_11627_copy-text-pdf.html for more on this - Mac users can do the same using the built in Preview app).
The server often gets choked with the initial rush, but there is no need to panic: you have until midnight tomorrow to get full marks for Challenge 1B and until midnight next Wednesday to get full marks for Challenge 1A. If the server is too busy just leave it for a while and try again.
Good luck!
Harry