Registration Instructions

Choose a username and a screen name. The username must be unique and may only contain letters, numbers, dashes and underscores (so no email addresses and NO spaces!)

The screen name will appear on the forum and the leaderboards, so it is public. Please don’t use anything that will identify you, could embarrass you or that gives away your username.

You should not use any personally identifying information in either of these fields as they will be stored in our system.

Choose a secure password, ideally using a password manager so you can’t forget it! It is impossible for us to reset your password if you forget it, though we will ask you to choose some “Security question” answers on the next screen that will allow you to reset it if you can’t remember.

In the next step we ask you to set three security questions that you will need to answer if you want to reset your password in the future. Please make sure that you remember the answers. You can store them securely in an encrypted note on your computer, or in a password manager if you are likely to forget. We will not be able to reset your password without them.

In step 3 If you choose to create a new team then you will be asked to give it a name.

Unlike the username and screen name this can contain spaces, but there are still restrictions on the characters you can use, so please read them carefully and stick to them.

If your teacher has registered on our system, they should have a Team Monitoring PIN that they will find on the School Teams tab in their user account. If you enter that PIN here, then they will be able to see how well you are doing in the competition, and should also be able to help administer the team.

The team name will be used publicly, so again don’t use anything that will cause embarrassment or give away private information like your name.

In step 3 If you choose instead to join an existing team, rather than set up a new one then you will need the PIN number and password for the team. You can ask your teacher (if they set up the team) or the team captain for this information and enter it here.

If you are the first person to join the team then you will be designated as the captain and it is your job to submit the answers each week. If you would prefer for someone else to do that then you can invite them to sign up to your team using the PIN and Password, and then delegate the captaincy to them.

If you are the team captain then you will be able to see the team PIN and Password on the team tab in your account page. You can share that with anyone you would like to have join your team.

In step 4 we will collect a small amount of information about you. In the first two boxes we ask for information about your school, that we will use to generate your certificates. This information is stored in your user account, but will be deleted at the end of the competition.

You can leave the school box blank if you are homeschooled or if you prefer not to tell us.

in the last two boxes we ask for your gender and age, purely so we can learn something about our audience.

We use this to monitor diversity and we record the information separately from your account and only in aggregate so there should be no privacy issues, but feel free to leave them blank or select “Prefer not to say” under gender if you want.