Students Claim 8th Place in National Cipher Challenge

January 2017

image

Congratulations to Abbi and Marshall on their excellent achievement.

Two of our talented Year 10 students, Abbi S and Marshall G, have claimed 8th place in the 'National Cipher Challenge', which attracts thousands of participants from across the UK alongside many international competitors.

The competition is designed and hosted by the Mathematical Sciences department at the University of Southampton. Abbi and Marshall have been competing each week since mid-October in the annual competition, which blends mathematics, computing, story-telling, and code-breaking. They have worked together to de-code letters, messages, and stories to solve this year's murder mystery entitled "Fighting Gravity', which investigated the mysterious death of a young scientist.

The pair have gained experience using different code breaking strategies including cipher shifts and analysing the frequencies of letters. Congratulations to them both on this excellent achievment.