Rules and regulations

[Harry]

Unclear about the rules? Want to check if something counts as cheating? You can post it here. We moderate all the posts and we promise not to post anything embarrassing. We can always post a question for you together with our answer.

[Doctor-sherlock-torchwood]

Hi Harry,

It’s good to be back doing the Cipher Challenge (although my username is different from last year so you probably won’t recognise me). Hope you and the elves are well.

I was wondering what the policy on [EEEDIT, Harry: using code on other] websites is? Is any use of a website like that chesting, even if it’s just for frequency analysis or checking a Caesar shift? Also, if you write a computer program yourself, can you use that? I’ve never been taught how to make cipher solving programs but I know others have and I would definitely teach myself if you thought it would be useful for the cipher challenge.

Thank you

[Harry]

There is a grey area here but clearly the idea is for you to use your own smarts, knowledge and experience to solve the challenges. It is highly unlikely that anyone could win the competition using other peoples work like this as we customise the harder challenges, but in any case the competition is a LOT more fun if you build your own expertise and tools to crack the ciphers.

Harry

[Author]

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