Southampton Uni codebreaking challenge winners announced
Winners of the National Cipher Challenge 2022 were announced during a ceremony held at Bletchley Park on 7 February.
The challenge, which sees 11-18 year olds deciphering weekly clues to unravel a narrative, was started by the University of Southampton’s Mathematical Sciences department and is now in its 21st year.
More than 7,000 teams and individuals initially entered the competition, which ran between October 2022 and January 2023, with only 20 making it to the final stage and receiving a silver medal. From these, only four were selected for gold status, which came with a large cash prize.
Sponsors for the challenge included IBM, 10degrees, Blue Spark Foundation, Trinity College Cambridge, UKRI, GCHQ, Netcraft, The Institute of Mathematics and its Applications, and Mathematics Teacher Training Scholarships.
Starting with a strange vault with a box on the floor containing a small slip of paper and nine mysterious characters, every Thursday afternoon further clues were given to help the codebreakers decipher the message and find the hidden story about a spy network infiltrating the CIA.
The top competitors were invited to write an account of how they broke the final cipher and were scored by a committee for their speed, ingenuity and accuracy, as well as how well they were able to relay the account of events, how they overcame challenges and how they spotted the clues.
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Cipher Master and University of Southampton Professor, Graham Niblo said: “This year's competition really tested the skills of participants, challenging them to solve various problems and puzzles. It’s interesting to see how the challenge had awoken a passion for maths that many didn’t know they had.”
“The next generation will face many of their own challenges. We hope that the competition will have inspired them to see how they, and mathematics, can play an important role in solving them.”
Silver Medallists on the day were:
- Matt Morris aka “electric” from Birkdale School, Sheffield
- Arya Salukhe and the members of “lffmp Xpsmel” from Westminster School, London
- Natan Arnold competing as “City Intelligence Agency” from City of London School
- Team “Error 404”, led by Asher Nagler from Haberdashers’ Boys’ School, Hertfordshire
- Samual Griffiths competing as “Kingswinford Warriors” from Kingswinford Academy
- Hannah Laughlin and her colleague in the Undeθbles from Northgate High School, Ipswich.
- Daniel Howard and the members of “The Cream Crackers” from Ralph Allen School, Bath
- “Downe House Pig Farming Society” from Downe House, Thatcham, led by Melinda Leong
- Jack Brinded and the members of CRyptoGraphicS from Colchester Royal Grammar School
Gold medals and sponsored cash prizes of £1,000 each were awarded to:
- Shrey Biswas, Karan Sharma, Henry Rayner, Taran McVay, Nigel Arun, Rudrrayan Manna & Alison Craig-Greene from King Edward VI Grammar School, Chelmsford competing as The Cypher, awarded the IBM Prize
- Nathaniel Elder and Nikhil Chauhan from Nower Hill School, Pinner competing as Rhino Well School, awarded the University of Southampton School of Mathematical Sciences prize
- Olivia Gibson from Manchester High School for Girls competing as JOG, awarded the Trinity College Cambridge Prize
- Hannah Blacker from King Edward’s School, Bath competing as ameliktos and awarded the GCHQ prize
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