The official Challenge 10 tips and hints thread
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Did you change your mind about putting the type of cipher in this hint? (You did say you would in the tips)
[Yes we did! Sorry! Harry]
Hi, according to the hint for 10A (which says “we will publish the type of cipher it is at 9am on Friday 15th December”) I thought we’d get the name of what cypher it is today? Or is the cypher’s name hidden in the hint we have already?
[That was the plan, but there was a late change of strategy, so the name of the cipher will not be released immediately. We have a series of hints building up here day by day instead. Hope they keep things interesting for longer. Happy Christmas, Harry]
On a scale of 1-10 (1 being easy, 10 being ridiculously hard), how difficult would you rate Challenge 10A to be compared to 9A?
Is Part A one cipher or a combination of multiple ciphers? From what we’ve investigated so far, the IOC implies it’s some form a vigenere cipher. Initially, we thought of a running key cipher with the use of the transcript for the show… but that doesn’t seem to be working… now we’re thinking of a variant of a running key as it’s “quite a bit different”… are we heading in the right direction Harry?
When are we getting the hint?????
[It was published in this thread at 9am this morning. See other replies. Best wishes, Harry]
Harry don’t forget to give which cipher the hint is for, for instance the 9:00am should start with
Hint for 10AThat goes for anyone posting make it known to which you are reffering to!
[It should! The timed posts do have titles saying which one they refer to, but those don’t seem to be displaying. Have just implemented a fix. Apologies for any confusion. Harry]
The first official hint for Challenge 10B
We assume you have already carried out all the standard tests and decided this is not a mono alphabetic uni-literal substitution cipher, so if you haven’t already tried it, your best bet is probably to start looking at bigrams, trigrams etc. To get you started here are the most common bigrams in the cipher text:
Harry I think I know what cipher 10b is but I have no clue what combination it is so can you tell us the combination tomorrow please instead of telling us in like 2 weeks
[Errrr, no. Where would be the fun in that. Muahaha, Harry]
Hi Harry, if we’ve solved 10b, and have been told that we may be asked for a write up of our methodology in future, then roughly when would we have to submit it, and how long would we have to write it.
Also, are there any guidelines for what we should write and include, and how we should present it; this is the first time our team has made it this far in the competition so we are in unfamiliar waters.
Any tips are appreciated, thanks in advance.
[All good questions. We are looking for evidence that you cracked it yourselves, and that you wrote any software that you used, but more importantly we are looking for how you broke it. What was the insight that led you to the solution. What blind alleys did you go down and how did you find your way out. You can read some past examples on the resources page, or you could read Claire Charlotte’s account on https://www.cipherchallenge.org/boss-your-cipher-challenge/. We love reading them all and will be grateful for whatever you can send, but do be aware that we will ask a number of teams to do this and there are only four prizes, so You shouldn’t spend too long on it and it doesn’t have to be a polished essay.
Good luck, Harry]Is there only 1 cipher or is it a combination of multiple ciphers for part B?
Has anybody solved it
[Some have, yes, so it is doable! Have fun, Harry]
The second official hint for Challenge 10B
We found the attached fragments among the papers together with the diary. Perhaps they shed some light?
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