Cipher Resources

How to contact us

The best source of info about the competition is this website. The rules page and the Teachers' Pack contain a wealth of information about the competition, and if your question is not answered there you can post it in one of the boards. If you need to get in touch directly with us you can email us at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.. While the organisers will make every effort to deal with your enquiries promptly we cannot guarantee to reply to every email as we have limited resources.

Books

In a desperate attempt to recover some small portion of the costs of producing the poster we have set up an Amazon Shop called Harry's Place which contains a selection of books and resources related to codes, ciphers and general mathematics. We make a very small commission on every sale and you don't pay any extra, so if you can use the site to buy books for the competition, or presents for family or friends (Christmas is coming!) then we will be eternally grateful. Any purchases you make in Amazon using the link will also enrich the National Cipher Challenge and help us to continue to keep it free. Thanks in advance for any support you can give us.

Information For Teachers

You can Download our Teachers Pack, which includes an introduction to substitution ciphers and contains three lesson plans which may be useful in helping you to explore ciphers and decryption techniques with interested students. One of our long-time participants, the esteemed Technosites, has prepared a short guide to beginning programming which you might also like to consult.

We have set the release time for each challenge to 3.15pm on a Thursday in the hope that pupils will be able to use School IT resources at that time, but we do know that school hours vary widely across the country and that this time is not ideal for everyone. We have tried to find the best compromise and apologise if it does not suit you.

If you have a Maths Club at your school, you could consider organising the students into teams to tackle the challenges, though this is not essential. If you don't have a Maths Club this might be a good time to start one, or you could try to set up a short term Cipher Club. The Teachers' Pack is a good place to start.

Bruce Schneier and Niels Ferguson, two of the world's top cryptographers have described cryptography as "Just about the most fun you can have with mathematics" and we are inclined to agree with them. We hope that this competition will help you in the task of enthusing students. If it does let us know, and if it doesn't let us know that too. We are always looking for ways to improve the competition.

Your school should have been sent an A2 size poster to advertise the competition, but if you didn't get one or need extra copies for the noticeboards you can download a pdf version suitable for printing at A4.