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Registration

Registration went live at midday on Monday 3rd October. Just use the login menu item to set up your account. We will ask for some information about you for competition purposes, but we will not be passing this to anyone else. We look forward to welcoming you to the Fifteenth National Cipher Challenge, Fighting Gravity.

To register you will need to provide us with the following information:

Username: This will be the name you use to log on to the site to post comments, and also to submit your entries, check feedback and to print your certificate. Choose something memorable. It will appear whenever you post something in the forum so don’t include anything in your username that identifies you. You are, after all, working with an undercover organisation.

Password: Again this is for logging on. Choose it carefully, make it strong and keep it secret. The system will discourage you from using a password that is too easy to crack.

Email address: This will be used to confirm your registration so it must be an active account you can check to authorise the account. If we need to contact you this is how we will do it, so add the account [email protected]to your email account address book to avoid sending our emails to your junk mail bin. Make sure the account is not too full, and check it regularly.

Teacher contact: Give the name of a teacher we can write to if we need to check anything. You should get their permission first! We don’t usually do this unless you win a prize. If you are home schooled give us a parent or carer’s name here and write home schooled in the school name field. You will still need to give us contact details in the address fields below.

School: Tell us which school you are at so we can include that on your certificate and the leaderboard. Do add your city/town/village (as in King Edwards School, Southampton for example) as you would be surprised how many schools share a name across the UK.

 

The “Ineligible for a prize” box on the registration form

If you are a teacher who is registering in order to keep an eye on the forum, or a Cipher Challenge alumnus who is now too old to take part but just can’t keep away, or ineligible for some other reason, then please tick this box so that the computer doesn’t award you a prize by mistake! It is embarrassing for us to have to ask for it back. Thanks.

Why bother?

You need to ask? Well we thought you might, so we did it for you. Here is the view of Julain Bhardwaj, longtime competitor in the National Cipher Challenge and Grand Finalist in the UK Cyber Security Championship:

If I were to name one thing which has undoubtedly influenced my academic drive, interests and overall career to date, it would be the National Cipher Challenge. Since being introduced to cryptography and the challenge in Year 8, it has been my one passion and driving force in pursuing further education in maths.

Julian has a great web page of his own at Sophos and you might enjoy his article on the top ten cipher texts that have been cracked in history:

https://nakedsecurity.sophos.com/2013/02/06/top-ten-ciphertexts-cracked/

 

Our new site

Fantastic work by the 10° and Onimpact team with a complete overhaul of the National Cipher Challenge website. We hope you like the new look and feel and welcome comments on it.