Hello!
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Just thought I would add my own welcome. It is great to see you and I look forward to getting to know you over the next few months. If you have any questions, comments or suggestions then do get in touch. We love hearing from you.
Jodie
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Happy to be back!
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Ready for new challenges and experiences!
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Looking forward to seeing what you can do with them! Harry
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Karma police arrest this man
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Glad to be back, it was a great 5 years as a competitor and I hope to remain in this community as an alumnus for many more!
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Hello All and Harry, good to be back and with a team this time. Im still haunted by the playing cards from last years 10b…
Hoping to out place my 53rd from last year and good luck to everybody competing alumni included
Ruikt
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hello to everyone competing, wishing you the best of luck and hopefully 10b wont be another card one again
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Maybe not a CARD one, but I hope it will still be a HARD one!!! (not kidding, Harry)
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Love to be back, spent so long on 10B last year after missing it was cards! This is my 2nd year so hope to use the experience from the first
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Hello to everyone competing, my team and I are ready for the first challenge release in a couple weeks!
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Hi all, erm Harry you need put the ‘Sunday Puzzle’ tread up in forum 😉
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Good thought! (Though actually, one of you could have done that!)
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can’t wait for this year. It’s my second time competing and my team has been working on a python project to solve the ciphers for us 🙂
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My advice: take that python project and keep working on it. When you think it is complete, keep working on it. Keep working on it until, well, I don’t know, I haven’t reached that point yet.
It is always great seeing more students starting to learn about programming for cryptography.
Trust me, even if at times you may hate that code, you will enjoy the project in the long run.
Good luck! – Puzzling_Pelican -
I’ve done a similar thing lol. I have maybe about 1/3 of the important parts finished and its looking like I’ll be finished just in time for week 4. Its half operational for the handful of decryption routines I’ve already made, but I’m just glad that it all works and that I can finally put my 2 years of python experience to something useful. Best of luck, I hope everyone reading this enjoys this year’s competition. May the best team win!
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My program currently solves caesar, affine, substitution, vigenere, and playfair, I have a whole GUI with input box button. I also made it solve playfair although have no clue if it will show up this year. I feel like this is a very strong start, are there any ciphers (other than transposition which I’m currently working on) which you think I should make solvers for
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It looks like your team have already made a good start on your python solver.
I would recommend looking over the past National Cipher Challenges and using that to prioritise which ciphers you implement next.
In addition to ciphers, it is worth also looking into: variants of each cipher (e.g. 6×6 Playfair), trying to automatically identify which cipher something is, trying to automatically pull the ciphertext from the website, break it and submit on its own (the top of the time leaderboard got very competitive last year, plus you get a cool badge for quickest submission), and as always, trying to improve how quickly the tool can break each cipher.
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Hello all!!! Glad to be back for my third year, I’m so excited! Our team is looking to start a python project too, but don’t know where to start. Any advice from our wizened elders?
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I’d like to describe myself as well-seasoned than wizened (you know, like a good Caesar salad) but here goes!
Something our team did was set up a GitHub repo for the group, with each person working on a different cipher type (e.g. transposition, grid, monoalphabetic). Our approach was to keep things modular, so the cipher, scoring function and solving algorithms were all separate files and you could swap any of them without rewriting the rest. We also kept a list of which cipher types to tackle first. Also, Madness’ book (which you can find in the BOSS Training Division) helped us immensely every single year!
As this is your third year, I’d suggest testing your solvers on previous years’ ciphers to see how they perform!
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Oh my word this is so helpful, thank you so much! I’ll be sure to check Madness’s book! I recognised you from other years, glad to see you again! And apologies, well seasoned is more apt for the challenge, with a side of Vigenère dressing?
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Hello all, this is my first year and me and my team are really looking forward to it. Any advice for newcomers?
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Hello and welcome to the cipher challenge! It is so fun, you will not regret joining! My advice is to not sit at length hours over the one you’re stuck on, take a break, read a mystery book or detective show to get the creative juices flowing, and see whether the solution comes to you then! Another good tip is to persevere, even if gets hard, just try your best, and if you don’t end up doing some of it that’s ok, the purpose of the challenge is not only to test our cipher cracking skills, but to have fun! So enjoy yourself, and have a lovely challenge! 😀
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Another good idea is to remember to eat and sleep – it sounds crazy but when you’re invested in a cipher, it’s easy for these things to slip your mind! If you’re also looking for a good detective show to start, watch BBC Sherlock – you won’t be disappointed 🙂
-JM -
Health advice from Moriarty himself? Very kind of you to make sure everyone’s well-rested before the Final Problem! Speaking of shows, if anyone would like something set at Bletchley Park itself, I can highly recommend Hut 33 by James Cary!
EotS
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Practice lots, don’t assume you fully understand how the ciphers work (I still don’t understand some fully after 4 years lol), don’t always feel the need to rush them straight away, take time to understand and learn about each cipher (some of them have really interesting history behind them), do what you can where you can (just because you don’t get one week in time doesn’t mean you can’t do the next, Harry and the team provide the official answers to each), make sure to work together and communicate rather than working individually (working together on call has helped me and my partner-in-crime a lot in the past, even if one of us can’t be in front of a computer at the time), bounce ideas off each other. But most importantly, and this is what the competition is built for, have fun exploring something new. If any of you know how to code, it might be beneficial writing some scripts (but don’t overcomplicate your files). There are plenty of tutorials and guides online that are super helpful. I hope some of this advice helps. Good Luck and I hope your first year goes well 🙂
P.S.
A few people are leaving recommendations for shows so here mine – The Imitation Game, starring Benedict Cumberbatch. Its all about Alan Turing and the Enigma machine, and how it was used during the war to crack the Nazi messages
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Hi everyone, it’s great to be back! This is my 8th year doing the Cipher Challenge (and my 1st year at university), and I’m really looking forward to what Harry and Jodie have to offer this year. Great to hear that we have an alumni leaderboard for the first time!
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helleooeoeoeeo guys im so excited this is so greatttttt
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Hii everyone! It’s my teams first time doing this challenge and we are so excited to participate and learn from all of you experts. Any advice for beginners would be really appreciated!! :)) xxxxx
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Hi everyone! its my teams first time doing this challenge but defiantly not last, we can’t wait to have a shot at the later chapters and learn new stuff along the way!
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