If you registered between about 2.05 and 3.50 today (12th October) then I am afraid you may have to do it again. I am really sorry for the inconvenience. Hope it doesn’t put you off, Harry.

With 39 hours and 28 minutes until the first Challenge goes live it is a good time to register. You won’t want to waste time doing it on Thursday afternoon with all the excitement of the challenge itself.

We have over 3100 competitors registered already, and I am pretty sure there will be a last minute rush to sign up, so do yourself a favour and get involved now so you can relax and get on with decoding parts A and B later this week.

There is no major rush to get started. You can score maximum points on this first challenge by submitting a complete and correct solution any time before Saturday 15th. And if you don’t it won’t matter. The first two Challenges (published on the 13th and 20th October) are warm up exercises designed to get you in the groove.

In the meantime, if you are still not sure how to tackle your first codebreaking exercise, don’t forget to take a look at the Beginner’s Guide that you can download from the resources page. Once you know about frequency analysis and cribs, you are in great shape to get started. The words might sound scary, but that much is not too hard.

to sign up for this year’s competition. We hit 1000 registrations at 5.25 yesterday afternoon and the number is steadily climbing. We are at 1,192 now and on target to beat our highest ever. Schools across the UK are gearing up with codebreaking activities, maths clubs and cipher challenge clubs. If you want advice, head over to the forums. Welcome to the Challenge.

Challenge 1 will go live at 3pm on October 13th, so you have plenty of time to get ready for it. On our resources page you should find a beginners guide to cryptography, and if you don’t know how to get started take a look at that. You might also like to view the powerpoint presentations on simple substitution ciphers like the Casear shift, the affine shift and keyword substitutions. That is more than enough to get you started.

The Challenge will last a week (or just a bit less) and speed doesn’t really matter at this point, though we will award some points based on how quick you are as well as how accurate you are just for fun. The first two challenges won’t contribute to your final score for the competition, but we will issue certificates for them anyway. Check the rules pag, the FAQ and “About the Challenge”, and if you have any questions either post them in the forum or send us an email.

Keep an eye on our twitter account too. You never know what you might find there.