bringing out the best in boys

Codebreakers

Posted at 10:18 am on 14th May, 2019

The Alan Turing Cryptography Competition

Year 7 and 8 students have been breaking codes and solving ciphers as part of their co-curricular Cryptography Club.

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Using the knowledge learnt during the co-curricular activity, teams of students entered The Alan Turing Cryptography Competition organised by the School of Mathematics at the University of Manchester.

The spring term online competition, open to Years 7 to 11, challenged students to  use their mathematical, logic, problem-solving, literacy and team skills to discover the secret of the Lovell legacy.

Mrs Tobiasen, Teacher of Maths, said:

“The teams who entered loved taking part in the competition; they looked forward to coming to the co-curricular cryptography club each week and were eager to solve all of the puzzles. Well done to all the students who took part!”

Well done to Year 7 students Zachary, George, Mason and Adam; their team finished in the top third of the national competition! They placed 338 out of the 1030 teams who entered.

George, Year 7, said:

“The puzzles got harder and harder every week, but that made the challenge even more fun.”

Mason, also Year 7, added:

“The cryptography challenges were really fun to solve, but we were learning at the same time.”

Cryptography, meaning the Science of Codes, includes the use of concealed messages, ciphers and codes and can only be understood by the person holding the key. Cryptography also includes the breaking of these codes.  Codes are based on whole words being changed, whereas a cipher is based on letters being swapped for other letters, numbers or symbols.

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