National Cipher Challenge 2020 Prizewinners

[Harry]

The National Cipher Challenge is about far more than the prizes, or those few who are awarded them, but those prizes represent the huge esteem that we and our sponsors hold for all of you who take part in the competition. They are a mark of the respect we have for the efforts of the thousands of you and the tens or hundreds of hours you put into it, so before we announce this year’s winners allow us to take this minute to congratulate you all. Whether you were a first timer who made  it through the early rounds, or an old hand  who stayed close to the top of the leaderboard throughout, Well Done! We hope that you will return next year for our 20th Anniversary edition and that you will continue to develop your skills and push yourself even further. We also hope that you will continue to enjoy stretching yourselves in everything you do, not just this competition. The dedication, hard work and resilience you have shown in taking part will stand you in good stead in the other challenges you are currently facing.

But now it is time to turn to the award of prizes and to thank our sponsors for making this possible. The professional codebreakers at Cheltenham, together with IBM and Trinity College Cambridge have been joint sponsors of the competition together with the School of Mathematical Sciences at Southampton from the beginning, and we are extremely grateful for their support. This year we were also joined by the Institute of Mathematics and its Applications, the Bluespark Foundation, the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council and Cloud Digital. We couldn’t run the competition without our partners and we hope that you will join us in welcoming and acknowledging their support.

Alan Turing Prize, sponsored by GCHQ, £1,000 is awarded to Guy Semple from George Watson’s College in Edinburgh.

Participating alone as Chiffre Déchiffrable, Guy is in the Scottish version of the lower sixth, or year 12,  and next year will be studying maths, computing, history and philosophy.  He is not quite sure what to study at University, but says that computing and economics are possibilities. Guy, it is not too late to turn away from the dark side and cross over to Mathematics! Guy told us that he was introduced to the cipher challenge in maths challenge club at school, and that this is his fifth year taking part. He started with paper and pencil but quickly realised that code was needed, so learnt python and has been building up his scripts and skills over the past three years, including tackling more unusual ciphers in the challenge off season and learning more about the history of cryptography.  He says that “The challenge has been a brilliant target each year, and I’d recommend it to anyone.” That isn’t the reason we gave him the prize though! He  completed Challenge 7B in 1 hour 11 minutes and 32 seconds beating all the other competitors, even some of those with years of experience who take part even though they are far too old for prizes!

Ada Lovelace Prize, sponsored by Trinity College Cambridge, £1,000 is awarded to William Zhang, a year 11 pupil  from Methodist College Belfast, our first prize winner from across the Irish Sea, and we hope that in the future there will be more! Participating alone as Wilwam845, William’s favourite subjects are Maths and Computer Science and apart from his school work, he likes studying modern cryptography and the maths behind it. He found the National Cipher Challenge via Twitter (@Cipher_Master), and decided to try it for the first time this year., so winning one of the two individual prizes was an astonishing feat. William says that “It was a very fun and rewarding experience, and I was able to increase my knowledge of classical ciphers and programming under pressure.” We hope that he will be back next year, and for many years after, even when he is too old to compete!

The Hut 8 Prize, sponsored by University of Southampton School of Mathematics, £1,000 – The Westmonsters, captained by Niklas Vainio, are a team of  year twelve pupils from Westminster School. He and his team mates Avish Kumar. Max Zuev, Oliver Beeby, Daniel O’Keefe, Conor Collins, Daniel Ciesla, Gracie Zhou, Audrey Zhan, Elizabeth Ho and Luca Reina are interested in cryptography, mathematics and programming and found out about the competition by recommendation from our teachers. They say that “t has been a wonderful experience to learn about different ciphers and use our knowledge for some practical, exciting problem solving!” We should also take a moment to acknowledge the huge efforts of teachers across the UK who run clubs and support students both in and out of the classroom, and whose efforts over the past year have been extraordinary.

The Hut 33 Prize sponsored by IBM, £1000 – “Ifmmp Xpsme!” Team captain Aryan Daga of “Ifmmp Xpsme!” freely admits that this was “retrospectively not the best name…” but did not say which of his year 11 team mates, Annant Khullar; Henry Williamson; Arya Salukhe;Aditya Gupta; Giacomo Sotti; Sandro Levi was responsible for it. Aryan told us that “Having heard of the competition through our school, and despite a lack of experience tackling ciphers, we decided to enter the competition to challenge ourselves – we did not expect to do this well! However, we found that a combination of luck and some programming knowledge was enough to solve each problem as it came by. The intriguing storyline, of Nazi spyclists in the English countryside, was also very fun to follow. As the competition went on, we learnt how best to approach each problem and break it down into manageable and solvable parts, as well as how to work together and communicate as a team. In the first few problems we would each attempt to solve the problem individually (with varying degrees of success), whereas the last problem required a huge amount of co-operation in trying to find weaknesses and developing code to exploit them. We also developed an enjoyment for ciphers that we will continue to pursue in the future. Thank you to all the organisers for this fantastic experience!” We were delighted by the thanks, but even more by the account of how the team grew together and developed their teamwork skills. Many of the most interesting and most challenging problems we face in research, and in our lives are best met by working together so that our individual talents can really flourish. Sometimes a breakthrough comes from a single moment of insight, but usually those moments are rooted in many hours of joint work and we love to hear stories like this.

And with that the competition is truly over, but we have one more surprise. Together with Madness, one of our most prolific posters, and joint developer of this year’s competition, Harry will be releasing one more ELITE level challenge on the site on Thursday 28th January. There will no leaderboard, no scores and no hints, just a nasty cipher for anyone interested to tackle. We will be delighted to see how you get on with it and will leave the Forum open for you to discuss it. Have fun, 

Harry and the Elves

(Don’t forget the 20th Anniversary Challenge in the Autumn! It wouldn’t be the same without you.)

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